Diversity: Life Outside the 2SD Range
The workplace is a competitive, challenging minefield for anyone, but it is harder still for those considered outliers of the system, based on gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, and accessibility. Diversity feels unfamiliar, and thus can spur the primal instinct of fear in people. It isn’t that we want to be hostile and disrespectful toward that which feels different, but rather that we experience an erosion of implicit trust around that which we have no knowledge or experience of, and thus feel fearful around. Diversity can lead to escalating tensions, miscommunication, stereotypical assumptions, and frayed group cohesion. However, not accounting for diversity misrepresents a heterogeneous reality as a homogeneous one, and the consequences of such denial are far worse for the collective.
Humanity has conflated unity with homogeneity and conformity, but if we looked to the wisdom of the wild, we would see that the earth’s biological inventory is fruitfully dissimilar, yet effortlessly resolved toward a state of self-regulated oneness. In nature, diversity results in resilient and robustly productive ecosystems that are hardy by virtue of the variances they account for and intimately assimilate through a convergent lens. We cannot resolve the interdependent problems confronting all of us, and coin true breakthrough transformations without being inclusive of various peoples who each carry unique perspectives, connections, insights, experiences, opinions and data.
What society and corporations need most is an impartial Quality Control (QC) department framed as a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation), comprised of members who concurrently represent real world diversity. Members would have equitable voting rights to counsel the societal frameworks or the company on all D & I (Diversity and Inclusion) matters, and they would have governance protocols that simulate the negative feedback loops abundant in nature. The more a resource or species proliferates, the more its checks and balances multiply to keep it in stasis with the whole ecosystem and all the organisms within its tapestry. This approach can be modelled with an AI algorithm for D&I initiatives, amongst other social justice concerns. In regards to a company’s daily functionality, the extent to which any identity would get to bogard a deliverable, centralise authority or monopolise the spotlight within a project, a presentation or team would trigger controls that restrict and rotate out the focus and priority over to the next identity to ensure diverse inputs are registered at every level of performance.
I would personally revel in a transition period when the AI is only allowed to suggest the alternative, not enforce it, as this would allow employees to continue doing as they believe is right. This will produce contrast maps between the recommended course versus the taken course, cataloging those decision tree discrepancies as case studies to build more equitable scenarios that can deliver better results in the near future. Mandating people to input the reasoning behind their choice points will offer transparency into why an inequity is accepted and under what conditions, i.e. we had to keep John Doe in charge due to domain expertise. This way, the AI’s learning curve would be populated with real time deviations backed by framing effect justifications for departure instances, instead of having to model around hypothesised ones that could never measure up to a human mind’s predilection to opt for the illogical, self-contradictory and counterintuitive. The decision-making archive would also log real time insights into how humanity shows up for and solves emergent scenarios that require urgent remediation. Would we defer to a pyramidal hierarchy of command, or are we more likely to impart the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the crisis equitably? A DAO would ensure everyone is proactively accounted for, given the chance to voice their minds, emote their hearts, vote in line with their values, and corroborate their culture. The DAO would objectively clarify the parameters against which the current paradigm excludes most people from finding necessary expression, and provide insight into why the prevailing system prizes the convenience of one demographic — the generally male, mostly white, invariably hetero-normative, myopically capitalistic, obliviously ableist profile — at the cost of all other demographics.
Same same but different. A campaign image by Asher Jay that portrays our inherently flawed awareness of equity.
In industry practice, QC ensures that outputs conform to predetermined requirements — and do so consistently. QC discards any outputs that do not meet given specifications, with the goal of minimising cost and maximising efficiency to turn the greatest profit. What QC doesn’t do is fail to disclose what those evaluation parameters are, what they tabulate as externalities, and what values get accepted. This is where I take issue with the predominant paradigm, as it often consciously omits the elephant in the room and manipulates the collective to believe the myth of meritocracy to avoid confrontation and accountability.
Competent QC (Quality Control) would recommend corrective action be initiated for all data points outside the standard ±2SD (standard deviation) range, to recalibrate the system to either account for the outlier variables under an expanded thesis or render irrelevant all atypical outcomes under a more restrictive premise. Irrespective, it strives to provide clarity around the conscious and unconscious cognitive bias inherent to the system’s design, and asserts intentionality over the data it favours, enables, validates and consequently normalises. Prevailing cultural mores and social norms should be scrutinised through the same sieve, with emphasis on unveiling the data prioritised, the data seldom collected, and the data gathered but disregarded. This would divulge the statistical mean the current system qualifies its viable results around, and make obvious the limitations and scope of application of both the system and the data it attests as reputable. Quality compliance guidelines that pass or fail a t-shirt naturally cannot be used for a microchip processor or mechanical gear box, but standards that could only work for the straight, white, able, male have been thrust upon every other living organism on this planet as prescriptive absolutes. Such an egregious underlying skew makes the suppressed majority feel like chronic outliers that can never be the default, only ever the exception.
Women, other genders, races, classes, those who are differently abled, as well as all wild and domesticated species, become extrinsic data sets, compelled to conform to a system that was never designed with them in mind. Therefore, the current framing cannot conceive of intrinsic value for any form of diversity, and why algorithms could persuade individuals to opt into the simplicity offered by consensus driven tribalism.
