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The meritocracy myth is s fundamental tenet of tech and Silicon Valley culture.
Maybe it's because they feel as if their success is undeserved and they project that feeling about themselves onto others?
The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
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Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#12It’s known that China, Russia, and their Allie’s promote anti-western content to steer discussion or drown out engagement through the use of bot networks upvoting and downvoting content across social media. I don’t know to what extent, but if I had to guess it’s pretty significant. Is that happening here? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/ch...
Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#13This is pure garbage. Please suggest an alternative to "The Myth." I see two immediate problems with any alternative that far out-weigh its purported benefits. (1) Any solution you propose involves a government imposing its will on the people, 'reallocating' their wealth, and using that loot to pick and choose the winners. (2) Any alternative to "The Myth" necessarily deprives people of ownership of their future -- y…
A false belief that we we have control over our destinies and ignoring the vast amount of luck is how we end up with increasing suicide rates. It also leads to poor outcomes because we can blame simply blame the poor performers rather than examine the systems. Why adjust the system when we can blame it on personal failure for free.
Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#14Realistically, the game was always played by the wealthy and the few that were lucky enough to be at the right place and the right time. Survivorship bias is almost inescapable as the mega successes crowd out all of the other failures and attempts.
To use myself as an example: My family was poor and my father passed away when I was young. A wrongful death suit was the sole reason why I had a modest college fund. That fund was the reason why I was able to go to college and become a software engineer and escape poverty. I still had to sacrifice my personal health in many ways to make that money last, as a large amount of it went to supporting my parents.
Multiple steps of the path that lead me today could've failed. My personal health sacrifice very literally could've killed me given the stuff I put off, I could've gotten injured, my mother could've needed more medical support. There's so many dice rolls that can put you on the path to success or failure in America and a lot of people don't even see them, or are lucky enough to not have to make those rolls in the first place. In every step I took there's a shadow of me whose roll failed.
In many senses I'm somewhat thankful of that poverty I went through because it keeps me grounded. But also that poverty and system that created it is a construct of over a century of the 'American Exceptionalism' mythos. And I didn't even have to experience the worst of it.
Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#15I get the impression reading articles like this that the authors take exception not only to the 'myth' of meritocracy in regards to its misrepresentation in political rhetoric in the past couple centuries, but to the idea of meritocracy itself. There is an underlying animosity towards the very concept that makes me think the idea of any one person being better than another in any regard is what truly makes the author uncomfortable, and motivates them to try deconstructing the entire idea of meritocracy on the basis of discrimination (as opposed to just pointing out some historically unfair applications of it)
Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#16I love how people act like Meritocracy is oppressive, or something like that mertiocracy is as simple as this.
You have a choice of two surgeons to operate on you for a rare and risky surgery. One has 80% of his patients die on the operating table the other has 10% of his patients die on the operating table. Which one are you going to choose? That's meritocracy
Another example, you need to hire a carpenter. Both your neighbors recently had to hire a carpenter. The neighbor on the right hired a carpenter that showed up late, overcharged, and did shoddy work that is already coming undone. The neighbor on the other side hired a carpenter that was punctual, did good work and finished ahead of schedule. Which carpenter are you going to choose? Congratulations you're reinforcing the "Myth" of meritocracy.
Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#17This same guy said that $2T in reparations is the least we could do to fix systemic racism.
Where does it end? What is the end game? What is the definition of done when your career depends on discussing such topics?
Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#18This is pure garbage. Please suggest an alternative to "The Myth." I see two immediate problems with any alternative that far out-weigh its purported benefits. (1) Any solution you propose involves a government imposing its will on the people, 'reallocating' their wealth, and using that loot to pick and choose the winners. (2) Any alternative to "The Myth" necessarily deprives people of ownership of their future -- y…
A false belief that we we have control over our destinies and ignoring the vast amount of luck is how we end up with increasing suicide rates. It also leads to poor outcomes because we can blame simply blame the poor performers rather than examine the systems. Why adjust the system when we can blame it on personal failure for free.
You can turn that right around though- Why improve yourself when you can just blame the system? Nature, nurture, free will, and pure luck all have a role to play. Sometimes a system is dysfunctional, sometimes a person within that system is dysfunctional- no matter what there's always a tendency to avoid personal responsibility when things don't go well (for all parties involved, the system included)
Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#19[deleted]
Re: The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History
#20This article is worthless. It's just another made up 'thing' to prop up some other 'thing'. It's just more noise, and we already have a lot of that. It's also got so many holes that it looks like someone used it for target practice.