71–80 of 127 posts
This is a strawman argument. Forget about Donald Trump as some model of success. Despite his head start he almost went bankrupt - twice. He is much less respected as a real estate developer in the world of real estate than you think. His success has been in PR and celebrity. There are thousands real estate investors who actually are good at it and started with nothing (e.g. Sam Zell). Don't like "meritocracy" then ho…
A meritocratic society is a lot of meritocracies chained together, themselves needing to merit success. Each one can only work with their own inputs, and so rely on the outputs of the other organizations. If these organizations do not extend deeply and broadly enough back, then at some point the inputs of an organization won't be the ones that should be there. This needs to go back to families at some point. In a mer…
While parents do, of course, have a huge impact on their children, I think it's overly simplistic to lay the ultimate responsibility at their feet. As raganwald points out (in the other direction), when there are feedback loops at play, the system can re-enforce other traits than you might hope for. Parents with no education in nutrition or no real supermarkets in their neighborhood can't be expected to feed their ch…
What I completely missed, and what you alluded to by mentioning people in prison, with bad parents, and so on, is that the present generation of families also have inputs -- the systems that they went through (education, military, commerce, etc.) and their own parents. The issues we have today are partly the results of mistakes made by parents living a hundred, five hundred, even a thousand years ago.
It's a depressing thought when expressed that way, but on the bright side, if we do as well as we can given our limited inputs today, we at least give the next generation of parents, teachers and employers a chance to do better than we could possibly have done.
Isn't the universe by default a meritocracy? Millions of years of evolution proves this... And society can either have policies that work against this default meritocracy or with it to speed it up.
You've just made it a circular argument. Why is it a meritocracy? Because the meritorious survive. Why did the meritorious survive? Because it's a meritocracy. Value and virtue are not the same thing, is the problem.
No, the meritorious survive because you can't cheat the universe.
I'm saying you can't make the world meritocratic because it already is and it's not changeable. You can only align yourself with how the world works so you don't get screwed.
For example, let's say I'm an employer and I decide to hire the least competent candidate for a new job. I, as the employer, cannot escape the consequences of this action and most likely I will pay for it in some form like the company failing or me losing my job. The world is still meritocratic despite my inane decision making. This forces me out of the equation and eventually my successor will have to do a better job hiring or else face the same fate of irrelevance as I. Eventually, all that's left is an employer who does pick candidates based on merit. But if this is true, the employer didn't really create a meritocracy, but merely aligned itself with the equilibrium state of the universe.
This is just a way of looking at what meritocracy means, and it frames it as a purely practical construct necessary for survival.
Isn't the universe by default a meritocracy? Millions of years of evolution proves this... And society can either have policies that work against this default meritocracy or with it to speed it up.
1. As by the peacock, "fitness" is not the same as our everyday use of fitness (certainly a bird that spends most of it's energy on giant butt feathers is not fit in the traditional sense, but does have a sexually selective advantage) and is certainly not meritocratic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peafowl#Evolution_and_sexual_se... 2. Consider the tragedies of the commons that often occur in nature. It is the structu…
For example, let's introduce a new predator that's also attracted to giant butt feathers. It doesn't matter how sexually attractive those giant butt feathers are, the offspring of giant butt feather peacocks will be at a survival disadvantage and will be selected out of the gene pool. The ones remaining are the female peacocks who don't like giant butt feathers, and their offspring (since they're more likely to not produce giant butt feathers).
Isn't the universe by default a meritocracy? Millions of years of evolution proves this... And society can either have policies that work against this default meritocracy or with it to speed it up.
One humbling thing I try to remember, is that before an asteroid struck the Earth 65 million years ago, mammals were no bigger than a field mouse and our warm-bloodedness was specialized for hunting insects at night. Then this lucky strike caused a huge climate change, and those dinosaurs that hand't evolved warm feathers died off, and we were in the right place at the right time. The day before the asteroid strike,…
Because it's fundamental, meritocracy should call for both minimizing false positives and negatives, as both work towards increasing survivability.
The word "meritocracy" comes from a satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy . It would be as if people were using the word "doublethink" like it was a great idea. The author's point is that social class is now guarded through education, and the most successful people give their children the best education. There is no longer the opportunity to work your way up from the mail room to the CEO chair. All the positions above…
Those at the bottom deserve to be there. I didn't put this in the article, but a few hours later I think this is an interesting point, thank you. If the post's proposition is correct and that "meritocracy" is all about minimal false positives, then we can also agree that there are people at the bottom who are qualified, but that's a cost of setting up a system optimized for minimizing false positives. I know from man…
The word "meritocracy" comes from a satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy . It would be as if people were using the word "doublethink" like it was a great idea. The author's point is that social class is now guarded through education, and the most successful people give their children the best education. There is no longer the opportunity to work your way up from the mail room to the CEO chair. All the positions above…
Those at the bottom deserve to be there. I didn't put this in the article, but a few hours later I think this is an interesting point, thank you. If the post's proposition is correct and that "meritocracy" is all about minimal false positives, then we can also agree that there are people at the bottom who are qualified, but that's a cost of setting up a system optimized for minimizing false positives. I know from man…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
POI: UWisc has 4x the population of Harvard, so it isn't really on par on an odds ratio. I expect similar class size differences for the other state vs Ivy schools.
Right, but if you believe the narrative that some people seem to be promoting (not raganwald, mind you, I'm generalizing a bit here), they'd have you believe that going to a State school is like a career death sentence or something... the narrative seems to be "Ivy League or you might as well commit suicide, unless you're the rare lucky chump like Zuckerberg or Gates". I'm just pointing out that things aren't quite s…
Both of which actually did go to Ivy League schools, so they are actually counterexamples to what you are trying to say. They may not have graduated, but to focus on that is to miss the point.
The point is that these Ivy League schools come with networks, which are more important than the education itself. When you are part of such a network, you are more likely to be considered for high-ranking positions. Going with the article's example, being in the network is the difference between being a Lisper vs. a Pythonista.
The ideal would be "push meritocracy", where able people push themself into the system and are able to reach their potential by exercising their ability. There are also multiple ways to do it (starting up, corporate/government ladder, non-commercial projects) so they don't get derailed over some personality quirk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
POI: UWisc has 4x the population of Harvard, so it isn't really on par on an odds ratio. I expect similar class size differences for the other state vs Ivy schools.
Right, but if you believe the narrative that some people seem to be promoting (not raganwald, mind you, I'm generalizing a bit here), they'd have you believe that going to a State school is like a career death sentence or something... the narrative seems to be "Ivy League or you might as well commit suicide, unless you're the rare lucky chump like Zuckerberg or Gates". I'm just pointing out that things aren't quite s…