Comment by dinfinity

> Even if it happens to be “optimal” in this case at assigning employees to positions based purely on the information available and their likelihood to succeed, biases can present other issues.

Yeah, even if the Aima people were 50% better at being a doctor than the Weku (or whatever) we still would not want Aima to be preferred over Weku just for being Aima.

This is the core flaw of this study, imho. The whole equal treatment thing isn't supposed to be "everybody should be equally likely to be picked for a job", but rather "everybody's chances to be picked for a job should only rely on direct characteristics that influence their competence for the job". This study effectively forces the decision maker to use group membership as a proxy for competence due to the lack of information on direct characteristics.

It is hard to see real world situations where there is no performance penalty for structurally choosing participants less fit for the job by using only group membership as a proxy.