7 ms·

Yes, what you described is a pure meritocracy and all things being equal, that would be GREAT, unfortunately, all things are not equal. If all people got equal

by pj_mukh 11y ago

Yes, what you described is a pure meritocracy and all things being equal, that would be GREAT, unfortunately, all things are not equal. If all people got equal encouragement, inspiration, and opportunity (from the moment of birth) then we could simply focus at the moment of judgement (which btw, is also currently biased [1]). So that is basically what STEM advocates are working on, making sure women and other disadvantaged minorities have equal encouragement, inspiration and opportunity (specifically to learn) so we can claim to have an equitable meritocracy. [1] http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf

yummyfajitas 11y ago
All you are saying is that due to bad luck during upbringing, some people have less merit than others. Furthermore this bad luck is not statistically independent of various other characteristics. Why does this imply that meritocracy is not great?
- pron 11y ago
  You do realize that the term meritocracy is literally a joke, right? I mean, it was actually invented as a joke by a sociologist, who's apparently not very observant because he'd assumed everyone would get it. Obviously, every 'cracy believes that it's a meritocracy; the only defining characteristic of one that actually calls itself meritocracy is a lack of self awareness. The word meritocracy sounds to me exactly the same way "positive energies" sounds to me and you; it makes me laugh because it is a word that expresses absolutely nothing but the cluelessness of those who may use it with a straight face (the only difference is that "positive energies" wasn't originally invented by a physicist as a joke, while meritocracy was). I mean, a noble family really did have a greater relative contribution to the economy and to society than a common family (or, at least, could have been said to have a greater contribution by the norms of the time) -- until it didn't, and that's when things changed. It's not like previous societies realized that they're not meritocracies; they utterly and truly believed that their system was the best possible one (and they could prove it!) and that there are people who are less represented in positions of power is just bad luck. No society (that lasted long) has ever said, let's put all the people with real talent at the bottom. It's only when resources were allocated differently due to political action (or natural disaster, like the black death) talent "suddenly" grew where everyone had until then known little talent could be found (and they were right: there was little talent because talent requires cultivation to become effective).
jules 11y ago
You're right that it's biased, but perhaps not in the way you think it is: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract > The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Encouraging everyone equally is great, but the problem is that many of these advocates seem to operate under the unsubstantiated hypothesis that there are no correlations between gender and career choice except those caused by upbringing. This leads to the idea that an unequal representation is necessarily a sign of a problem that needs to be fixed. I don't think this is supported by the data. We know from biology and other fields that there are natural differences. We also know that in more emancipated societies where people have more opportunity to choose what they want, there is a greater gender imbalance in universities (example: highest % of women earning science degrees is Iran; no western european country nor the US nor Canada is even in the top 20). Perhaps a gender imbalance is a sign of a society where individuals can do what they really want.
- pj_mukh 11y ago
  We'd have to look at a meta-study to weed out problems in individual studies. "Encouraging everyone equally is great". We should probably just end the argument on that point we both agree :). The rest will work itself out. If everybody was encouraged and inspired equally and there were still imbalances your point will remain. Unfortunately, that's not true today, so we won't know. Iran and India have much higher representation of women in STEM fields, and while they have other issues with misogyny, the inculcation of ambition (across gender lines) is very high (I say that having lived in India). The result seems to contradict any "biological" predilections. But we'll see.
  - jules 11y ago
pj_mukh 11y ago
"Furthermore this bad luck is not statistically independent of various other characteristics" Right, so that's not bad luck. That's systemic bias.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  You can apply the label "systematic bias" to bad luck which is correlated with other characteristics. So what? What makes correlated bad luck somehow something to be eradicated (above and beyond ordinary bad luck)?
  - pron 11y ago
    So I guess you're against trying to find a cure for cancer. BTW, it's pretty funny that you call systematic bias a "label", yet bad luck is something that seems sufficiently explanatory to you. It seems to me that "bad luck" is a label that you apply to something that you don't wish to study because you just don't care. It's bad luck that humans can't fly. It's bad luck that people die of the flu. As pretty much everything humans do is try to eradicate things that could be labelled as bad luck, actually using that term is essentially yelling "I don't care about this! I like things as they are!"
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      I made a very specific claim. The parent poster applied a label to that claim as if it somehow refutes the claim - I was merely disagreeing with this. I can easily provide reasoning for why study of flu (or other disease) is worth studying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369801 Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias? If so, you may convince me it is worth studying. Im unconvinced it is even well defined, since I've never seen a definition that advocates of it consistently apply.
      - pron 11y ago
        > Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias? Easily! But just as your reasoning is completely dependent on an axiomatic value (death is bad), so is mine: That many people's freedom to cultivate, explore and express their talents is hindered by those in power (positive claim) is bad because freedom is good (normative claim), therefore we should study how those restrictions work so we can remove them. But don't get me wrong: the distribution of power will change (it always does), yet inequality will grow again (it always does; a dynamic system that is not perfectly balanced and that includes positive feedback loops will always go out of balance) and this process will be repeated. I know this because pretty much all of history has been this way: inequality grows; social strife grows; people demand change; others first politely and then less so explain to them that that is scientifically/theologically impossible or that things are best as the are; after a lot of struggle things change and power shifts; inequality grows and so on and so forth. > Im unconvinced it is even well defined, since I've never seen a definition that advocates of it consistently apply. You are right in the sense that "systemic bias" is a term invented to explain to laymen what "bias" is. To social researchers, it's clear that all social bias (where "social" means "not exploding volcano in one town and not in another") is "systemic" (whatever that means). It really means nothing more than "a result of social dynamics disproportionately directed by those with power", and even that is a definition for laymen because obviously, that's what power is, so it really means "a result of social dynamics". But even that is redundant because every social phenomenon is a result of social dynamics (that's what a social phenomenon means), so it really just means "bias". Personally, I hate the term "systemic bias" because "systemic" may suggest either a bureaucratic bias or something dictated by law or decree.

