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Meritocracy Is Bad

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Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#31

Post by pc86 »

wmf wrote: post #29
bberrry wrote: post #15

For some reason this idea that meritocracy is undesirable has been making the rounds recently. I haven't heard any proposed alternatives that would be at all viable in a society where we want critical roles to be performed by competent people. Do we really want incompetent people running things because they will botch their attempts at being unethical? It certainly seems like the author is making that argument. Yes,…

There's a brief discussion of that: "Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel suggests that the most exclusive colleges should move away from tournament-style admissions. Instead, he’d like to see them set a minimum competency bar and then accept everyone who clears the threshold." You could apply this thinking society-wide: if you're competent enough to do your job then that's it; there's no rankings.

> set a minimum competency bar and then accept everyone who clears the threshold

Isn't this what they already do at a theoretical level? If you have 800 seats in a given class, you keep raising your admissions bar until you get ~800 qualified applicants.

Now we can discuss whether donations and legacy status should play into that bar or not, but I think that's a separate issue.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#32

Post by hervature »

deilline wrote: post #28
hervature wrote: post #16

I'm conflicted about this essay. I agree with many of the points but fail to see how it relates to and ultimately disagree with the thesis that meritocracy is bad. Taking the tennis example, sure, it would be beneficial for the top players to have a flatter payout structure. But this ultimately leads to the ATP tour being solidified and newcomers being barred from entry as now the player ranked 250 is now earning an…

> Very few individuals are responsible for key advancements of civilization. Is this true? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_theory_of_invention_and... Another example is the Finnish education system aiming to raise the floor instead of increasing the ceiling. I can think of counterexamples in Hungarian mathematicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) A lot of them knew each other growing up…

This is exactly the argumentation I would love to see as well. It would be very interesting to compare scientific achievement coming out of Finland compared to, say, Alabama which is the first state to cross 5M people and thus comparable in population. Of course, I'm sure that analysis would be plagued by what subjectively counts as achievement.

Also, I was loose with my words. I didn't really mean few as in you could actually count the individuals. I meant more along the lines of the 1% of the population that has a PhD and at least making some minor contribution to academia.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#33

Post by hervature »

jgwil2 wrote: post #21
hervature wrote: post #16

I'm conflicted about this essay. I agree with many of the points but fail to see how it relates to and ultimately disagree with the thesis that meritocracy is bad. Taking the tennis example, sure, it would be beneficial for the top players to have a flatter payout structure. But this ultimately leads to the ATP tour being solidified and newcomers being barred from entry as now the player ranked 250 is now earning an…

> But this ultimately leads to the ATP tour being solidified and newcomers being barred from entry as now the player ranked 250 is now earning an income that they can afford much better training than outsiders. No, it would make it more worthwhile to invest in promising players, who now would have the prospect of making a decent living as a top 250-ranked touring pro, rather than needing to be in the top 50 or 100 in…

That logic is the exact opposite approach of VC investing. They invest in moonshot ideas for the chance at a unicorn, not because it makes a solid lifestyle business.

Again, this doesn't solve the meritocracy problem. If the top 250 get a steady source of income, which ones do you invest in? You wouldn't bother with the moonshot talent because the expected payoff is lower. It only becomes worthwhile to invest in those that have a good chance of breaking into the top 250. That is, the well established. It doesn't follow that a flatter pay structure is fairer in any way.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#34

Post by jgwil2 »

hervature wrote: post #33
jgwil2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this ultimately leads to the ATP tour being solidified and newcomers being barred from entry as now the player ranked 250 is now earning an income that they can afford much better training than outsiders. No, it would make it more worthwhile to invest in promising players, who now would have the prospect of making a decent living as a top 250-ranked touring pro, rather than needing to be in the top 50 or 100 in…

That logic is the exact opposite approach of VC investing. They invest in moonshot ideas for the chance at a unicorn, not because it makes a solid lifestyle business. Again, this doesn't solve the meritocracy problem. If the top 250 get a steady source of income, which ones do you invest in? You wouldn't bother with the moonshot talent because the expected payoff is lower. It only becomes worthwhile to invest in thos…

Well yeah, the tennis example is pretty limited as an analogy because it's the players themselves, their parents, and maybe coaches who do the investing. Also, flattening the payouts is better if you want more people playing tennis professionally, but that might not actually be a desirable outcome. I think it's mainly useful as an example to show how minor skill differences can lead to massively different outcomes. It's up to us to decide whether and how much income redistribution will lead to the kind of society we want to live in.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#35

Post by jaybrendansmith »

djoldman wrote: post #12

Merriam-Webster: >Meritocracy: 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 [0] It seems to me that Meritocracy is an unfortunately vague word. Given that, it's difficult to say much definitively about the US with respect to it. The American dream and the idea that if you work hard enough…

Yes. Matt's point is that we are in general selecting for intelligence and NOT true merit, e.g., honesty, integrity, bravery, and all of the traditional values. We seem to be selecting based on pure cleverness, and his point is that this alone creates quite a lot of success for people who are by most definitions terrible people. I don't see any issue with his argument, I believe he is on to something here. And because these intelligent but otherwise unprincipled people are raised up, they degrade the larger culture, the politics, and the economy for everyone.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#36

Post by jfengel »

pc86 wrote: post #31
wmf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a brief discussion of that: "Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel suggests that the most exclusive colleges should move away from tournament-style admissions. Instead, he’d like to see them set a minimum competency bar and then accept everyone who clears the threshold." You could apply this thinking society-wide: if you're competent enough to do your job then that's it; there's no rankings.

> set a minimum competency bar and then accept everyone who clears the threshold Isn't this what they already do at a theoretical level? If you have 800 seats in a given class, you keep raising your admissions bar until you get ~800 qualified applicants. Now we can discuss whether donations and legacy status should play into that bar or not, but I think that's a separate issue.

I don't think that's what was intended. I think the idea is "Set your admissions bar to the minimum level, then admit however many students meet it."

Or, if you have only 800 possible seats, "Set your admissions bar, then pick 800 of them randomly". The more you "raise" the bar, the more your definition of "raise" matters. It will tend to select people who can afford (in time, money, connections, etc) to meet your specific criteria. And you run the risk of accidentally setting your criteria to be "more like me" (in looks, patterns of thought, etc.)

If you assume that your school can benefit anybody smart enough to meet your criteria, why not take as many as you can? And why not aim to get more people who couldn't focus on your criteria? Randomness won't seek them out, but it at least won't prefer a 1500 SAT by a student who does nothing but take SAT tests to a 1460 SAT by a student who has to work two part time jobs.

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