4 ms·

Can someone explain how striving for meritocracy stems from assumption of equal opportunity? I want projects I am part of or benefit from to be guided by merito

Can someone explain how striving for meritocracy stems from assumption of equal opportunity? I want projects I am part of or benefit from to be guided by meritocracy. It means some people have better chances to contribute or gain influence there than others. Those are more competent people who often got better opportunities through life. I want that because I care about those projects. I don't see how chances not being equal contradict any of it.

ggggtez 8y ago
Let's say you get "a" tries to succeed. You'd expect equally talented candidates x, and y, to have Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|a). But what if y only had "b" tries, where b<a? What would y have to be to make Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|b)? Our intuition seems to say that there will be a lot of variance in Pr(y|b). But the candidate's skill hasn't actually changed, just we aren't measuring it with the same fidelity! And that's all there is to it. If you no longer assume everyone has an equal chance to show their skills, then the meritocracy isn't actually working as intended. Good "y" candidates are getting ignored for worse "x" candidates, just because "x" candidates had more chances.
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  This assumes meritocracy we want is based on skills. I think "working as intended" is actually based on "shown skills", not "skills"; people with mad skills which didn't show it in the project don't have merit. I've seen "do-ocracy" used instead for this reason. Do-ocracy does not assume equal opportunity.
  - oconnore 8y ago
    This is a really weird critique of the idea that people with fewer opportunities should be given a few more chances to show their skills. It's directly increasing the metric you're interested in, but you're still against it for... reasons?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- tinalumfoil 8y ago
  In a true meritocracy, all candidates are judged on equal footing so P(x|a) isn't compared to P(y|b). In practice this is very possible (albeit expensive) to achieve, given a set pool of candidates. Although judging based on past achievement has the problem you describe, it can be used in place of a fair test (eg, judging candidates based on resumes instead of technical interviews) since high past achievement is strongly (but not perfectly) associated with high skill. Mozilla doesn't appear to be addressing your version of meritocracy, but the actual definition of meritocracy, which still gives those who had the opportunity to build skill an advantage.
- zerostar07 8y ago
  If the sample sizes differ you should use a statistical test not just the variances
- moduspol 8y ago
  I get the idea, but Mozilla is building things. If I want the best engineer to build my bridge, I don't want to give bonus points for skin color or private parts. It's not like the trucks going over it will be any lighter or have smoother tires because the person building it grew up in a single parent household or something. When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the end product. My fundamental concern is that the moment that the deciding factor isn't how good someone is at what you need them to do, you're driving a wedge through "the world as it is (cold hard reality)" and "the world as you want it to be (equal outcomes, diverse, empathetic)". The deeper that wedge gets, the tougher of a time you'll have meeting goals in the real world, where whether or not that bridge holds during a tornado is completely independent of the background of those who built it. I think employees should be judged on how well they can deliver toward the company's goals, and for the most part, I think that happens. Actions like these are more about virtue signaling than anything else.
  - ggggtez 8y ago
    For someone who doesn't care about private parts, why are you the first person to bring it up? If you care about delivering success, you should take a moment and think hard about why you feel so strongly about the race/gender aspect, and are not thinking about the probability theory.
    - moduspol 8y ago
      > For someone who doesn't care about private parts, why are you the first person to bring it up? Sorry--sometimes the endless stream of euphemisms and language policing bores me. This isn't an isolated event and I think we all know what's being said here. > If you care about delivering success, you should take a moment and think hard about why you feel so strongly about the race/gender aspect, and are not thinking about the probability theory. I really don't care about the race/gender aspect, but it's being injected into Mozilla's governance statement and here we are discussing it.
