Editing Taleb's Ugly Surgeon (section)

== Consequences ==

The thing that is interesting is that this applies to discrete variables as well. Take, for instance, a society that rates people of some specific race lower by default. Perhaps they think that South Indians<ref name=safe-race/> are morons, for instance. If you were to see a South Indian in a position of eminence, you must assume that they're better than someone else from an undiscriminated race in that same position.

An unusual consequence of this is that for those whose entire experience is with people who have passed the selection filter, they will look around them and find that South Indians (in this example) doing the things that they're doing seem unusually more competent. Given a lack of awareness of the selective filter, they would then conclude that South Indians are particularly well-suited to that position of eminence. The stricter the filter unfairly on South Indians, the stronger this will seem, since the South Indians will be more and more competent.

But this is more a property of the filter than of the South Indians, in this case.