wokeness = How update-able are you?
I remember a phone interview where the hiring manager apologized for assuming I was married to a women. I told him that he shouldn’t apologize for his prior — it was quite reasonable. We laughed and continued to talk about digital transformation.
Oddly, the apology made me wonder when I should be offended? Or if assumptions I made could have offended someone in the past. We all make assumptions about our surroundings to make it through each day so I don’t consider the first mistake an offense. What would be offensive is if they pretended the conversation never happened, tried to say that marriage was never meant to be between two men, or rejected my application because of the incident. Each of these possible outcomes interestingly have different statistical interpretations!
The “pretend nothing happened” would describe someone’s who’s beliefs cannot be updated with data, i.e. their prior is so strong that they are blind to the data points being presented to them.
The “you’re living your life wrong” would describe someone who interpreted the data, i.e. the correction, incorrectly. Normally when someone corrects you about these personal details is just to avoid future awkward moments and had no intention of attacking your wokeness. A counterattack is not necessary.
The “can’t hire this person anymore” would describe someone who is mixing up their belief about my eligibility with their belief about something … else. In other words, they are not hiring with intention but more with intuition and likely their work is done in a similar fashion.
In all of these cases, they’re practicing bad statistics by not updating their beliefs according to the data. Someone who is mature and empathetic, i.e. woke, would have just acknowledged the correction and carried-on with the conversation.
So instead of associating wokeness as being knowledgable about the least offensive vocabulary, I think it’s better to associate it with how update-able are you to the data being presented to you everyday.
