Blind auditions required removing shoes because footsteps revealed gender

Evidence

The obvious solution in the human case—removing the names—will not work. In 1952, the Boston Symphony Orchestra began holding its auditions with a screen placed between the performer and the judge, and most other orchestras followed suit in the 1970s and ’80s. The screen, however, was not enough. The orchestras realized that they also needed to instruct auditioners, before walking out onto the wood floor of the audition hall, to remove their shoes. — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 190

Categorization

• XREF: This sets up the ‘hear the shoes’ machine-learning insight in 191—one of the chapter’s best connecting metaphors.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 190