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I understand the inclination to do this - I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy. But I just can't image this not backfiring. The road to hell i

by dqpb 9y ago

I understand the inclination to do this - I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy. But I just can't image this not backfiring. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

denzil_correa 9y ago
> I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy It’s fallacious to think that meritocracy is a function of ONLY the present.
- DataWorker 9y ago
  Nothing is a function of only the present. Your point has no meaning.
richmarr 9y ago
Can you be more specific about these ways you imagine it backfiring? Brooker tackled this kind of thing in Black Mirror, and while his vision of it was pretty bleak, it actually seemed a lot more open to social mobility than our current system in which inequality is becoming more deeply entrenched. Presumably there's no way to live off your parents 'social credit' trust fund. The Black Mirror version of this system would be deeply affected by attractiveness, for example, which would be one possible failing, but there's no indication that the Chinese version is as susceptible to that.
- free652 9y ago
  >Presumably there's no way to live off your parents 'social credit' trust fund. LOL. Doesn't matter what the system is - the people with power will always find a way around it. USSR - check, China - check.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  Social mobility at the cost of honest expression of personal beliefs, though. Essentially, lack of personal freedom through rigorous self-censorship. In that episode, Nosedive, the higher up you got, the more "fake" it got. The lower you got, the more "real". Culminating with the archteypical "likeable truck lady". Loss of freedom, no matter if through oppression or through more insiduous means like reverse psychology, is a very heavy price to pay.
- wallace_f 9y ago
  >Can you be more specific about these ways you imagine it backfiring? >[credit can be awarded for] doing exemplary business Some examples of exemplary businessmen who are justly rewarded under our wonderful system are Mr Trump, Mr Zuckerburg, and the Kochs, who have been awarded outstanding sums of social credit from their efforts in reputable, important businesses. >allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step Horatio Alger has had trouble moving beyond his job at the local Zhongwen-Mart. He isn't able to attend university, or even take public transport to get there, if he were. Due to several traffic fines, a minor drug conviction, and a bad credit score, he has never escaped poverty. Mr Trump has been the subject of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, and Mr Obama admitted to drug use--the same substance as Horatio Alger; but since neither convicted, their social credit remains extremely high. Government is not the solution to every problem.
- sgt101 9y ago
  The big issue is that our society faces massive challenges wrt. population growth, climate change, environmental stress, technical change and population crashes over the next two centuries. To make it through these it will need a lot of its members to do a lot of creating and experimenting. The complete loss of privacy will chill these efforts and prevent the rapid adaptions that I believe are necessary.
johnchristopher 9y ago
> I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy. That's a bold statement. Who defines the goals ? The one(s) who can attain them ?
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Like school! And college! The folks that work there, are the ones that did well there. Not kidding. Its this circular 'meritocracy' argument that makes for insular, inbred organizations with few creative ideas.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jfaucett 9y ago
    > Not kidding. Its this circular 'meritocracy' argument that makes for insular, inbred organizations with few creative ideas. Just thinking out loud here but what's the alternative? Random allocation of goods/power or random promotion of individuals/companies based on nothing? At least in a meritocracy advancement of an individual/organization is based on some performance measurement - we can of course argue about different performance measures and sets of tasks - but we have some means of guiding society in a normative way.
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      You could actually design your organization to find the best fit for each member of the team. Hire based on differing skills and approach, instead of dismissing them as "not a cultural fit". When the 'norm' is defined as 'just like the rest of us' is when you get into trouble.
  - DataWorker 9y ago
    You would prefer college admissions be based on a blind lottery system? That seems like a great way to destroy an education system. Would degrees then be allocated randomly to people who may or may not have studied? Maybe you’re being sarcastic.
kome 9y ago
Funny trivia: the word "meritocracy" is the invention of a British sociologist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Young,_Baron_Young_of_Dartington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Young,_Baron_Young_of_... In his book "The Rise of the Meritocracy" (1958) he describes a dystopia where everything in a society is decided by using "merit" (intelligence + effort). For all of those whom use "meritocracy" with a positive connotation, it should be a compulsory read. It's also short and very fun.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rdlecler1 9y ago
  You’re putting up a straw man. I could write a dystopian book about any ideology. A good meritocracy would deal with these issues because a dystopian meritocracy would likely hamper innovation and the emergence of new standards and areas of merit.
  - zajd 9y ago
    It's not a straw man though? Meritocracy, the word itself, was invented to describe a fictional dystopian society.
  - kome 9y ago
    Well, it's kinda fun that the very word of meritocracy was invented as a dystopian word, but now it got a positive connotation. That's not a straw man: it's a fun fact.
hliyan 9y ago
