http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Kapor The fact that Michael Arrington, snot-nosed latter-day startup wag, is attempting to discredit Mitch Kapor, one of the guys who made San Jose "Silicon Valley", says a lot. Almost as much as the fact that Arrington decided not to quote the paragraph in full: "Being meritocratic is a really worthy aspiration, but will require active mitigation of individual and organizational bias. The operation of hidden bias in our cognitive apparatus is a well-documented phenomenon in neuroscience. We may think we are acting rationally and objectively, but our brains deceive us." What Kapor is talking about is the fact that our bias isn't always evident to ourselves and that we have to be aware of it. Is he saying "Michael Arrington is a racist?" No, he's not: * * * A recent study, The Tilted Playing Field, indicates there are practices in recruiting, promotion, and retention within the IT sector which are problematic for women and under-represented people of color, and reduce their participation. Specific experiences of exclusion, bullying, difficulty balancing work/family are reported at much higher rates by underrepresented groups -- i.e African Americans, Latina/o/s, and women of all backgrounds. Another vicious cycle at play. "If I’m not going to be valued or respected, then I’m outta here." Meanwhile, Caucasian and Asian male engineers and managers report that their companies spend the right amount of time on diversity. Silicon Valley likes to think it operates as a pure meritocracy, e.g., it's the best teams and ideas which get funded. In practice, as luminaries from John Doerr to Ron Conway acknowledge, key decisions are often guided by a combination of pattern-matching based on superficial characteristics and the network of people you already know. More on this here and here. http://mkapor.posterous.com/ * * * Michael Arrington founded TechCrunch. Mitch Kapor founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, UUNet and, oh, yes, spreadsheets. And he's married to this lady: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freada_Kapor_Klein I had some sympathy for Michael Arrington for a couple days - no mean feat. But now he just needs to STFU.
Ascribing properties to the brain that properly only belong to humans (or other creatures) has been called a new form of dualism by the philosopher P.M.S. Hacker. What he means is that this type of thinking doesn't lead to any deeper understanding of cognition, cogitation or brain function; it simply hides the real answers by saying "your brain does it". I'll freely admit to not knowing anything about the disposition or professional backgrounds of Arrington or Kapor. Arrington maybe an asshole, and Kapor a saint, but it doesn't mean in this case that Arrington isn't correct.
The science is on Kapor's side: we are not fully aware of the inherent biases we use in order to live our lives. These biases are not necessarily bad: there are reasons why a snap judgement is more useful than careful consideration. However, "bias" is how we lead our lives and by automagically assuming that simply because we think we're without bias we must be without bias we are, in fact, ignoring the fact that "the brain thinks X." Have a TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_o... Two books I recommend: http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-D... http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/05472479... As an aside, throwing mud at neuroscientists and then invoking a philosopher as ammo does not impress me. Finally, Mitch Kapor's wife is a leading authority on bias in the workplace: "Klein now devotes the majority of her time to work in the non-profit world. In 2001 she founded the Level Playing Field Institute, a non-profit which promotes innovative approaches to fairness in higher education and workplaces by removing barriers to full participation.[1][2] While serving on the Executive Board of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Klein co-founded the IDEAL Scholars Fund with three other board members in 2000. IDEAL invests in high-caliber, underrepresented students at Berkeley by providing resources and support to maximize their educational experiences and leadership opportunities during college and beyond. The fund was established in response to California Proposition 209.
Klein’s for-profit and non-profit endeavors include the design and execution of several landmark studies, including: an annual survey of quality of worklife issues in Internet start-ups, a survey of Fortune 500 manufacturing and service firms to determine the effectiveness of corporate efforts to address sexual harassment, a survey of gender bias and sexual harassment experienced by Massachusetts physicians and medical students, survey projects for the United Nations and World Bank on various forms of harassment, and a national representative survey of U.S. employers and employees on their perceptions of fairness in the workplace." Michael Arrington is a journalist. Freada Kapor Klein has been a leading scholar on diversity in IT since before the phrase 'IT' was invented.
I think we're arguing about two different things here. I fully believe that bias exists. It seems undeniable. I wasn't arguing that it doesn't, or that Arrington doesn't possess any biases. It just so happened that one sentence in this piece was a great example of something that annoys me in science, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to so with the IT world or racial bias in any capacity. It has to do with a broad conceptual misunderstanding among many people about the interpretation of neuroscientific data. I meant to sling no mud at any scientist; I just meant many are wrong. (I don't despise any scientist. That was a poor choice of words.) That's what scientists do to one another. I used Kandel and Crick as examples to show how pervasive this type of language is. Both of those men are geniuses and well deserving Nobel laureates, and even they aren't immune. "Invoking a philosopher", as you call it, is a way to point out that there are scholars who deal in this type of work who are often ignored. Hacker is perhaps the world's leading authority on Wittgenstein, whose writings about language and levels of understanding are very germane to neuroscience, but aren't required reading in most neuroscience graduate programs. We would all benefit if they were. Scientific data are much more useful if there is a philosophical framework in which to interpret them. I wasn't trying to impress you; I was making a point that dualism is alive and well in today's world and is propagated by the belief that the brain is the new God.