We want more of what we know, as it makes us feel a sense of belonging, safety and domain expertise. However, our unwillingness to interact with the unknown deprives us of our autonomy, curiosity and receptivity to learning. Once there are sheep, a self-proclaimed shepherd often manifests to populate the vacuous skulls of the effortlessly influenced to actualise a self-serving bias. Additionally, studies revealed that being around those who look, act, emote, and think like us results in confirmation bias, which diminishes our individual need to share data overtly, as we believe those who look like us must possess all the same intel. After all, it was instinctive consensus and blind faith that brought us together. Conversely, hearing a dissenting insight on a topic from someone who looks, acts, emotes and thinks differently from us feels more controversial and novel, as we expect their thoughts to be contrarian to our own construct, which challenges the mind toward greater critical thinking. In both instances, diversity encourages people to operate outside their comfort zones, apply their faculties more assiduously when considering facts, be more forthcoming when disclosing information, and be more open minded when receiving information. Such osmosis and sensitivity not only prevent oversight, redundancies, data chasms and data deficiency, but also boost creativity and innovation. Since we are less likely to take for granted that our content will be grasped immediately by people who are different from us, we are more likely to prepare well for a presentation delivered to a mixed team or audience, than when we preach to our choir. We expect to be misunderstood when faced by a heterogeneous group, and we expect to be understood when faced by a homogeneous group. This expectancy curve informs all cognitive bias, and it is humanity’s Achilles heel.
If we can see how ineffective it is to eclipse our situational awareness and communication skills with false projections, why do we still trend toward simplifying all incoming code? Everything we relay through visual, auditory and sensorial stimuli is encoded for optimal understanding by the message’s intended recipient, who needs to decode and interpret the message to receive its meaning. Information inundates us, and we must decode and process nearly 11 million bits per second, when our cerebral capacities can only process 40 bits per second (Orzan et al., 2012). Since we can’t break down all the messages coming our way as quickly as we would like, we formulated mental shortcuts. This makes us model our present and future disposition on our previous exposure, connecting the dots between known stimuli to create heuristics (shorthand insights) that can help explain unknown stimuli through pattern recognition. We ludicrously compare oranges to a shallow repository of flawed memories of merely one kind of apple. This distills why we are continually surprised by Black Swan occurrences.
Close examination of any distinctive structural methodology or protocol would reveal substantial prejudice and demonstrate how inept a singular lens is at exemplifying or coalescing diversity, in terms of people, perspectives, connections, crucial insights and even wildlife. Let’s not sidestep that which is plain as day. The statistical mean we currently measure against is the patriarchy, and those who are given the privilege to measure and appraise the relevance of gathered intel are partisans in advancing their own exclusive agenda. The toxic feedback loop is carefully curated to allow those who have always had the power and access to opportunities to maintain the state of affairs that continue to work to their benefit. QC for the patriarchy is not objective, as it enables systemic male favouritism at the cost of participation from all other peoples and species, constantly deeming the latter extraneous and inconsequential to the predominant paradigm.
There is a need for compassion toward the omnipresent ignorance that shapes the world to be as imbalanced and unfair as it is. Most people are not enlightened or unified within, hence the rationality and accuracy of decisions and judgments around the notion of being inclusive runs counter to their awareness of self. When someone perceives themselves as a part, they can be counted on to misrepresent the whole. So why are we appalled that white men don’t know how to bear in mind ripples that could affect other groups of people? It’s not just white men, we all make these snap judgments and impulsive choices that prioritise the me above the we, after all, if we didn’t do it, we would not be able to recognise it when another does.
Consequently, it is important to be compassionate towards the mindless and heartless ways in which others conduct themselves, as that cultivates compassion within, and vice versa. We can only learn more about ourselves from studying every reaction we have carefully, for how can we know how to judge, reject, condemn or antagonise another if we haven’t subject aspects of our own self to such harsh criticism first? We show up for others, how we show up for our own self, so diversity must find acceptance within. What does that mean? To be diverse within is to be whole, to allow the coexistence of opposing notions, ideas, thoughts, events, feelings by seeing how identifying with either side of the coin fractures the coin equally. There is a need to find reconciliation within before we try to cultivate unity in the world around.
A company’s modus operandi can consciously overcome such warping heuristics (mental shortcuts), social pressures, and emotions that cause the same data blind spots and data bias pervasive in cultural mores and social norms by questioning why the frameworks in place were initially chosen. Why do so many lives inhabit the periphery anticipating access, instead of being implicitly accounted for as stakeholders? When investigating the ingrained slope of any system, we must first ask who benefits most from the slant, as that would offer insight into the kind of incentives, insights and systemic reform that would help right the tilt.
Articulating an equitable future does not imply shunning those who have had the reins to date, but rather carving out their space as equivalent to the space occupied by every other demographic, and as a species, we need to do the same for other species. Models of mutualism do not use restitution as a reason to give rise to new gradients that imbalance the whole in favour of a few parts. While an initial shift in the axis might seem like a positive change for the previously subjugated, all it does is repeat history. To weight a seesaw to tip in the best interest of either seat only prolongs the frictions that ail a dichotomy, which is not how we spark sweeping metamorphosis toward unity.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein
Caption: Co-Exist by Asher Jay. We all emerge from the same folds of time, space, energy and matter, yet we fail to see that our differences are built on the same blueprint and building blocks. I used origami crease diagrams to illustrate this premise.