Perhaps that is a good thing. There is no argument more convincing than a demonstration. So I'd rather observe this scheme's first failure in China than elsewhere. The rest of the world can learn a lasting lesson in what not to do. And if it succeeds, then I'd be glad to be wrong.
- krona 9y ago
  This experiment has been tried before. The main difference being this Cultural Revolution will be digitized, and the informants will be databases, not your neighbors.
- klokoman 9y ago
  What if it succeeds for the wrong people?
- ibeckermayer 9y ago
  This is not an empirical issue. Without knowing any of the outcomes, we can already say that a government clocking your every move and giving you a rating based on how favorable the government finds your behavior, all without your consent, is an utterly obscene moral evil.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Generally when people have to use the word “obscene” it’s because they can’t make an argument in moral grounds. See: obscenity laws. But I’d like to here your argument on why this is immoral.
  - Gambit89 9y ago
    Maybe it is a question of needing to experience what happens though. Most people are of the "wait and see" and "you gotta do what you gotta do to survive" mentality. So they "wait" and let events unfold, and survivors in those cascade of events are idealized as morally good.
- dlwdlw 9y ago
  I would prefer it not be first tried in a country with such a large population...
everdev 9y ago
To me, this high level news and the political system in China is terrifying because of the implications that they limit freedom. However, I rarely great about civil unrest in China. Is that because it's hard to get independent journalists to go there? Or, is the economic boom the greater good to most Chinese? Or something else?
- niccccccccc 9y ago
  > economic boom the greater good > rarely civil unrest Are you not on the internet? China is suffering from high debt load, declining exports, dictatorship, censorship, crashed stock market, capital control, housing inflation, capital outflow, protests in hong kong/tibet/northeast/xinjiang, etc.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    lol, go on YouTube and watch some of the videos filmed in China on a daily basis, China is incredibly prosperous and most citizens are very happy with their government. Western nations on the other hand....
- westiseast 9y ago
  It’s a mix of factors. There are protests and issues bubbling up all the time - hundreds or thousands of actions in any given year. It’s a big country with a lot of issues, so that’s not unexpected. But the one thing the CCP is undoubtably world class at is ensuring protests or issues don’t ever gather momentum and start spreading. So, a lot of the police apparatus, media and online censorship is geared up to this end. Potential instigators of unrest (lawyers, independent/foreign journalists, activists) are routinely harassed and locked up, or put under immense pressure. TV and traditional media outlets are tightly controlled and will receive directives about what they can and can’t report on. They self-censor and will not promote news or issues that are outright critical of the government. Often negative news is shown, but it is massaged and spun to show the CCP proactively dealing with a problem, rather than causing a problem or being incompetent. Burgeoning online trending topics are regularly blanket censored if they are critical of the government and gaining traction fast. Also, remember that these things are bad, but daily life in China is still daily life. Most people will never really experience massive injustice or rights abuses, just as most Americans will not be shot in a school shooting. It doesn’t mean the injustices aren’t happening and/or bad. And finally, yes. The last 30 years of economic prosperity mean that most people are pretty happy with their life in China, or at the very least they just want to focus on making money, getting rich, and avoiding problems.
niccccccccc 9y ago
> paved with good intentions. lol you're giving xi jingping the dictator too much credit. it's a means to monitor and silence his critics, and to prevent protests/uprisings. this is just cultural revolution 2.0. from hitler 2.0.
- fermienrico 9y ago
  I agree, I think people are delusional. Let’s watch the uninamous vote to indefinitely extend his term - Xi asks “Is anyone against me?” Scroll down to watch the video in the article: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43188739 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43188739 This reminds of Christopher Hitchen’s account of Saddam Hussein. Terrifying.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    I haven’t been paying much attention, but I just read this report on the event: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/24/xi-jinping-mao-thought-on-socialism-china-constitution https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/... and noted this: > However, Susan Shirk, the head of the 21st Century China Centre at the University of California, San Diego, disputed the portrayal of Xi as an almighty Mao-like figure. > “He’s ruling differently, for sure, and people are intimidated by him because of the anti-corruption campaign.” But Shirk said she was reserving judgment on whether Xi was attempting “a real dictatorial play” until the new line-up of China’s top ruling council, the politburo standing committee, was announced on Wednesday. > If that committee included at least one of three possible successors – Hu Chunhua, Chen Min’er or Zhang Qingwei – that would signal Xi’s intention to step down in 2022, she said. If no clear successor emerged, however, it would fuel fears that Xi was “going for broke, all-out to be a dictator” and planned to remain in power indefinitely. I looked and none of those individuals were appointed to the standing committee of the politburo. Two of them are on the regular politburo (Min’er and Chunhua), but Shirk referenced the standing committee specifically. So by her measure this is a dictatorial path.
- Panoramix 9y ago
  The Hitler comparison is too much, even for an anti-China troll.

by dqpb 9y ago

I understand the inclination to do this - I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy. But I just can't image this not backfiring. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

denzil_correa 9y ago

> I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy It’s fallacious to think that meritocracy is a function of ONLY the present.