Bias, however, is not racism. Racism is a particular subset of bias. Kapur was talking about bias. Arrington made it about racism. And while I'm tired of this whole tawdry affair, it does seem as if CNN is attempting to shine a light on the bias - deliberate or inadvertent - within the tech industry. My read of Kapor's statement, and my read of Soledad O'Brien's statement, is that they are attempting to point out that there is bias within the tech world aside from racism. My read of Arrington's statements are that he's basically saying "you tricked me into looking like a racist and boy howdy am I pissed off about it." Meanwhile, you seem to be saying that there are philosophical dangers inherent in implying that the brain is an organ as well as the seat of consciousness, and you seem to be pretty exercised about it. I'll reiterate - I've read a number of fairly compelling books that support the hypothesis that the consciousness and the unconsciousness are often at loggerheads and that much of the nuance and surprise in behavioral science is due to this dichotomy. However, I have no skin in the game. I just think you're tilting at windmills. A "psychological study with their subjects hooked up to an EEG or an fMRI" is still leagues ahead of the musings of a philosopher. Weren't you one of the people giving me shit for defending Freud?
Also, bias and racism are separate, to be sure. I think boiling everything down to racist vs. non-racist is a terrible way of proceeding. It stifles the real issue, which is that many well meaning people (me and you perhaps) aren't always fully self aware, and we make decisions based on many factors besides those of which we are fully conscious. If that was O'Brien's point, then its a good one that was made in a poor way. As to the other point, there are philosophical dangers in implying the brain does a lot of things. Certainly we would be psychologically devoid if not for an extremely well developed cerebral cortex. However, I do fundamentally disagree with the notion that the brain is indeed the seat of consciousness. Consciousness can only be ascribed to an organism, not a brain. One can have a perfectly intact brain and lose consciousness due to, say, kidney disease. The brain as an organ has the indispensable role of coordinating all of our organ systems, providing a means for cognition and cogitation, sensing pain, etc. That doesn't make it conscious. We are conscious as people, not as vehicles for our brains. I certainly grant you in advance that I'm probably not in the majority on this. Sometimes "the musings of a philosopher" do outweigh scientific studies. If we can't interpret data in a coherent way--and certainly saying that "our brains trick us" is nothing if not incoherent--then the data are useless. I think neuroscience is at a point where collecting data is a lot easier than doing anything with the data. All of these tools like fMRI, PET, CT, etc. are very new, and I think in the rush to collect data, some people have lost sight of what the data actually mean.
I think the root of our disagreement is that I simply don't see the danger in drawing a distinction between "what we do" and "what we think we do." The conscious/unconscious divide is hardly a new philosophical conceit and one which has helped to outline many sociological and psychological issues.
It used to be "the soul". Then it was "the mind" during the Enlightenment. Now its "the brain". Its all the same, no matter what word is used to describe it. Its dualism, and it robs us of our humanity (by saying that we lack control over our own psyche), while obscuring complex and important problems. The mind is an emergent property of the body, and they are one, not two.
It used to be "the soul". Then it was "the mind" during the Enlightenment. Now its "the brain". Its all the same, no matter what word is used to describe it. This is something that I haven't been able to put into words. I think that you both have legitimate arguments, and I can't help but think that we need better language to describe this. I don't consider that I am my conscious part of my brain anymore than I am the part that drives 200 miles and can't remember it. I for one, embrace dualism, in that it means we are not more than how we relate. We needn't be internally consistent, just externally definable. The road defines my consciousness as I drive, and my friend defines my consciousness as I converse with him. You two have defined an aspect of my consciousness here. I wouldn't say that the mind is an emergent part of the body, but exists as the interaction of the body with the environment. Arrington does have unconscious bias, and it is his fault.
IMHO, if we can accept that these aren't contradictions, I think we can move forward. It's not that I don't think a self doesn't exist, but I do think that it has no seat. The more ways we can describe it, the better we can characterize it. We know what is necessary for the self, but it doesn't reside within those necessary components. It's like wheels are necessary for a car, and to make it drive, but if we remove the wheels, it's still a car.
Certainly our brain has immutable functions, without which we would not be conscious. It does not, however think, trick us, make decisions, or any of the other myriad activities or properties that are ascribed to it in both scientific and popular literature. That's my issue with using language like "our brains deceive us"; whether consciously (pun intended) or not, when this language is used, consciousness is being ascribed to the brain, which inevitably leads to the supernatural because it creates and infinitely long chain of who is thinking for whom.