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Meritocracy comes down to "Who deems someone worthy of merit?". Who or what makes the consideration? Is it done in a fair and impartial manner, or is the word "

Meritocracy comes down to "Who deems someone worthy of merit?". Who or what makes the consideration? Is it done in a fair and impartial manner, or is the word "Meritocracy" used as a tool to further disenfranchise people out of the 'in group'? If you dig in further, past the simple buzzword, its a method of distributed control of power, controlling social acceptance and shrouding it as "merit". What does "Meritocracy" come down to? Turns out women don't get 'merit'. They get 'social media' positions. They get the fuzzy fluffy jobs because that's all they're good for, regarding merit. Similar with African Americans. Pidgeonholed, natch. Older people, same - seriously they 'just can't keep up!'. I read the Hacker Manifesto back in '89. I accepted it. I lived it. And as much as I wanted to accept "that we're all alike", Real Names and similar forced policies to disclose identity have poisoned this back to racism, sexism, nationalism, and ageism. I don't like it, and I don't like whatever pretty glitzy name is given to do this round of demeaning and ostracization.

CWuestefeld 8y ago
Turns out women don't get 'merit'. Please provide citations.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  Sure. https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/jun/24/false-theory-meritocracy-women-lose https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/jun/24/... The main takeaways here are: 1. Players have a range of qualities. It is nigh on impossible to rank them in a simple linear order, since strengths and weaknesses come in bundles, not as a single order of merit. 2. What makes someone a winner or a loser varies as they move up the ladder? Success criteria are context-dependent. Qualities suited to the top position may have little value in the middle, and vice versa. Indeed we may kill off the very leaders we need in middle echelon tournaments. 3. Something like the Peter Principle operates, where people are promoted to their level of incompetence. We advance people on yesterday's, not tomorrow's, competence. It is also striking that no one goes down. Losers just get stuck in their positions or exit the game. 4. People move ahead as much by luck as through performance. They get a good break, have a strong sponsor, make the right friends and get handed an opportunity to shine. https://theconversation.com/women-in-tech-suffer-because-of-american-myth-of-meritocracy-94269 https://theconversation.com/women-in-tech-suffer-because-of-... "In the U.S., women own 39 percent of all privately owned businesses but receive only around 4 percent of venture capital funding. Put another way, male-led ventures receive 96 percent of all funding." https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner-statistics https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner-statist... https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646267/how-the-meritocracy-myth-affects-women-in-technology https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/27... Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies There's plenty enough to dig further in this area. The numbers are damning, and show that "Turns out women don't get 'merit'." rather effectively. Well, unless you think that half of the population has 'fair' representation with only 4% VC funding, or 6% CEOs.
  - CWuestefeld 8y ago
    You've shown that merit isn't a simple cardinal value; I buy that. You've also shown that outcomes aren't equal. You haven't provided any reason to believe that the outcomes should be equal - in particular, that a comparable number of women are actually competing with the men. There's a fundamental assumption here that women have the same goals as men, and prioritize them against other life choices in the same way. There's a lot of reason to think that both of those things are false.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      > You've also shown that outcomes aren't equal. You haven't provided any reason to believe that the outcomes should be equal - in particular, that a comparable number of African Americans are actually competing with whites. There's a fundamental assumption here that African Americans have the same goals as whites, and prioritize them against other life choices in the same way. There's a lot of reason to think that both of those things are false. By subtly changing a few words, I've replicated the same sentiment against African Americans. And before that, the Irish immigrants. And Chinese immigrants. You come from a superiority position, and that the "inferiors" don't really want nor care. I reject that worldview wholeheartedly.
      - CWuestefeld 8y ago
        Reject away, but your counterexample doesn't prove anything. Once again, you're continuing to make the assumption that all outcomes should, prescriptively, be equal for any demographic you might care to examine. There's no reason to believe that everyone is identical. That idea is a religion to some people, but it's all based on faith with no real evidence. People are free to pursue different goals, and to prioritize different things. For your argument to prevail, you've got to get past that as an assumption. You need to actually demonstrate that for completely equivalent cases, some demographics are being held back. That's remarkably difficult to do. Otherwise, I can do this: women compromise 56% of college enrollees, with men only at 44%. There's clearly some kind of superiority position with an interest in keeping men out of college. I'm not claiming that's a problem, but with your model of presumptive discrimination, you're going to have to come up with an explanation.
commandlinefan 8y ago
> women don't get 'merit'. They get 'social media' positions. Well, hang on - some do, but not all. I've worked with plenty of very competent women programmers (Grace Hopper was a woman, after all), BUT they weren't exactly 50% of them. In fact, they were far fewer. I think most people have observed the same thing and the problem comes up when you try to figure out why, since, so far, there have only been two suggested possibilities: 1) women just aren't that interested in programming or, 2) the men are being sexist and keeping them out. Whenever somebody goes off on an "anti-meritocracy" rant, they're almost always _also_ insisting that the second suggestion is the truth, but there's really not that much evidence to support it.

