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Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point

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

#91

Post by umvi »

px43 wrote: post #65
umvi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure those things would help some people, but probably not as much as you would think. I always see "access to education" as if lack of good teachers is the main thing holding disadvantaged kids back and not their trainwreck of a family life where the single mom working 2 jobs and didn't graduate high school herself has no idea how to help her kids and lets them slip into truancy like she did. Making the public s…

> the single mom working 2 jobs and didn't graduate high school herself This isn't a quick fix strategy, it's a long term fix strategy that takes generations. The "access to education" is exactly for the benefit of people like the mother. Also the UBI means that she no longer has to work two jobs to pay for basic services for her kids. UBI is the ultimate safety net that catches almost everyone who the current system…

Maybe, but I'm not convinced. People don't just magically bootstrap themselves into incremental self-improvement just because their immediate needs are being met. My next door neighbors here in Maryland are impoverished african americans receiving SNAP and HOC from the state (basically free rent and food), and the kids are consistently truant and on track to drop out of middle school. There needs to be an element of mentorship at some point.

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

#92

Post by nottorp »

alexpc201 wrote: post #85
px43 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Gates had parents who were successful lawyers, and who got him into Harvard.

... and his mother was very cozy with IBM management :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates

"the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Opel, "

No relation to Microsoft getting the MS DOS contract, for sure.

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

#93

Post by futurehero »

umvi wrote: post #91
px43 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the single mom working 2 jobs and didn't graduate high school herself This isn't a quick fix strategy, it's a long term fix strategy that takes generations. The "access to education" is exactly for the benefit of people like the mother. Also the UBI means that she no longer has to work two jobs to pay for basic services for her kids. UBI is the ultimate safety net that catches almost everyone who the current system…

Maybe, but I'm not convinced. People don't just magically bootstrap themselves into incremental self-improvement just because their immediate needs are being met. My next door neighbors here in Maryland are impoverished african americans receiving SNAP and HOC from the state (basically free rent and food), and the kids are consistently truant and on track to drop out of middle school. There needs to be an element of…

Your observation of reality is racist /s.

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

#94

Post by dahfizz »

sjg007 wrote: post #13
dahfizz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ironically this is not meritocracy.

From Merriam Webster:

a system, organization, or society in which people are chosen and moved into positions of success, power, and influence on the basis of their demonstrated abilities and merit.

A meritocracy only cares about demonstrated ability. If the kids next door could afford a better tutor, they probably have a greater demonstrated ability than you. They would still succeed under their own merit.

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

#95

Post by futurehero »

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?

This is why you've been pushed towards front end work and denied the credit for tasks that might put you on a path to power. Those above you can sense what you'd do with it. You'd say: "My experience has been this, and none of you can argue with that, so here is what we're going to do to make up for the injustices I experienced. Deal with it". The equality of outcome you so desire would be you and everyone underneath you unemployed, whole organizations gone bankrupt, and entire countries: a gulag.

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

#96

Post by dahfizz »

cs702 wrote: post #31

Many people, including me, feel differently about two different kinds of unfairness: * We are OK with the unfairness that stems from "winning the genetic lottery," which confers an unfair advantage regardless of the socioeconomic background of parents . Most of us want a society in which the most able, talented, hard-working, persistent among us can put those qualities to work for their most productive uses. * We are…

My takeaway from the article is that "fairness" is overrated.

I don't care one bit whether the parents of my surgeon were rich or not. I want the best, most meritorious surgeon to do my operation.

If every niche in society is operated by the most qualified person (even if they became the most qualified by having rich parents) then, by definition, society will be running as well as possible.

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

#97

Post by jariel »

_qulr wrote: post #59
jariel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there is no simple way of determining the "best" candidate" There is, it just so happens many people applying are already good by virtue of their credentials. What you are not seeing are the zillions of truly unqualified people show up. If you want to gain some confidence in meritocracy, then simply open up your next dev position to literally 'anyone' and start interviewing 'random people' for that high paying job.…

> But it's mostly highly meritocratic at least, each hiring mechanism is in isolation. Why view it in isolation? To me, the interesting question is how the hiring manager got into their position. Referring to the sports analogy of the previous comment: how do you become a sports team owner? Not by being great at sports, but simply by having a ton of spare money. And some pro sports team owners are really bad at runni…

" To me, the interesting question is how the hiring manager got into their position."

The same way as anyone else.

And as for sports ... who cares who the owner is?

'Owning a sports team' has nothing to do with playing on one, frankly, by most historical measures it's a money-losing enterprise, something rich guys outbid each other on because they can. Like a yacht.

Ironically, nobody questions the meritocracy of sports because it's mostly evident that the best rise to the top.

Not always, and there are so many factors.

If you open up your next job position to less than qualified candidates you will see all manner of people come through the gates, most of whom - surprise surprise - are totally unqualified.

This whole 'the world is not meritocratic' meme is really problematic and assumes there's basically no ability for people to vet or understand each other when hiring, which is ridiculous.

Ask the nurse giving you a vaccine how long they had to study, how many exams they had to pass before they were allowed anywhere near you. No study, no pass, no job.

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

#98

Post by calibas »

aidenn0 wrote: post #66
calibas wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes all this mainly about personal values and not "objective truths".

That's only true if you accept moral relativism.

If morals aren't relative, which ones are correct?

To me, moral relativism means that I understand other people have different morals than mine and I have to respect that. It's not some excuse to toss morals out the window.

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

#99

Post by aidenn0 »

calibas wrote: post #98
aidenn0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if you accept moral relativism.

If morals aren't relative, which ones are correct? To me, moral relativism means that I understand other people have different morals than mine and I have to respect that. It's not some excuse to toss morals out the window.

If Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are incompatible with respect to gravity, which one is correct?

The fact that we don't know something does not then imply that that the actual truth is subjective.

The less you know the more humble you need to be, but different views do not always justify respect. To use my previous analogy: If a random person shows up to a physicist claiming to have invented anti-gravity, then they aren't going to get much respect.

Similarly if someone claims that it's a moral positive to walk into random people's houses and murder their babies, I don't have to respect that.

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

#100

Post by jariel »

crististm wrote: post #54
jariel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, meritocracy works fine. It's far from perfect, but the 'special case' you describe is actually rare. There are people who are brilliant and hardworking in the academic sense slinging coffee for life, because both those attributes will result in 'good grades' which is a really good proxy for other things in life.

Hi there! If you pay attention to the ratio of pro vs against meritocracy rants in this page you will find some interesting (anec)data. Make your own conclusions!

We don't need 'anecdotes' we have tons of data.

Higher IQ, better academic results correlates with better jobs. That's a very crude, but broad measure of meritocracy.

But it's even easier than that: show me people earning $180K developing software who are 'complete idiots'. They don't exist.

People who earn more are generally smarter, more conscientious, credentialed.

It's basically a ridiculous argument to imply that meritocracy doesn't exist, when it's poignantly the basis of almost everything we do.

You might be smarter and more capable than your boss but more broadly speaking it's not the case.

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