The Inverse Relationship Between Inclusion and Competence

In the current neurotic obsession with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in America, much as been said about equity and its Marxist and Maoist characteristics. Diversity has obviously been on the topic board since the late 1980s. But “inclusion” is an odd word in a few senses, and one that has received little attention.

The DEI crowd seems to believe that all domains of life should draw randomly and proportionately from the population and that anything other than precise representation of all races, both sexes, and all cultural backgrounds is clear evidence of unjust exclusion at the hands of a power-source.

The problem with this assumption is that as the complexity and difficulty of a task increases, the utility of inclusion reduces and the value of exclusion rises rapidly. For instance, when it comes to neurosurgery residency admissions or NASA engineering roles, it makes sense that the admissions to these tasks themselves is associated with very low levels of inclusion. If this were not so we would obviously be compromising competence in very sensitive domains and increasing the risk of catastrophe. This self evident truth lies at the basis of my objection to initiatives in the DEI front.