alt Hacker NewsIt depends how you conceptualize fairness. If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.
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Yep. Maybe a little bit like a sports handicap, you’re not trying to give someone a better chance of winning than everyone else, you’re trying to give them equal chances based on historical data.
Gemini gave me an okay analogy: “If a pendulum is knocked permanently off-center by a structural bend or a magnetic field, the only way to center it again is to apply an equal and opposite force. Affirmative action policies attempt to apply this counter-weight to straighten the broader societal scale.”
I’m not sure but is there a question about whether we actually had pre-existing unfairness? Blacks got the legal right to vote in 1965. Before that was effectively institutionalized racism, fully entrenched cultural bias, right?
No, because two wrongs don’t make a right. Where else in our society do we justify imposing a moral wrong on a specific individual on the premise that moral wrongs may have been committed against other individuals?