DataWorker 9y ago
Nothing is a function of only the present. Your point has no meaning.

richmarr 9y ago

Can you be more specific about these ways you imagine it backfiring? Brooker tackled this kind of thing in Black Mirror, and while his vision of it was pretty bleak, it actually seemed a lot more open to social mobility than our current system in which inequality is becoming more deeply entrenched. Presumably there's no way to live off your parents 'social credit' trust fund. The Black Mirror version of this system would be deeply affected by attractiveness, for example, which would be one possible failing, but there's no indication that the Chinese version is as susceptible to that.

free652 9y ago
>Presumably there's no way to live off your parents 'social credit' trust fund. LOL. Doesn't matter what the system is - the people with power will always find a way around it. USSR - check, China - check.
nothrabannosir 9y ago
Social mobility at the cost of honest expression of personal beliefs, though. Essentially, lack of personal freedom through rigorous self-censorship. In that episode, Nosedive, the higher up you got, the more "fake" it got. The lower you got, the more "real". Culminating with the archteypical "likeable truck lady". Loss of freedom, no matter if through oppression or through more insiduous means like reverse psychology, is a very heavy price to pay.
wallace_f 9y ago
>Can you be more specific about these ways you imagine it backfiring? >[credit can be awarded for] doing exemplary business Some examples of exemplary businessmen who are justly rewarded under our wonderful system are Mr Trump, Mr Zuckerburg, and the Kochs, who have been awarded outstanding sums of social credit from their efforts in reputable, important businesses. >allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step Horatio Alger has had trouble moving beyond his job at the local Zhongwen-Mart. He isn't able to attend university, or even take public transport to get there, if he were. Due to several traffic fines, a minor drug conviction, and a bad credit score, he has never escaped poverty. Mr Trump has been the subject of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, and Mr Obama admitted to drug use--the same substance as Horatio Alger; but since neither convicted, their social credit remains extremely high. Government is not the solution to every problem.
sgt101 9y ago
The big issue is that our society faces massive challenges wrt. population growth, climate change, environmental stress, technical change and population crashes over the next two centuries. To make it through these it will need a lot of its members to do a lot of creating and experimenting. The complete loss of privacy will chill these efforts and prevent the rapid adaptions that I believe are necessary.

johnchristopher 9y ago

> I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy. That's a bold statement. Who defines the goals ? The one(s) who can attain them ?

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Like school! And college! The folks that work there, are the ones that did well there. Not kidding. Its this circular 'meritocracy' argument that makes for insular, inbred organizations with few creative ideas.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jfaucett 9y ago
  > Not kidding. Its this circular 'meritocracy' argument that makes for insular, inbred organizations with few creative ideas. Just thinking out loud here but what's the alternative? Random allocation of goods/power or random promotion of individuals/companies based on nothing? At least in a meritocracy advancement of an individual/organization is based on some performance measurement - we can of course argue about different performance measures and sets of tasks - but we have some means of guiding society in a normative way.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    You could actually design your organization to find the best fit for each member of the team. Hire based on differing skills and approach, instead of dismissing them as "not a cultural fit". When the 'norm' is defined as 'just like the rest of us' is when you get into trouble.
- DataWorker 9y ago
  You would prefer college admissions be based on a blind lottery system? That seems like a great way to destroy an education system. Would degrees then be allocated randomly to people who may or may not have studied? Maybe you’re being sarcastic.

kome 9y ago

Funny trivia: the word "meritocracy" is the invention of a British sociologist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Young,_Baron_Young_of_Dartington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Young,_Baron_Young_of_... In his book "The Rise of the Meritocracy" (1958) he describes a dystopia where everything in a society is decided by using "merit" (intelligence + effort). For all of those whom use "meritocracy" with a positive connotation, it should be a compulsory read. It's also short and very fun.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rdlecler1 9y ago
You’re putting up a straw man. I could write a dystopian book about any ideology. A good meritocracy would deal with these issues because a dystopian meritocracy would likely hamper innovation and the emergence of new standards and areas of merit.
- zajd 9y ago
  It's not a straw man though? Meritocracy, the word itself, was invented to describe a fictional dystopian society.
- kome 9y ago
  Well, it's kinda fun that the very word of meritocracy was invented as a dystopian word, but now it got a positive connotation. That's not a straw man: it's a fun fact.

hliyan 9y ago

Perhaps that is a good thing. There is no argument more convincing than a demonstration. So I'd rather observe this scheme's first failure in China than elsewhere. The rest of the world can learn a lasting lesson in what not to do. And if it succeeds, then I'd be glad to be wrong.

