The law required you not to discriminate on the basis of sex etc.
I am the one saying that this is inherently fair, and that doing so produces a definitionally level playing field.
Because that's just true. That's how fairness works. Fairness is when you don't discriminate on the basis of things (here, race, sex etc.) irrelevant to the decision you're trying to make (here, suitability for the position). Bias is when you do.
Your definition of fairness suggests that when someone is born poor, suffers, and dies poor, and someone is born rich, gets to enjoy all the things wealth brings a person in life, and dies rich, even though they did nothing in particular to earn their station in life... That's fair.
I think civilizations have been struggling for several centuries with whether that's good enough. We are, in fact, coming up on the Christmas season for those who celebrate, and there's a pretty good story an Englishman wrote in the 1800s on this topic. Something about three spirits visiting and what a man's life comes to, even when he plays by every single written rule.
(You're hitting the nail on the head. Equality of opportunity vs. equality of possible outcome is the division in philosophy in this space. Are you familiar with the thought experiment Lyndon B. Johnson spoke of in 1965 about a relay race where the runners have unequal starting lines?)
> Your definition of fairness suggests that when someone is born poor, suffers, and dies poor, and someone is born rich, gets to enjoy all the things wealth brings a person in life, and dies rich, even though they did nothing in particular to earn their station in life... That's fair.
No. I said nothing of the sort.
What I said is that when those things happen, and then an employer disregards that history in the course of making a hiring assessment, the employer acted fairly.
It is not incumbent upon the employer to attempt to right prior injustices. It is in fact wrong to expect the employer to do so. Because the employer did not cause them.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
I am done with this discussion, in all sub-threads, because this is clearly going no where.
You didn't say it directly; your definition suggests it as a logical inference.
> The law required you not to discriminate on the basis of sex etc.
> I am the one saying that this is inherently fair
So if most men start on a playing field where they are wealthier and most women on one where they are poorer, a level playing field will tend to maintain that level of inequality, will it not? And by your definition that would e fair.
In fact, there'd be an interesting observable consequence of this scenario: were it truly level, one could begin to observe population-level phenomena like "women are just poorer; that's innate to them" and be correct in observation but with an error in causality; it's not so much "innate" as "initial conditions coupled with a lack of mobility."
If it were initial conditions and a lack of mobility... An un-level playing field would encourage more mobility, would it not? And if you made it un-level in the right way, perhaps you could start to zero out those initial-conditions effects?
I am the one saying that this is inherently fair, and that doing so produces a definitionally level playing field.
Because that's just true. That's how fairness works. Fairness is when you don't discriminate on the basis of things (here, race, sex etc.) irrelevant to the decision you're trying to make (here, suitability for the position). Bias is when you do.