[NCSG-Discuss] On Diversity and Discrimination

[Dan Krimm]

I think the overall point is that expertise and experience are not the
same thing, and that while a baseline level of expertise is necessary,
experience adds much that expertise does not guarantee in itself.

Expertise is a narrow measure of value in a deliberative process.  As long
as there is a sort of "critical mass" of expertise in the group,
additional variety of experience adds more to collective deliberations
than additional duplication of expertise.

Dan



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On Fri, February 1, 2013 10:27 am, Carl Smith wrote:
> Lighten up Andrew,
>
> Satire is another and funny way of making a point.  But more rationally,
> if you had an important task of which you were uncertain of the
> methodology, would you not seek the most qualified individual to assist
> you without regard to anything other than talent?
>
> Lou
>
> On 2/1/2013 1:50 AM, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
>> Marc,
>>
>> You seem to have missed the context of the discussion of diversity. It
>> arose
>> because of discussions of the GNSO endorsements of candidates for the
>> ATRT2
>> team. While Avri, Dan, myself and others have engaged in a general
>> discussion
>> of diversity, the issue I was posting on and that the others taking this
>> question seriously seemed to me to be posting on, is the question of
>> required
>> diversity in bodies with specific authority or whose outputs are likely
>> to be
>> used to strongly and formally influence piolicy-making. Voluntary
>> membership
>> organisations such as NCUC/NCSG may also form an echo-chamber and
>> self-aware
>> people interested in equality, justice and fairness may seek to put some
>> resources into outreach to disproportionately encourage new members from
>> under-represented groups.
>>
>> Your discussion about intelligence levels, US political leanings and US
>> sports teams are rather off-the-point and in fact represent a classic
>> misdirection argument about any form of attempting to improve diversity
>> of
>> representation.
>>
>> If you haven't already seen it, I heartily recommend John Scalzi's post
>> on
>> "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is":
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/cngqk4h
>>
>> On this list we have good gender balance, some reasonable representation
>> from
>> developing countries and some other geographic diversity (though I think
>> the
>> only Japan-based members of the list are immigrant SWMs from the UK or
>> US,
>> but I might be mis-remembering, and I don't recall seeing any
>> Korean-based
>> posters - FYI Korea and Japan have some of the highest Internet
>> penetration
>> rates in the world, but are very unengaged in Internet governance fora).
>> But
>> we're just one constituency in ICANN and many of the others seem far
>> less
>> diverse and even with our diversity, it would be easy for the formal
>> bodies
>> of ICANN to end up unrepresentative, and therefore producing poorer
>> policies.
>>
>> Forgive me for being concerned about such issues, but as an information
>> ethicist, looking at the mechanisms creating and perpetuating inequality
>> in
>> information services is one of my research interests.
>>
>>
>>
>