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Jack comments on A hypothetical candidate walks into a hypothetical job interview... - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is getting cartoonish since it is extremely unlikely that the most qualified candidate for a given position maintains membership in an avowedly racist organization. But yes, again with the proviso that the candidate's beliefs somehow don't impact their ability to do the job, I would hire racists. Why wouldn't I exactly? Just as a way of saying "Booo racism!" or "Booooo religion!"? Who is even reading my signaling other than myself? Am I supposed to think that by depriving a highly qualified person of a job opportunity, and thereby hurting myself, I will damage the group they are a member of or lead them to rethink their beliefs?
I think we're gonna start bumping up against terminal values pretty soon. I don't see how not hiring the enthusiastically religious is an efficient use of the lost income that results from your inefficient hiring practices.
What would you do if a large percentage of population had such membership, so that it became quite likely?
Doesn't change my answer.
Even if I only cared about economics, their beliefs affect how well I can do my job. I doubt I could sit across from an antivaxxer and get anything useful done. How picky one can be is determined by the number and quality of candidates.
My quality of life is also affected by the people I interact with daily. To use a silly example: I hate brussel sprouts. If someone said, "Oh I love brussel sprouts! I cook them every day at lunch!" that would affect how much time I'd want to spend around that person.
These seem like arguments that could conceivably be used to defend any kind of discrimination in the workplace. I suppose the justifications for making some groups protected and others not are meta and involve things like the Veil of Ignorance so we won't go into them. But this makes discussing workplace discrimination on the object level seem pretty boring to me since the criteria for when discrimination is acceptable appear almost totally subjective.
I am bothered by how "discrimination" has become an inherently offensive word. Choosing an employee among many is by definition an act of discrimination; what matters is what you base your discrimination on - whether it's something relevant to their role or not.
Mere lexical conservatism? Not quite. Policy discussions should revolve around which type of discriminations are permissible and which are sufficiently harmful that they should be banned; but the "discrimination = bad" has made this step all but impossible.
Hence you get people honestly, and correctly, arguing that to favour younger, or older, people is a form of discrimination. But then, rather than asking "did this employer have a legitimate reason for preferring a particular age group for the job?" (hopefully followed by "is it going to be harmful if people keep doing it?" and "do we have the means to stop it?"), they just slap the label "ageism" on it and are convinced that they have just proved that it's a Bad Thing®.
Worst possible worlds do tend to be cartoonish.
-chuckles-
Well how in the world will I get any work done with a woman in the office? Clearly my misogyny makes it ok for me to discriminate against women. ;)
People don't pick their gender based on argument and evidence.
Transexuals pick their gender based on their feelings, and they fully have a right to do that in my opinion. But lets say that currently the costs for that kind of change are too high for most people and pick a different example:
How in the world will I get any work done with a commie in the office? How in the world will I get any work done with a atheist in the office? How in the world will I get any work done with a eugenicist in the office? How in the world will I get any work done with a republican in the office? How in the world will I get any work done with a Jew in the office? ect.