I strongly agree. Put another way, I suspect we, as a community, are bad at assessing talent. If true, that manifests as both a diversity problem and a suboptimal distribution of talent, but the latter might not be as visible to us.
My guess re the mechanism: Because we don’t have formal credentials that reflect relevant ability, we rely heavily on reputation and intuition. Both sources of evidence allow lots of biases to creep in.
My advice would be:
When assessing someone’s talent, focus on the content of what they’re saying/writing, not the general feeling you get from them.
When discussing how talented someone is, always explain the basis of your view (e.g., I read a paper they wrote; or Bob told me).
I strongly agree. Put another way, I suspect we, as a community, are bad at assessing talent. If true, that manifests as both a diversity problem and a suboptimal distribution of talent, but the latter might not be as visible to us.
My guess re the mechanism: Because we don’t have formal credentials that reflect relevant ability, we rely heavily on reputation and intuition. Both sources of evidence allow lots of biases to creep in.
My advice would be:
When assessing someone’s talent, focus on the content of what they’re saying/writing, not the general feeling you get from them.
When discussing how talented someone is, always explain the basis of your view (e.g., I read a paper they wrote; or Bob told me).
How we do we know that we are not bad at assessing talent in the opposite direction?