by pj_mukh 11y ago

yummyfajitas 11y ago

All you are saying is that due to bad luck during upbringing, some people have less merit than others. Furthermore this bad luck is not statistically independent of various other characteristics. Why does this imply that meritocracy is not great?

pron 11y ago
You do realize that the term meritocracy is literally a joke, right? I mean, it was actually invented as a joke by a sociologist, who's apparently not very observant because he'd assumed everyone would get it. Obviously, every 'cracy believes that it's a meritocracy; the only defining characteristic of one that actually calls itself meritocracy is a lack of self awareness. The word meritocracy sounds to me exactly the same way "positive energies" sounds to me and you; it makes me laugh because it is a word that expresses absolutely nothing but the cluelessness of those who may use it with a straight face (the only difference is that "positive energies" wasn't originally invented by a physicist as a joke, while meritocracy was). I mean, a noble family really did have a greater relative contribution to the economy and to society than a common family (or, at least, could have been said to have a greater contribution by the norms of the time) -- until it didn't, and that's when things changed. It's not like previous societies realized that they're not meritocracies; they utterly and truly believed that their system was the best possible one (and they could prove it!) and that there are people who are less represented in positions of power is just bad luck. No society (that lasted long) has ever said, let's put all the people with real talent at the bottom. It's only when resources were allocated differently due to political action (or natural disaster, like the black death) talent "suddenly" grew where everyone had until then known little talent could be found (and they were right: there was little talent because talent requires cultivation to become effective).

jules 11y ago

You're right that it's biased, but perhaps not in the way you think it is: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract > The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Encouraging everyone equally is great, but the problem is that many of these advocates seem to operate under the unsubstantiated hypothesis that there are no correlations between gender and career choice except those caused by upbringing. This leads to the idea that an unequal representation is necessarily a sign of a problem that needs to be fixed. I don't think this is supported by the data. We know from biology and other fields that there are natural differences. We also know that in more emancipated societies where people have more opportunity to choose what they want, there is a greater gender imbalance in universities (example: highest % of women earning science degrees is Iran; no western european country nor the US nor Canada is even in the top 20). Perhaps a gender imbalance is a sign of a society where individuals can do what they really want.

pj_mukh 11y ago
We'd have to look at a meta-study to weed out problems in individual studies. "Encouraging everyone equally is great". We should probably just end the argument on that point we both agree :). The rest will work itself out. If everybody was encouraged and inspired equally and there were still imbalances your point will remain. Unfortunately, that's not true today, so we won't know. Iran and India have much higher representation of women in STEM fields, and while they have other issues with misogyny, the inculcation of ambition (across gender lines) is very high (I say that having lived in India). The result seems to contradict any "biological" predilections. But we'll see.
- jules 11y ago

pj_mukh 11y ago

"Furthermore this bad luck is not statistically independent of various other characteristics" Right, so that's not bad luck. That's systemic bias.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
You can apply the label "systematic bias" to bad luck which is correlated with other characteristics. So what? What makes correlated bad luck somehow something to be eradicated (above and beyond ordinary bad luck)?
- pron 11y ago
  So I guess you're against trying to find a cure for cancer. BTW, it's pretty funny that you call systematic bias a "label", yet bad luck is something that seems sufficiently explanatory to you. It seems to me that "bad luck" is a label that you apply to something that you don't wish to study because you just don't care. It's bad luck that humans can't fly. It's bad luck that people die of the flu. As pretty much everything humans do is try to eradicate things that could be labelled as bad luck, actually using that term is essentially yelling "I don't care about this! I like things as they are!"
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I made a very specific claim. The parent poster applied a label to that claim as if it somehow refutes the claim - I was merely disagreeing with this. I can easily provide reasoning for why study of flu (or other disease) is worth studying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369801 Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias? If so, you may convince me it is worth studying. Im unconvinced it is even well defined, since I've never seen a definition that advocates of it consistently apply.
    - pron 11y ago
      > Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias? Easily! But just as your reasoning is completely dependent on an axiomatic value (death is bad), so is mine: That many people's freedom to cultivate, explore and express their talents is hindered by those in power (positive claim) is bad because freedom is good (normative claim), therefore we should study how those restrictions work so we can remove them. But don't get me wrong: the distribution of power will change (it always does), yet inequality will grow again (it always does; a dynamic system that is not perfectly balanced and that includes positive feedback loops will always go out of balance) and this process will be repeated. I know this because pretty much all of history has been this way: inequality grows; social strife grows; people demand change; others first politely and then less so explain to them that that is scientifically/theologically impossible or that things are best as the are; after a lot of struggle things change and power shifts; inequality grows and so on and so forth. > Im unconvinced it is even well defined, since I've never seen a definition that advocates of it consistently apply. You are right in the sense that "systemic bias" is a term invented to explain to laymen what "bias" is. To social researchers, it's clear that all social bias (where "social" means "not exploding volcano in one town and not in another") is "systemic" (whatever that means). It really means nothing more than "a result of social dynamics disproportionately directed by those with power", and even that is a definition for laymen because obviously, that's what power is, so it really means "a result of social dynamics". But even that is redundant because every social phenomenon is a result of social dynamics (that's what a social phenomenon means), so it really just means "bias". Personally, I hate the term "systemic bias" because "systemic" may suggest either a bureaucratic bias or something dictated by law or decree.