krona 9y ago
This experiment has been tried before. The main difference being this Cultural Revolution will be digitized, and the informants will be databases, not your neighbors.
klokoman 9y ago
What if it succeeds for the wrong people?
ibeckermayer 9y ago
This is not an empirical issue. Without knowing any of the outcomes, we can already say that a government clocking your every move and giving you a rating based on how favorable the government finds your behavior, all without your consent, is an utterly obscene moral evil.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Generally when people have to use the word “obscene” it’s because they can’t make an argument in moral grounds. See: obscenity laws. But I’d like to here your argument on why this is immoral.
- Gambit89 9y ago
  Maybe it is a question of needing to experience what happens though. Most people are of the "wait and see" and "you gotta do what you gotta do to survive" mentality. So they "wait" and let events unfold, and survivors in those cascade of events are idealized as morally good.
dlwdlw 9y ago
I would prefer it not be first tried in a country with such a large population...

everdev 9y ago

To me, this high level news and the political system in China is terrifying because of the implications that they limit freedom. However, I rarely great about civil unrest in China. Is that because it's hard to get independent journalists to go there? Or, is the economic boom the greater good to most Chinese? Or something else?

niccccccccc 9y ago
> economic boom the greater good > rarely civil unrest Are you not on the internet? China is suffering from high debt load, declining exports, dictatorship, censorship, crashed stock market, capital control, housing inflation, capital outflow, protests in hong kong/tibet/northeast/xinjiang, etc.
- mistermann 9y ago
  lol, go on YouTube and watch some of the videos filmed in China on a daily basis, China is incredibly prosperous and most citizens are very happy with their government. Western nations on the other hand....
westiseast 9y ago
It’s a mix of factors. There are protests and issues bubbling up all the time - hundreds or thousands of actions in any given year. It’s a big country with a lot of issues, so that’s not unexpected. But the one thing the CCP is undoubtably world class at is ensuring protests or issues don’t ever gather momentum and start spreading. So, a lot of the police apparatus, media and online censorship is geared up to this end. Potential instigators of unrest (lawyers, independent/foreign journalists, activists) are routinely harassed and locked up, or put under immense pressure. TV and traditional media outlets are tightly controlled and will receive directives about what they can and can’t report on. They self-censor and will not promote news or issues that are outright critical of the government. Often negative news is shown, but it is massaged and spun to show the CCP proactively dealing with a problem, rather than causing a problem or being incompetent. Burgeoning online trending topics are regularly blanket censored if they are critical of the government and gaining traction fast. Also, remember that these things are bad, but daily life in China is still daily life. Most people will never really experience massive injustice or rights abuses, just as most Americans will not be shot in a school shooting. It doesn’t mean the injustices aren’t happening and/or bad. And finally, yes. The last 30 years of economic prosperity mean that most people are pretty happy with their life in China, or at the very least they just want to focus on making money, getting rich, and avoiding problems.

niccccccccc 9y ago

> paved with good intentions. lol you're giving xi jingping the dictator too much credit. it's a means to monitor and silence his critics, and to prevent protests/uprisings. this is just cultural revolution 2.0. from hitler 2.0.

fermienrico 9y ago
I agree, I think people are delusional. Let’s watch the uninamous vote to indefinitely extend his term - Xi asks “Is anyone against me?” Scroll down to watch the video in the article: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43188739 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43188739 This reminds of Christopher Hitchen’s account of Saddam Hussein. Terrifying.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  I haven’t been paying much attention, but I just read this report on the event: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/24/xi-jinping-mao-thought-on-socialism-china-constitution https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/... and noted this: > However, Susan Shirk, the head of the 21st Century China Centre at the University of California, San Diego, disputed the portrayal of Xi as an almighty Mao-like figure. > “He’s ruling differently, for sure, and people are intimidated by him because of the anti-corruption campaign.” But Shirk said she was reserving judgment on whether Xi was attempting “a real dictatorial play” until the new line-up of China’s top ruling council, the politburo standing committee, was announced on Wednesday. > If that committee included at least one of three possible successors – Hu Chunhua, Chen Min’er or Zhang Qingwei – that would signal Xi’s intention to step down in 2022, she said. If no clear successor emerged, however, it would fuel fears that Xi was “going for broke, all-out to be a dictator” and planned to remain in power indefinitely. I looked and none of those individuals were appointed to the standing committee of the politburo. Two of them are on the regular politburo (Min’er and Chunhua), but Shirk referenced the standing committee specifically. So by her measure this is a dictatorial path.
Panoramix 9y ago
The Hitler comparison is too much, even for an anti-China troll.