5 ms·
The place where the sand/gold analogy breaks down is that the goalposts are constantly shifting due to competition. If I've hired the best person in the world,
by philipov 5y ago
The place where the sand/gold analogy breaks down is that the goalposts are constantly shifting due to competition.
If I've hired the best person in the world, and they're the best out of 100,000 candidates, then if someone else also wants to find the best person in the world, they'll need to be better than the current best person in the world. It may take 200,000 candidates to find that person. To keep finding someone better than the current best person in the world, you constantly need to increase the amount of sand.
To find the new best person in the world, you'll produce geniuses who are as good as the old best person in the world, but they're no longer good enough to be the NEW best person in the world.
So yes, we're overproducing on gold, but now we're looking for something even better than gold.
- stdbrouw 5y agoThis presumes (a) a highly reliable ability to identify the "best person", which we simply don't have, (b) the idea that "best" is unidimensional and unrelated to the context one finds oneself in and (c) the idea that such a "best" person will also be the one who will do most to advance science. Just take a look at a century of Nobel prize winners and you'll see that none of those assumptions hold.
- philipov 5y agoThe assumptions don't hold in reality, but the myth of them holds in the minds of people doing the hiring, and that is enough.
- ipaddr 5y agoThey would cost too much. You take the second best and claim they are the best person on the market.
- lupire 5y agoIt doesn't cost too much, because the employer doesn't pay for it; the candidates do.