  - thecrash 8y ago
    "When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the end product." This is overly individualistic. A given engineer is not better or worse in some absolute sense. They are better or worse at a given job, which takes into account many other contextual factors: the specific goal, the rest of the team (who will be pursuing a that goal cooperatively), and the unique challenges which face that team/goal combination. For example, it may be that your engineer Dmitri is best at solving particular types of design problems, but he only speaks Russian, and he's having trouble on a team with no other native Russian-speakers. In this case, the "best" engineer to hire for Dmitri's team is a Russian, even if they're "worse" at solving design problems on an individual basis. In the abstract, hiring an engineer based on the language they speak goes against the meritocratic ideal, but in practice it is obviously the decision which best moves the team toward their goal. More generally, one could say that even though language-diversity is not obviously or directly related to engineering effectiveness, it is still related. Having many languages represented on a team increases the odds that the performance of people like Dmitri will not be limited by a language barrier in the first place. It's funny you mentioned "the world as it is" vs "the world as you want it to be". Because from my perspective, you're describing the world as you want it to be: each person has an abstract platonic "skill value" which can be objectively and universally evaluated, and which translates predictably and directly into metrics like load-bearing capacity. This is a lofty ideal, but does not reflect how organizations and teams actually achieve goals. "The world as it is" involves orgs with lots of subjective, local, interdependent systems which often involve interpersonal dynamics, norms, and emergent social phenomena, all of which have an indirect but very significant effect on metrics like load-bearing capacity.
sanxiyn 8y ago
It doesn't. I can't explain falsity.
beguiledfoil 8y ago
Overfitting.
CapacitorSet 8y ago
I think the concept is "a purely-meritocratic system cannot be achieved without equal opportunity". This is because one's contribution to governance is proportional to their merit and to their opportunity to express this merit. For a concrete example, a programmer in Seattle has much higher opportunities than the same programmer in rural Burundi, so he can put the same effort into much more work, and ultimately be much more relevant in supposedly meritocratic governance. However, the original post is not concerned with opportunity due to geographic location or access to technology, but rather to a bias where code submitted by programmers with a feminine username and profile picture is approved less often than average. Note that the linked study does not refer to Mozilla explicitly, though.
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  Note that the cited study actually shows PR from women are approved more often than average. Study authors themselves state this.
cucumberferity 8y ago
The movement pushing this worldview do not believe oppressed groups can ever meaningful participate in society without their help. They advance their 'help' to these groups and rely on the cooperation of people who want 'do the right thing' when they go about forcing their agenda on everyone. It is about cementing their own personal and political power, it does little to actually improve diversity, and has nothing to do with code. They are radical authoritarian thugs who come bearing gifts wrapped in feel-good language. You can see how quickly this movement turns on members of groups they believe to be marginalized who reject their help. They also inevitably turn against even moderates who are just trying to the right thing. Funny enough the first reply to this in the listserv is calling out use of politically incorrect language in the proposal.
- didgeoridoo 8y ago
  I agree with almost all of your substantive points, yet I find this post tremendously unhelpful. If you cared about communicating effectively and changing minds, you would watch out for overheated language. It seems like you’re falling into the same trap of self-satisfied browbeating that you are accusing others of.
orbitur 8y ago
Why is there an assumption that competence is lost by allowing for equal opportunity? We can prioritize equal opportunity and then meritocracy within that. There's no need for all this handwringing about loss of quality, when there's been no demonstrable evidence of that. Things get better for a subset of educated people, and nothing gets worse for anyone, but we still get 1000s of comments like the one above.

