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

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

#81

Post by Kim_Bruning » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #62

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! Do you have a specific example where it seemed to work fine for you? (The example where I learned was in diverse web communities, including Wikimedia.)

Take the most broad and crude measure, educational outcomes, as some, albeit imperfect input to the system and you'll see very unambiguously and consistently that kids with better grades will do better in life, in most measures. Next time you are at the office, look to your left, look to your right: you will notice conscientious people, probably educated, probably reasonably hard working, team work oriented, and prob…

Surely, Merit based metrics should be "a part of this complete breakfast". However, focusing _purely_ on merit based metrics (pure Meritocracy) is not sustainable. It will break down and cease to reward merit almost immediately. (for reasoning, see my previous post).

If you are using modern (western) societies as your example; you will see a sophisticated system of laws, subsidies, taxes, education and health investments, etc... which are all at least in part designed to prevent this breakdown and make sure that people who have something to contribute get a chance to contribute to society, and hopefully get justly rewarded.

The counter-intuitive part is that the outcomes are more Merit-based than are possible if you directly institute a merit based system. (It seems that policy outcomes are almost never intuitive)

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

#82

Post by Bakary » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #73

Bakary wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Do you consider that countries like Sweden are still mostly meritocratic? Growing the pie is almost always a good thing, it gives you more resources to tax so you can benefit the poor. The problems you see in USA aren't that they focus too much on merit but that they focus too little on redistribution afterwards.

I think the concept of meritocracy is more or less a smokescreen that adds a redundant layer of morality to discussions of systemic problems. Of course, that layer could be seen as inevitable considering human psychology and the need to assign moral worth to groups or individuals.

For example, I don't disagree with the author's thesis that the outcomes are what matter in the end. It's just that their reasoning does not go far enough and stops at individuals instead of systems. In this sense it is clouded by the notion of meritocracy and the desire to discuss it.

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

#83

Post by username90 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 8:51 PM UTC

spacekitcat wrote: post #80

username90 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who think that white men will hire more minorities and women if they focused less on merit are naive.

Striving to build an environment where effort is made to attribute credit where it's due and to strive for equality of outcome for all is what we need to do. You're still picking the 'best person for the job' according to your own biases for what constitutes the 'best' (because how else could it work?), but you're also making an effort to ensure that your team/department/company isn't just all white (straight etc) me…

> Striving to build an environment where effort is made to attribute credit where it's due

That is what meritocracy is all about though.

> strive for equality of outcome for all is what we need to do

This is your bias speaking.

I got my job at Google by doing well on online coding competitions. I didn't do it with anyone else, I just sat at home and practiced on my own. Anyone could have done that. Show me a single woman who did well enough to get a t-shirt from the main google code jam competition but failed to get a good tech job and I could see your point, but I don't think there are any.

More importantly you'd expect that women would flock to those more objective ways to get into the industry, however it is the other way around, competitive programming is almost only asian and white men. Asians love it since it is a way for them to circumvent the bias against them and get jobs at Google or equivalent, why can't women do the same? And if women refuse to do the same work I and many of my peers did to get in yet still say I got in via privilege why should I take them seriously instead of just assuming they are biased against me? It isn't like women have less time as students than men have, they just choose to spend it differently.

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

#84

Post by spacekitcat » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #83

spacekitcat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Striving to build an environment where effort is made to attribute credit where it's due and to strive for equality of outcome for all is what we need to do. You're still picking the 'best person for the job' according to your own biases for what constitutes the 'best' (because how else could it work?), but you're also making an effort to ensure that your team/department/company isn't just all white (straight etc) me…

> Striving to build an environment where effort is made to attribute credit where it's due That is what meritocracy is all about though. > strive for equality of outcome for all is what we need to do This is your bias speaking. I got my job at Google by doing well on online coding competitions. I didn't do it with anyone else, I just sat at home and practiced on my own. Anyone could have done that. Show me a single w…

Listen, I know what I’ve experienced.

Edit: No actually, I can't understand what this is? You are trying to convince me my experiences are wrong. You don't seem to actually want to understand my point of view, so what is this? Why are you wasting both of our time like this?

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

#85

Post by alexpc201 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

px43 wrote: post #64

alexpc201 wrote: post #61

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Henry Ford and many others who were born poor and succeed are the perfect counterexample of this comunist manifesto. Life is not fair, but if the merit wasn’t rewarded soon there will be no achievement. Why try harder to get what everyone else gets? Look to a society who abolished meritocracy: Cuba.

I'm pretty sure most of those people were born into homes with plenty of access to good food and education. Elon had a nice computer from an early age in the early 80s, and went to a fancy prep school. Gates had parents who were successful lawyers, and who got him into Harvard. Bezos went to Princeon. Woz's dad was a well paid enigeer at Lockheed and went to UC Berkeley. Lots of mobility for sure, but it really does…

Wow.. they built an empire from their own garages and you say “yeah, but they had a nice computer in the 80’s”. I sense the resentment.

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

#86

Post by tpoacher » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

Define "merit"

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

#87

Post by sjg007 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #51

remote_phone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham says differently. You need to hire A players because otherwise B players hire B and C players and water down the strength of the startup.

> Paul Graham says differently. It was Steve Jobs.

Or was it Joel Spolskey?

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

#88

Post by sjg007 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:26 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

So.... "Be Best" ???

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

#89

Post by sjg007 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #21

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 rema…

This is the power law dynamic of increased network effects. Incumbents will not be displaced until some fundamental tech revolution or catastrophic (financial crisis or antitrust) remedy. Even then, tech revolutions are far more powerful than legal ones...

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

#90

Post by username90 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

spacekitcat wrote: post #84

username90 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Striving to build an environment where effort is made to attribute credit where it's due That is what meritocracy is all about though. > strive for equality of outcome for all is what we need to do This is your bias speaking. I got my job at Google by doing well on online coding competitions. I didn't do it with anyone else, I just sat at home and practiced on my own. Anyone could have done that. Show me a single w…

Listen, I know what I’ve experienced. Edit: No actually, I can't understand what this is? You are trying to convince me my experiences are wrong. You don't seem to actually want to understand my point of view, so what is this? Why are you wasting both of our time like this?

> You are trying to convince me my experiences are wrong.

No, I am not, I agree that there are many situations where women are not taken seriously due to their gender and assigning project credit is one of them. I 100% believe that has happened to you, that is wrong and we should try to do something about it. If you want that then you support meritocracy instead of biasocracy. However I'm trying to convince you that this statement is wrong:

> strive for equality of outcome for all is what we need to do

Men and women are different on average, maybe because of socialization etc but fact is that today they are different. My path relied on anonymous interactions online, so is by far the most friendly for marginalized groups. However marginalized groups like women are basically non existent on that path. That proves to me there are more differences than just discrimination. If you want to hire someone like me you wont find a woman, as there are hundreds of men for every woman with that background. Now you might not want to hire a person with those skills, but those who do will not find women to hire. And not because of discrimination, they don't even try to work for it in the first place.