> Most people would say if both person A and person B had the same opportunity to practice Chess that's sufficient.
What if person A and person B had, in theory, equal opportunity to practice chess, but person B has a whole lot of other things demanding his time and energy due to lower socioeconomic status? Or, what if person B never really considered trying out for the chess team a viable thing, because "people like him" don't become serious chess players?
That's the thing that gets tricky here. Equality of opportunity is a nebulous concept. And to the extent that it's tilted towards some, it tends to stay that way in subsequent years and in subsequent generations.
But putting our finger on the scale to favor those who we are guessing had less opportunity to try and even it out screws up in lots of ways, too.
How do you suggest removing the barriers you describe? It's sensible and easy to remove barriers to trying out for the chess team, but removing all differences in time, energy and socioeconomic status seems much harder, and much easier to veer into a society that is overly prescriptive at nearly even level of humanity.
I hit on that with the last sentence. It's hard, and it's easy to create unfairness the other way. It's also easy to create perceptions that student B only got on the team because they are female, black, poor, or whatever.
At the same time, when student B shows up, and is nearly as good as A despite almost certainly having less chance to practice... maybe B is actually a better talent and will be better overall.
Making qualitative decisions sucks. But sometimes a holistic, qualitative decision captures better what is going on than the strict quantitative "fair" measure. It's all fuzzy and difficult.
I will say, especially with youth: my "fair" measures have been rubbish at predicting performance. Some of the strongest students on my robotics teams and in challenging classes have been the ones that did not look like it on my first measures.
What if person A and person B had, in theory, equal opportunity to practice chess, but person B has a whole lot of other things demanding his time and energy due to lower socioeconomic status? Or, what if person B never really considered trying out for the chess team a viable thing, because "people like him" don't become serious chess players?
That's the thing that gets tricky here. Equality of opportunity is a nebulous concept. And to the extent that it's tilted towards some, it tends to stay that way in subsequent years and in subsequent generations.
But putting our finger on the scale to favor those who we are guessing had less opportunity to try and even it out screws up in lots of ways, too.