ggggtez 8y ago

Let's say you get "a" tries to succeed. You'd expect equally talented candidates x, and y, to have Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|a). But what if y only had "b" tries, where b<a? What would y have to be to make Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|b)? Our intuition seems to say that there will be a lot of variance in Pr(y|b). But the candidate's skill hasn't actually changed, just we aren't measuring it with the same fidelity! And that's all there is to it. If you no longer assume everyone has an equal chance to show their skills, then the meritocracy isn't actually working as intended. Good "y" candidates are getting ignored for worse "x" candidates, just because "x" candidates had more chances.

sanxiyn 8y ago
This assumes meritocracy we want is based on skills. I think "working as intended" is actually based on "shown skills", not "skills"; people with mad skills which didn't show it in the project don't have merit. I've seen "do-ocracy" used instead for this reason. Do-ocracy does not assume equal opportunity.
- oconnore 8y ago
  This is a really weird critique of the idea that people with fewer opportunities should be given a few more chances to show their skills. It's directly increasing the metric you're interested in, but you're still against it for... reasons?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tinalumfoil 8y ago
In a true meritocracy, all candidates are judged on equal footing so P(x|a) isn't compared to P(y|b). In practice this is very possible (albeit expensive) to achieve, given a set pool of candidates. Although judging based on past achievement has the problem you describe, it can be used in place of a fair test (eg, judging candidates based on resumes instead of technical interviews) since high past achievement is strongly (but not perfectly) associated with high skill. Mozilla doesn't appear to be addressing your version of meritocracy, but the actual definition of meritocracy, which still gives those who had the opportunity to build skill an advantage.
zerostar07 8y ago
If the sample sizes differ you should use a statistical test not just the variances
moduspol 8y ago
I get the idea, but Mozilla is building things. If I want the best engineer to build my bridge, I don't want to give bonus points for skin color or private parts. It's not like the trucks going over it will be any lighter or have smoother tires because the person building it grew up in a single parent household or something. When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the end product. My fundamental concern is that the moment that the deciding factor isn't how good someone is at what you need them to do, you're driving a wedge through "the world as it is (cold hard reality)" and "the world as you want it to be (equal outcomes, diverse, empathetic)". The deeper that wedge gets, the tougher of a time you'll have meeting goals in the real world, where whether or not that bridge holds during a tornado is completely independent of the background of those who built it. I think employees should be judged on how well they can deliver toward the company's goals, and for the most part, I think that happens. Actions like these are more about virtue signaling than anything else.
- ggggtez 8y ago
  For someone who doesn't care about private parts, why are you the first person to bring it up? If you care about delivering success, you should take a moment and think hard about why you feel so strongly about the race/gender aspect, and are not thinking about the probability theory.
  - moduspol 8y ago
    > For someone who doesn't care about private parts, why are you the first person to bring it up? Sorry--sometimes the endless stream of euphemisms and language policing bores me. This isn't an isolated event and I think we all know what's being said here. > If you care about delivering success, you should take a moment and think hard about why you feel so strongly about the race/gender aspect, and are not thinking about the probability theory. I really don't care about the race/gender aspect, but it's being injected into Mozilla's governance statement and here we are discussing it.
- thecrash 8y ago
  "When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the end product." This is overly individualistic. A given engineer is not better or worse in some absolute sense. They are better or worse at a given job, which takes into account many other contextual factors: the specific goal, the rest of the team (who will be pursuing a that goal cooperatively), and the unique challenges which face that team/goal combination. For example, it may be that your engineer Dmitri is best at solving particular types of design problems, but he only speaks Russian, and he's having trouble on a team with no other native Russian-speakers. In this case, the "best" engineer to hire for Dmitri's team is a Russian, even if they're "worse" at solving design problems on an individual basis. In the abstract, hiring an engineer based on the language they speak goes against the meritocratic ideal, but in practice it is obviously the decision which best moves the team toward their goal. More generally, one could say that even though language-diversity is not obviously or directly related to engineering effectiveness, it is still related. Having many languages represented on a team increases the odds that the performance of people like Dmitri will not be limited by a language barrier in the first place. It's funny you mentioned "the world as it is" vs "the world as you want it to be". Because from my perspective, you're describing the world as you want it to be: each person has an abstract platonic "skill value" which can be objectively and universally evaluated, and which translates predictably and directly into metrics like load-bearing capacity. This is a lofty ideal, but does not reflect how organizations and teams actually achieve goals. "The world as it is" involves orgs with lots of subjective, local, interdependent systems which often involve interpersonal dynamics, norms, and emergent social phenomena, all of which have an indirect but very significant effect on metrics like load-bearing capacity.

sanxiyn 8y ago

It doesn't. I can't explain falsity.

beguiledfoil 8y ago

Overfitting.

CapacitorSet 8y ago

I think the concept is "a purely-meritocratic system cannot be achieved without equal opportunity". This is because one's contribution to governance is proportional to their merit and to their opportunity to express this merit. For a concrete example, a programmer in Seattle has much higher opportunities than the same programmer in rural Burundi, so he can put the same effort into much more work, and ultimately be much more relevant in supposedly meritocratic governance. However, the original post is not concerned with opportunity due to geographic location or access to technology, but rather to a bias where code submitted by programmers with a feminine username and profile picture is approved less often than average. Note that the linked study does not refer to Mozilla explicitly, though.

sanxiyn 8y ago
Note that the cited study actually shows PR from women are approved more often than average. Study authors themselves state this.

cucumberferity 8y ago

The movement pushing this worldview do not believe oppressed groups can ever meaningful participate in society without their help. They advance their 'help' to these groups and rely on the cooperation of people who want 'do the right thing' when they go about forcing their agenda on everyone. It is about cementing their own personal and political power, it does little to actually improve diversity, and has nothing to do with code. They are radical authoritarian thugs who come bearing gifts wrapped in feel-good language. You can see how quickly this movement turns on members of groups they believe to be marginalized who reject their help. They also inevitably turn against even moderates who are just trying to the right thing. Funny enough the first reply to this in the listserv is calling out use of politically incorrect language in the proposal.

didgeoridoo 8y ago
I agree with almost all of your substantive points, yet I find this post tremendously unhelpful. If you cared about communicating effectively and changing minds, you would watch out for overheated language. It seems like you’re falling into the same trap of self-satisfied browbeating that you are accusing others of.

orbitur 8y ago

Why is there an assumption that competence is lost by allowing for equal opportunity? We can prioritize equal opportunity and then meritocracy within that. There's no need for all this handwringing about loss of quality, when there's been no demonstrable evidence of that. Things get better for a subset of educated people, and nothing gets worse for anyone, but we still get 1000s of comments like the one above.