Imagine that academic performance has a really low value for predicting job performance. [...]
Sure. It is possible to construct possible worlds in which the behaviour of the academic faculty investigated in this study is rational and unbiased and sensible and good. The question is: How credible is it that our world is one of them?
If you think it is at all credible, then I invite you to show me the numbers. Tell me what you think the actual relationship is between gender, academic performance, job performance, etc. Tell me why you think the numbers you've suggested are credible, and why they lead to the sort of results found in this study. Because my prediction is that to get the sort of results found in this study you will need to assume numbers that are really implausible. I could, of course, be wrong; in which case, show me. But I don't think anything is achieved by reiterating that it's possible for the results of this study to be consistent with good and unbiased (more precisely: "biased" only in the sense of recognizing genuine relevant correlations) decisions by the faculty. We all (I hope) know that already. "Possible" is waaaaay too low a bar.
The question is: How credible is it that our world is one of them?
Making wrong arguments isn't good even if it leads to a true conclusion. I haven't argued that the world happens to be shaped a certain way. I argue that your arguments are wrong. LessWrong is primarily a forum for rational debate. If you arguing for a position that I believe to be true but make arguments that are flawed I will object. That's because arguments aren't soldiers.
On the matter of the extend of gender discrimination I don't have a fixed opinion. My uncertainty interval is pre...
I remember seeing a talk of the concept of privilege show up in the discussion thread on contrarian views.
Some discussion got started from "Feminism is a good thing. Privilege is real."
This is an article that presents some of those ideas in a way that might be approachable for LW.
http://curt-rice.com/quotas-microaggression-and-meritocracy/
One of the ideas I take out of this is that these issues can be examined as the result of unconscious cognitive bias. IE sexism isn't the result of any conscious thought, but can be the result as a failure mode where we don't rationality correctly in these social situations.
Of course a broad view of these issues exist, and many people have different ways of looking at these issues, but I think it would be good to focus on the case presented in this article rather than your other associations.