Lately I've started to think Agile also bears some striking similarities to Communism. It has its dogmatic adherents, and it actually sounds good on paper. It's just that everywhere I've seen it tried, it fails. And the reason given is always "that wasn't proper Agile".
Like other dogmas or ideologies, it's unfalsifiable. No amount of real-world experiments can invalidate it if the reason is always "that wasn't real Agile".
> Thomas Gilovich—a Cornell University psychologist famed for research that indicates people are far more likely to regret things they haven’t done than things they have—examined people with high IQs: not one regretted having children; several reported regretting not having a family. That assumption has been challenged, however, by the “childless by choice” movement and research debunking the myth that babies have a bonding effect on marriage or that children bring happiness: a 2010 American Sociological Association study found that parents were more likely to be depressed than their child-free counterparts, and that people without kids were happier than any other group.
Not one high-IQ person studied reported regretting having children, and yet the objection made here is that another study showed "that people without kids were happier than any other group"? There seems to be some conflation of ideas here. Lack of regret and happiness are by no means the same thing. You can have no regrets about doing something while simultaneously admitting you would probably have been personally "happier" having not done it. I would say most sacrifices are like this. For example, you wouldn't fight for a cause you believe in (say, protesting against a corrupt regime) and put yourself in great personal danger in order to maximize your happiness - that would be a terrible strategy. You're much more likely to have a happier life by keeping your head down, staying quiet and not rocking the boat. You would only fight for a cause because you believe it's greater than yourself, and more important than your personal happiness. The belief the pervades this article - both implicitly and explicitly - is that your happiness is the highest value in life. If you believe this - and I don't - perhaps not having children is the most logical choice. It does seem to be the case from the data that childless people are happier. What can be made of this? Maybe this: having children is not about making you happy.
> You're equivocating on the word discrimination. When activists or people in the media talk about discrimination as a societal problem, they're referring to discrimination based on irrelevant characteristics.
Kind of. I was highlighting the fact that the word "discrimination" is inherently ambivalent (you could also say equivocal I suppose) - it simply means to distinguish between. It’s no different to the words "categorisation" and "selection" in this sense.
As you recognised, there are forms of discrimination that are absolutely necessary and even desirable - such as discriminating against someone without a medical degree to practise medicine.
The point I was making is that it's not always so easy to distinguish between positive and negative forms of discrimination. Is it wrong to be biased against less-educated people? Well, it depends on the situation. Are you hiring for an important position that requires higher education? In this case, it would be unethical of you not to be biased against less-educated candidates.
The problem I have with this kind of article is it paints a one-sided picture where discrimination-as-such is bad. You can make a compelling case for this. When you discriminate against people without a law degree for performing legal work, you deprive those people of a well-paying, high-status position in society. You could say that's not fair, and there’s truth in that. But what's the alternative? If your view is that all forms of discrimination are wrong, the logical answer is to do away with all forms of discrimination, even the positive ones. You can see this in the article by its promotion of non-quantitative assessments in education:
> So, what could help overcome the education divide? One view is that different ways of scoring tests could help even the playing field. In several studies, Butera’s team showed that giving children graded tests or exam scores actually reduces motivation and performance in reasoning and decision making. If there are no graded scores it also reduces social comparison, which we know can often negatively affect performance, as Sheehy-Skeffington’s work revealed.
If detailed feedback on how to improve is given instead of simple graded scores, it helps “focus on assessment as a tool for education” rather than assessment for selection, Butera argues.
Of course removing graded scores “evens the playing field" and reduce social comparison. It also makes selection based on competence impossible - it’s “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. And don’t think for a minute that proponents of this think it should be strictly limited to primary education and not also apply to secondary or tertiary education, where grades and certifications supposedly have some value as selection criteria for employers.
> Nobody is arguing that we should allow blind people to drive cars.
Don’t be so sure. Arguing that we shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate by level of education is no different to this in principle - it’s only a matter of degree.
"A subtle form of discrimination exists towards those who are less educated and it divides society in a number of ways."
Wrong - it's not always so subtle! For instance, there's widespread, blatant discrimination against people lacking medical degrees for performing complex surgical procedures. We should really work to correct this systemic bias for a more equal and inclusive society.
Some thoughts about the "no one's forcing you to use it" arguments (of which I'm also partial to, having removed myself from Facebook).
Humans do have a need to socialise/connect with other humans, just as we have need food and water - we quickly lose sanity in isolation. To give an example, the worst punishment in prisons is solitary confinement (being separated from the other criminals!). The link between social isolation and health problems and ultimately early death has also been demonstrated.
It seems to follow from this then that we do really need Facebook to the degree to which they control all means of socialising, and online communication is only becoming more and more primary over time. In other words, imagining the extreme case where FB is only means to connect with the world (and this is their stated mission), we can no longer choose not to use them anymore than we can choose not to breathe and eat, insofar as physiological well being goes.
Like other dogmas or ideologies, it's unfalsifiable. No amount of real-world experiments can invalidate it if the reason is always "that wasn't real Agile".