However, if we are predominately white males, why are we?
Ignoring the obviously political issue of "concern", it's fun to consider this question on a purely intellectual level. If you're a white male, why are you? Is the anthropic answer ("just because") sufficient? At what size of group does it cease to be sufficient? I don't know the actual answer. Some people think that asking "why am I me" is inherently meaningless, but for me personally, this doesn't dissolve the mystery.
The flippant answer is that a group size of 1 lacks statistical significance; at some group size, that ceases to be the case.
I asked not from a political perspective. In arguments about diversity, political correctness often dominates. I am actually interested in, among other things, whether a lack of diversity is a functional impairment for a group. I feel strongly that it is, but I can't back up that claim with evidence strong enough to match my belief. For a group such as Less Wrong, I have to ask what we miss due to a lack of diversity.
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