Viewpoint diversity is one of the most effective ways of attaining creative and innovative breakthroughs in any field.

An interesting observation from Is Social Psychology Biased Against Republicans? by Maria Konnikova. The article is about the problem of a low level of intellectual diversity in the field of social psychology.

This dovetails with the point I frequently make; all systems need some minimum amount of diversity in order to evolve but also have to maintain a ceiling on diversity in order to sustain systemic coherence. Uniformity is tactically efficient but strategically catastrophic. A little bit of variation is tactically inefficient but strategically effective. A lot of variation leads to tactical dissolution of the system.

From the article.

Experimentally, viewpoint diversity is one of the most effective ways of attaining creative and innovative breakthroughs in any field; its absence leads to much the opposite result.

In recent decades, we have gotten confused. We have mistaken identity diversity (race, religion, gender, etc.) for viewpoint diversity. Hence, the tragedy in universities. In Most Competitive universities, the student body is racially diverse but viewpoint homogenous (and the university vociferously polices that homogeneity of viewpoints). Virtually everyone is upper middle income and middle class even though they are of many races. Racially diverse and class homogenous does not lead to intellectual growth or innovative thinking.