Re: Personality BS (was: Should we oppose the Data Superhighway/NII?)

[doug@netcom.com (Doug Merritt)]

arromdee@blaze.cs.jhu.edu said:
>One problem is that if you just sit around and discuss everyone's impressions
>of the candidate, you've probably got some people who automatically get
>negative impressions of all candidates who are black, or Asian, or Jewish, or
>gay, or in the wrong political party.

True. And even aside from extreme examples like that, it is notoriously
hard to judge such things, even given people who are reasonable and operating
on the basis of good will.

On the flip side, ideally one would not have hired bigots in the first
place, so there wouldn't be such people making such judgements. (I haven't
stopped to do a head count, but as a white male I may actually be in the
minority in my group. Our V.P. is female and Jewish, as one example of
that. We're probably atypical. ;-)

And lastly, every method of interviewing anyone has ever conceived of
has its bad side. Nothing's perfect. Therefore this particular interchange
of ours is really merely a digression.
	Doug