CWuestefeld 8y ago

Turns out women don't get 'merit'. Please provide citations.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
Sure. https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/jun/24/false-theory-meritocracy-women-lose https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/jun/24/... The main takeaways here are: 1. Players have a range of qualities. It is nigh on impossible to rank them in a simple linear order, since strengths and weaknesses come in bundles, not as a single order of merit. 2. What makes someone a winner or a loser varies as they move up the ladder? Success criteria are context-dependent. Qualities suited to the top position may have little value in the middle, and vice versa. Indeed we may kill off the very leaders we need in middle echelon tournaments. 3. Something like the Peter Principle operates, where people are promoted to their level of incompetence. We advance people on yesterday's, not tomorrow's, competence. It is also striking that no one goes down. Losers just get stuck in their positions or exit the game. 4. People move ahead as much by luck as through performance. They get a good break, have a strong sponsor, make the right friends and get handed an opportunity to shine. https://theconversation.com/women-in-tech-suffer-because-of-american-myth-of-meritocracy-94269 https://theconversation.com/women-in-tech-suffer-because-of-... "In the U.S., women own 39 percent of all privately owned businesses but receive only around 4 percent of venture capital funding. Put another way, male-led ventures receive 96 percent of all funding." https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner-statistics https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner-statist... https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646267/how-the-meritocracy-myth-affects-women-in-technology https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/27... Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies There's plenty enough to dig further in this area. The numbers are damning, and show that "Turns out women don't get 'merit'." rather effectively. Well, unless you think that half of the population has 'fair' representation with only 4% VC funding, or 6% CEOs.
- CWuestefeld 8y ago
  You've shown that merit isn't a simple cardinal value; I buy that. You've also shown that outcomes aren't equal. You haven't provided any reason to believe that the outcomes should be equal - in particular, that a comparable number of women are actually competing with the men. There's a fundamental assumption here that women have the same goals as men, and prioritize them against other life choices in the same way. There's a lot of reason to think that both of those things are false.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    > You've also shown that outcomes aren't equal. You haven't provided any reason to believe that the outcomes should be equal - in particular, that a comparable number of African Americans are actually competing with whites. There's a fundamental assumption here that African Americans have the same goals as whites, and prioritize them against other life choices in the same way. There's a lot of reason to think that both of those things are false. By subtly changing a few words, I've replicated the same sentiment against African Americans. And before that, the Irish immigrants. And Chinese immigrants. You come from a superiority position, and that the "inferiors" don't really want nor care. I reject that worldview wholeheartedly.
    - CWuestefeld 8y ago
      Reject away, but your counterexample doesn't prove anything. Once again, you're continuing to make the assumption that all outcomes should, prescriptively, be equal for any demographic you might care to examine. There's no reason to believe that everyone is identical. That idea is a religion to some people, but it's all based on faith with no real evidence. People are free to pursue different goals, and to prioritize different things. For your argument to prevail, you've got to get past that as an assumption. You need to actually demonstrate that for completely equivalent cases, some demographics are being held back. That's remarkably difficult to do. Otherwise, I can do this: women compromise 56% of college enrollees, with men only at 44%. There's clearly some kind of superiority position with an interest in keeping men out of college. I'm not claiming that's a problem, but with your model of presumptive discrimination, you're going to have to come up with an explanation.

commandlinefan 8y ago

> women don't get 'merit'. They get 'social media' positions. Well, hang on - some do, but not all. I've worked with plenty of very competent women programmers (Grace Hopper was a woman, after all), BUT they weren't exactly 50% of them. In fact, they were far fewer. I think most people have observed the same thing and the problem comes up when you try to figure out why, since, so far, there have only been two suggested possibilities: 1) women just aren't that interested in programming or, 2) the men are being sexist and keeping them out. Whenever somebody goes off on an "anti-meritocracy" rant, they're almost always _also_ insisting that the second suggestion is the truth, but there's really not that much evidence to support it.