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Why do you believe liberals embrace meritocracy? From what I've seen they are it's primary critics. It was hardly liberals pushing Github to end meritocracy an

Why do you believe liberals embrace meritocracy? From what I've seen they are it's primary critics. It was hardly liberals pushing Github to end meritocracy and adopt whatever it's adopting now (there isn't really a name for it). In various recent court cases (Fisher vs Texas, Ricci v DeStefano) it was usually liberals opposed to meritocracy. When high merit people get rewarded it's usually liberals criticizing this outcome. I can't think of a single modern case where liberals push people to adopt purely merit based systems, in fact. They seem to want some sort of spoils system - the closest word I can think of is corporatism in the old Italian sense (I'm being very careful not to use an alternate term, see this reddit comment for a good explanation of why https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/d1dctlz https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...). (Lets also distinguish credentialism from meritocracy. The tech industry has something approaching the latter - we idolize the dropout/self taught ubergeek - but liberal types generally oppose our culture.)

pron 11y ago
> Why do you believe liberals embrace meritocracy? It's a little hard to discuss this in this context because the article talks about different kinds of liberalism and different kinds of meritocracy, that without specifics the question is a bit meaningless. In particular, the word meritocracy itself is hard to describe because it was originally coined as a joke, and specifically defined to mean something that is satirical, ill-defined, and even oxymoronic[1]. Then the question becomes exactly how much of a joke is meritocracy in each circumstance. Many would say that in the GitHub case, meritocracy was a very extreme kind of a joke as it wasn't even self-aware. It was like describing a king's court as meritocratic. The liberals of the kind Frank talks about would be appalled at calling that meritocracy, and would want a "true" meritocracy. Frank would say (as would Michael Young, the sociologist who coined the term in a satirical essay), that even "true" meritocracy is a joke (and is also just a spoils system). In any case, meritocracy is (intentionally) too ill-defined for comparing different kinds, but I think it is clear from Frank's article that the new kind of professional-class liberals he's talking about is definitely in favor of some sort of meritocracy (which, for Frank, is a bad thing). > we idolize the dropout/self taught ubergeek - but liberal types generally oppose our culture. That is a very ridiculous thing to say, as the vast majority of "our culture" is generally liberal. While libertarianism and other right-wing ideologies are more common in tech than in other professional occupations, it is still a small minority. In any case, the criticism from the left of the culture you describe is that there's nothing wrong with idolizing a self-taught ubergeek as long as you don't marginalize other groups with no less "merit". [1]: After all, every system is some sort of meritocracy -- most people actually believed that noble-born people have more merit than commoners -- and so calling it that shows a lack of self-awareness more than anything else (especially as in all such systems, merit is something that is 90% due to luck of being born to the right family; this is almost as true for ubergeeks as it is for aristocrats).
tptacek 11y ago
What's "our culture"? Most of the nerds I know are intensely liberal, enough so that I count as "conservative" simply for favoring Clinton over Sanders. And my social circle in nerdery is infosec, the gun-lovin'est of all the nerds. There's a really silly rhetorical trick Eric Raymond likes to play, where the definition of a "hacker" devolves pretty much to that of someone who shares Raymond's politics. Seeing him try to deploy it over and over again has made me allergic to attempts to assumptively foreclose arguments with appeals to ill-defined group identity.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  ...Eric Raymond...Seeing him try to deploy it over and over again has made me allergic to attempts to assumptively foreclose arguments with appeals to ill-defined group identity The point you are taking issue with is completely tangential to the main point. You could delete that sentence and the rest of the post wouldn't be affected. Now I don't read ESR except when you or someone links to him on twitter and it sounds like it might be interesting (it rarely is). So maybe I'm missing something here. But do you actually assert that any of my claims are false? Or are you merely attempting to raise your status and lower mine by criticizing ESR and associating me with him?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I'll answer your question when you answer mine. :) Nobody's reading this thread at this point, so the "status" stakes seem pretty low.

pron 11y ago

> Why do you believe liberals embrace meritocracy? It's a little hard to discuss this in this context because the article talks about different kinds of liberalism and different kinds of meritocracy, that without specifics the question is a bit meaningless. In particular, the word meritocracy itself is hard to describe because it was originally coined as a joke, and specifically defined to mean something that is satirical, ill-defined, and even oxymoronic[1]. Then the question becomes exactly how much of a joke is meritocracy in each circumstance. Many would say that in the GitHub case, meritocracy was a very extreme kind of a joke as it wasn't even self-aware. It was like describing a king's court as meritocratic. The liberals of the kind Frank talks about would be appalled at calling that meritocracy, and would want a "true" meritocracy. Frank would say (as would Michael Young, the sociologist who coined the term in a satirical essay), that even "true" meritocracy is a joke (and is also just a spoils system). In any case, meritocracy is (intentionally) too ill-defined for comparing different kinds, but I think it is clear from Frank's article that the new kind of professional-class liberals he's talking about is definitely in favor of some sort of meritocracy (which, for Frank, is a bad thing). > we idolize the dropout/self taught ubergeek - but liberal types generally oppose our culture. That is a very ridiculous thing to say, as the vast majority of "our culture" is generally liberal. While libertarianism and other right-wing ideologies are more common in tech than in other professional occupations, it is still a small minority. In any case, the criticism from the left of the culture you describe is that there's nothing wrong with idolizing a self-taught ubergeek as long as you don't marginalize other groups with no less "merit". [1]: After all, every system is some sort of meritocracy -- most people actually believed that noble-born people have more merit than commoners -- and so calling it that shows a lack of self-awareness more than anything else (especially as in all such systems, merit is something that is 90% due to luck of being born to the right family; this is almost as true for ubergeeks as it is for aristocrats).

tptacek 11y ago

What's "our culture"? Most of the nerds I know are intensely liberal, enough so that I count as "conservative" simply for favoring Clinton over Sanders. And my social circle in nerdery is infosec, the gun-lovin'est of all the nerds. There's a really silly rhetorical trick Eric Raymond likes to play, where the definition of a "hacker" devolves pretty much to that of someone who shares Raymond's politics. Seeing him try to deploy it over and over again has made me allergic to attempts to assumptively foreclose arguments with appeals to ill-defined group identity.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
...Eric Raymond...Seeing him try to deploy it over and over again has made me allergic to attempts to assumptively foreclose arguments with appeals to ill-defined group identity The point you are taking issue with is completely tangential to the main point. You could delete that sentence and the rest of the post wouldn't be affected. Now I don't read ESR except when you or someone links to him on twitter and it sounds like it might be interesting (it rarely is). So maybe I'm missing something here. But do you actually assert that any of my claims are false? Or are you merely attempting to raise your status and lower mine by criticizing ESR and associating me with him?
- tptacek 11y ago
  I'll answer your question when you answer mine. :) Nobody's reading this thread at this point, so the "status" stakes seem pretty low.