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Comment on Apple’s diversity chief out after outcry

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Apple: "We deeply believe that diversity drives innovation”.

The company is certainly innovative but it's predominantly (2017) white and male but on the other hand Apple don't say what % diversity is needed to do this driving. Don't they just choose employees on merit irrespective of any other consideration? They'd be dumb if they didn't.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-releases-2017-diversity...

Honestly, that "diversity drives innovation" is a total goddamn lie. Hiring the best people available drives innovation. Diversity itself has never been shown to be of any value.

If you look at some of the most innovative places in history, they weren't particularly diverse. It doesn't seem to have held them back. Renaissance Florence wasn't especially diverse, it was a bunch of Florentines sitting around doing Florentine things. Victorian London wasn't all that diverse, either, but they were innovating at an astounding rate.

Bell Labs in the 1960s was mostly nerdy white dudes with pocket protectors, and they were massively innovative -- because what drives innovation is thoughts like "What if we laid down amorphous silicon dioxide directly onto the wafer and annealed it to reduce electron traps?" rather than thoughts like "omg, I just saw a person with a different colour skin, my mind is totally blown".

You threw your argument out the window with this; "omg, I just saw a person with a different colour skin, my mind is totally blown”.

People from different social and cultural backgrounds can bring different experiences and skill sets. There are many, many examples of this throughout history.

It would seem many of the diversity programs are in some ways meant to address past racism in this country. That may be a whole different topic.

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