“science is about descriptive facts, not about prescriptive values”
As a scientist I like that (because I prescriptively value facts/data), but as a sociologist, I note that “hard science” is published into a social context and reproducibility is quite a problem there as well; I think what makes the social sciences even more difficult is the added issue that the results can so easily feed back onto the population at large nullifying the results once they’re too public.

This is relevant in the context of crucial skills inasmuch as we discuss surveys and “the latest research” and “what we know from [xyz sociology]”, all of which employ a conflict of interest in even determinig the framing of data collection, let alone interpretation.

I think Google and Facebook got it “best” (i.e. “worst”) when they just started collecting everyone’s behavioral data online so that they could point to empirical proof of human behavior for internal decisions before “the public” finds out how they actually behave.

Scott, I’ve read the Pluckrose book. Its got too many misses in it to be useful in my opinion. There’s holes in their arguments and they completely miss neoliberalism as a fundamental cause for some of the things they blame on post-modernism, and they try to shoehorn ALL social justice into one category when the reality is quite different. But I digress.

What I really wanted to add to in your comments was the thought about diversity training. If you’re talking about the general, all hands, forced diversity training, you’re absolutely right. The majority of people already have the knowledge that they would have had to gain at this training already. They don’t need to repeat it over and over.

But there ARE training interventions that do work and have the solid evidence behind them. Targeted trainings towards increasing psychological safety, empathy, and interaction with diverse colleagues can do a lot. The key with ALL of them is that it can’t just be a one and done training, it has to be a continuous effort. If an effort is made to continue the efforts over time, the positive attitude change effects move into behavioral change for a portion of the audience. And training can only be one part of the plan – if other DE&I work isn’t being done, the training is worthless.

The problem for most people is that their companies want to look good and not make the efforts to actually be good when it comes to DE&I. So the companies persist with the forced all hands training even when they know it has little effect on their employees because its cheap and gives them something to put on their DE&I page.

A quick story because this is getting long (I apologize). I was at an event where the staff had banned the “manel” (aka an all white male panel). When we talked to the staff afterwards, they said it was not as much of a challenge as they thought to not use the same all white males that they always went to in order to speak, and they had ample staff experts ready to present. They just didn’t know they had them because they had never been asked to do so. Now there are dozens of expert speakers in that company instead of the same six dudes going to every event. And that is a fantastic DE&I intervention that didn’t cost them anything but a little time and effort. But had the staff not made an effort to try something new, it would have been those same six dudes up there until they retired. When we talked to their usual six dudes, they were thrilled because they didn’t have to be 100% travel for speaking engagements any more and could get other work done. You don’t hear about these kinds of interventions on a DE&I page, but they are incredibly effective and important.

Hi Caleb, that’s a reasonable question.

In general, how do we know any claim is true?

For what it’s worth, here is my view on it:

In the natural sciences, the scientific method of hypothesis testing is the way of creating scientific knowledge. Science is about descriptive facts, not about prescriptive values.

In the social sciences, practitioners try to use the scientific method but there are lots of systematic problems with their findings (Goggle the Reproducibility / Replication Crisis). This is because the social sciences are about humans, and the values of the human social scientists can corrupt their supposed factual findings.

So what about the effectiveness of the principles from the “One People One Planet” book or the principles from DEI training?

I see these two things in the realm of ethics and values, which are more like politics, religion and philosophy. Not science.

Ultimately, I like the One People One Planet principles because they match up with my worldview of traditional virtue-ethics and values.

And likewise, I don’t like DEI training because I see it as the opposite of my worldview. It’s groupish, coercive and dehumanizing of individuals.

FYI, my opinion of DEI has been greatly influenced by this book:

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay

Good point, Caleb. Thank you. I hear you.

The three points that paint DEI training as ineffective, temporary, and unsupported also seem unsubstantiated. I would’ve appreciated more information about why DEI isn’t enough if we are then supposed to adopt more generalized advice about civility. I get that this was a guest author, but Crucial Learning usually does a better job of backing up statements like this.

So for me, “dialogue talk” has to be face-to-face communication.
I’ve recently been doing dialogue talk with a person who believes I have extreme political views. The dialogue talk has been working in the sense that we understand each other’s viewpoints much better now and the negative emotional responses have been dialed back considerably. Neither one of us has really changed our core beliefs.

Before we did the dialogue talk, we only engaged in “connection talk” which is friendly and non-controversial, and occasional “control talk” which is adversarial and aggressive (not fun).

For me, dialogue talk requires total focus and face-to-face listening and responding. It can be very intense and exhausting, but afterwards it feels very exhilarating to actually listen so carefully and respond honestly to another person.

When I’m sincerely asked “How do I know?”, it makes me realize just how flimsy the basis for many of my beliefs are. As a result, I’m more careful about categorizing my beliefs into impressions (based on feelings), opinions (based on values) and knowledge (based on facts).

This process has helped reduce the magnitude of my emotional attachment to my beliefs, and thus not take it so personally when my beliefs are criticized or challenged. This is not easy for me to do and requires much awareness and vigilance regarding my emotional state of mind.

Overall, this is why I believe civility (such as in dialogue talk) is so important and why I’m convinced it’s such a key element in the foundation for healthy human relations. And of course, dealing with controversial issues such as DEI.

I can’t speak for Meredith, but I was somewhat disappointed in this article as well, and I believe that institutional, structural, and individual racism are real problems in our society today, so I will take your invitation to civil dialogue, for what it’s worth. As a frame for understanding where I’m coming from, I am by no means an expert in DEI, and it’s not part of my day job. I occupy various identities that are mostly privileged (white, middle class, educated, etc.)

I think the actions recommended here–don’t judge others, be kind, etc.–are necessary, but definitely not sufficient, to making progress toward a truly just multicultural society. Sure, when you catch yourself judging others, try to suspend judgment. But one of the problems is that we all have implicit biases that cause us to make judgments that we’re not even aware of. It’s easy to believe we are more rational and objective than we are, and even if we have been raised by people who don’t consciously believe in racism, still, the perspective that says “this is what normal looks like,” where “normal” = white, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian, etc., is all around us in our culture. We need to learn to explicitly look out for certain biases, or we just won’t see them.

Second, we may intend to be nice, but still cause harm when we are unaware of the issues affecting people who are different from ourselves. By learning about the perspective of people who face microaggressions so frequently that all the little stings add up to a barrage big enough to take a significant toll, we can avoid causing harm without meaning to, and not put the burden on those people to educate all of us individually–again, and again, and again, and again, and again . . .

I hope this helps!

Meredith – I’m not a representative of Crucial Learning but I’m wondering about your comment. What about this is tone deaf? I’d like to hear more about your perspective.