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> "many people can't access or contribute to Wikipedia because of racism", which is basically true if you account for second-order effects

This kind of very shaky use of second-order effects is dangerous and is responsible for some of the most well-intentioned but also destructive policy changes in the last 20 years.




> well-intentioned

I'm not so sure that's always the case.


> the most well-intentioned but also destructive policy changes in the last 20 years

For example?


Too many examples to list and I encourage you to do your own reading, but a low-hanging fruit is the ongoing legal battle of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Policy which was intended to make admission standards more equitable have succeeded in making them shockingly discriminative.

As I said, everyone involved I assume was acting out of good faith, but it's incredibly easy to see in retrospect how misguided their decision making was.




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