Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point • Hacker News Board

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#21

Post by Kim_Bruning » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

The hardest lesson I ever learned (the hard way!) was that meritocracy doesn't work in practice.

At some point in time, some people accumulate more credit/reputation for their work, and can use that to earn more credit more quickly. This then snowballs as these people pull ahead of others out of proportion to their actual contributions.

This makes a Meritocracy an unstable equilibrium, and such a system will not remain meritocratic for long. When other parties come along later, they won't be able to displace the incumbents.

You might then be tempted to cut off the long tail and hand over the community to the incumbents. But that's really going to be a problem if more than half your work is being done in that long tail!

Importantly; if you do hand over to the incumbents, you've very obviously just changed into something other-than-meritocracy.

My argument is that all systems that start as a (naive) Meritocracy will tend to fall into this trap.

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#22

Post by aidenn0 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

jkingsbery wrote: post #18

I think the author has a very different definition of "fair" than what I usually think of it (free from favoritism; conforming to established rules; see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fair ).

One reason why life isn't fair is that there are contradictory definitions of fair. Unfairness is a poor criticism of any system, because there isn't a completely fair system.

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#23

Post by TheIronYuppie » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

The fundamental issue in meritocracies is that we only measure a small part of the merit that needs measuring. I once got in an argument with a manager that we should measure best coders on the team by lines of code generated - is that merit?

To extend the analogy in the piece, if the only way a football team measured “best” was for “yards passed” that’d be a pretty bad team on the field. They measure by position to figure out what’s right - and techniques like those made famous by SaberMetrics/Moneyball show even THAT is not all - you REALLY need to measure by team performance and team goals.

Teams that are diverse deliver materially better returns[1]; if that’s “merit” then that’s a way to optimize for that. The problem with this article and meritocracies is not diving deeper in what you should measure.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinsights/2020/01/15/diver...

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#24

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

svrtknst wrote: post #15

kiba wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do live in a meritocracy, which favor those white, middle class, mediocre males you complained about, because they got all the advantage and thus became good about it. But selecting the best had nothing with fairness or ensuring that everyone is educated.

But... favoring a certain class of people _by definition_ means that those people arent necessarily the best equipped. Being favored doesn't just mean reaching the best results due to the best circumstances, it also means being given unfair credit etc.

[deleted]

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#25

Post by KukiAirani » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

This is such an odd use of the word "fair"

Fair is understood in a meritocracy to be with respect to skill level, not with respect to any particular person's moral standard.

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#26

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #3

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

If you're fine with a system that rewards those who grew up in middle class and above families and punishes those that don't then I disagree but okay. But don't call that a system based on merit when you're quite transparently admitting it's not. Meritocracies are an inhuman system which, to the extent they can be realized, only happen incidentally. How many of the relatively well to do people on this board subvert t…

They address this in the article. Meritocracy doesn't mean dropping your children in the forest and stripping all advantage from them. The whole point of a meritocracy is to be the best you can. Giving every advantage to your children that you can afford is the whole point of meritocracy. It's not "fair" but it produces peak performance, like the article says

>They address this in the article. Meritocracy doesn't mean dropping your children in the forest and stripping all advantage from them.

If there's no equalizing basis then you can't say it's about merit. Was feudalism actually about merit? After all who's more capable of being the king than his own son?

>The whole point of a meritocracy is to be the best you can.

I agree but with a very strong emphasis on the "you."

>Giving every advantage to your children that you can afford is the whole point of meritocracy.

Just a second ago you were saying it was about advancing yourself. Now it's about advancing your bloodline, those are two different things.

>It's not "fair" but it produces peak performance, like the article says

There's no reason to believe it produces peak performance. Even if you're a big believer in individuals advancing themselves in efficient markets and all that what you actually want is very liquid markets. If certain jobs become chock full of rich kids because they're the only ones who can receive all the training then that's very strong evidence of inefficiency and thus big evidence that we are not receiving "peak performance."

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#27

Post by Kim_Bruning » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

TheIronYuppie wrote: post #23

The fundamental issue in meritocracies is that we only measure a small part of the merit that needs measuring. I once got in an argument with a manager that we should measure best coders on the team by lines of code generated - is that merit? To extend the analogy in the piece, if the only way a football team measured “best” was for “yards passed” that’d be a pretty bad team on the field. They measure by position to…

Something like this program tends to discourage the "let's pay for KLOCs" line of reasoning. Does $1 per line sound reasonable? :-)

  #!/usr/bin/env python3  

  with open("pay_me_lots.py","w") as payme:
      print ("#!/usr/bin/env python3", file=payme)
      for i in range(1000000):
          print ("print('you now owe me $"+str(i)+"')",file=payme)

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#28

Post by Bakary » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #14

Bakary wrote: post #5

The issue of meritocracy often turns semantic. Different realities can be justified with the same word depending on people's conception of justice and efficiency. The other aspect not mentioned is that a society can be meritocratic, but the peak performance that results does not necessarily lead to work that is useful to society in aggregate. I am reminded of Jeff Hammerbacher's infamous quote: "the best minds of my…

I am not sure what is ironic about the last paragraph. The point is that growth and distributioin are orthogonal concerns.

The author's argument is that their conception of meritocracy is laudable because it grows the pie, and growing the pie is the most important thing if we are to avoid fighting for scraps. They're not saying that growth and distribution are orthogonal, just that the former leads to a better latter and ought to be prioritized.

This is ironic in the sense that much scrap fighting is the result of growth being captured and allocated by meritocratic elements (as defined by the author) in ways that make fighting for scraps more likely, from nobles wasting the surplus on political struggles to the smartest people today redistributing wealth around instead of creating it.

Perhaps a more poignant example would be the deterioration of the environment. Peak performers have created much wealth in the past by harnessing fossil fuels, but the negative externalities can now lead to an equal if not worse destruction of wealth in the future. The author's view does not take into account these situations that go beyond the simple struggle between individuals in a historical, physical, and geographical vacuum.

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#29

Post by _qulr » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

The article makes the fundamental mistake of confusing economics and ethics.

Capitalism is an economic system. It's far from perfect, but it may be the best economic system we've got.

Capitalism is not an ethical system. Treated as an ethical system, it may be the absolute worst. It has nothing to do with "fairness". How is massive inequality fair? It's not.

We've got to dump the inhumane idea that people ethically "deserve" the money they acquire, as some kind of god-given right. I suspect some people literally believe that the "invisible hand" of the market is God distributing reward and punishment. But that's not economics, it's theology. I've got no objection to capitalism or inequality, if they end up being useful, but the whole point of it is to make everyone better off via economics, not to "fairly" distribute wealth. How fair is it that some people are born smart, or strong, or tall, or beautiful? Nothing really fair about the genetic lottery, but it can certainly be advantageous economically, and there's nothing wrong with utilizing natural talents for societal benefit.

Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

#30

Post by mikea1 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

arnvald wrote: post #17

> The reason meritocracies work so well, is not because they are fair, but because they produce peak performance. This is short-sighted. It optimizes for the "local maximum", the "today's maximum". Yes, if today you don't choose the best candidate based purely on their results, you are technically losing, because you could do better. But here's the thing, if you choose a candidate that is not the best, but that can h…

I like that your comment aligns with game theory. It is in the best interest of individual corporations to hire the best candidate. It is in the best interest of the industry to create a strong pool of candidates. An industry consists of individual corporations that act self-interested unless they cooperate to achieve long term goals together.

This dovetails with the free rider problem too. A corporation does not want to train (invest in) a subpar individual and then lose them to a free rider corporation in the industry that only hires the best candidates.