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These attacks on meritocracy by journalists are getting tiring. Meritocracy as it is defined by its proponents just means the most competent person gets the jo

These attacks on meritocracy by journalists are getting tiring. Meritocracy as it is defined by its proponents just means the most competent person gets the job or gets admitted. It doesn't mean that it's someone's hard work or whatever that leads to their competence. These critics don't grasp this distinction. Moreover, this idea of entrenching "status hierarchies" is silly because it ignores the reality of genetic inheritance of intelligence. If a mother and son both have 150 IQ because of a genetic gift, then yes I want them both to get into MIT. This is not entrenching hierarchies. It simply follows from the cold reality that smart parents are more likely to have smart kids. Also, higher education is far from a meritocracy either in vision or in practice. Asians and to a lesser extent Whites are routinely discriminated against, and money can buy access either through donations or by being legacy admits. SATs are the least problematic part of this picture. What should be criticized are these prestigious higher education institutions keeping supply artificially capped instead of scaling up. They do this because they have turned education into a positional good. It's wrong and yet you never hear these Ivy-educated journalists railing against it because doing that would threaten their own status as part of the scarce elite.

cratermoon 5y ago
> they have turned education into a positional good Positional goods are highly valued not just for their scarcity but also because they convey a high relative standing within society. The term "high relative standing" is just a fancy way of saying "merit".
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  A Harvard legacy/donor/child-of-famous-person admission gets the same amount of prestige (and the same amount of "high relative standing") as someone that got there by virtue of their intelligence and competence. The former isn't meritocratic but the latter is, and it's this distinction that shows why it's a mistake to conflate "high relative standing" with "merit".
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    But that Harvard legacy/donor/child-of-famous-person student started with more prestige. So even if they don't gain any more, they are still ahead individuals who got there otherwise. Besides, the problem with merit is in how what is meritorious is defined. And coincidentally, the people who get to define what is meritorious are the ones who just happen to already be rich in the things they define as meritorious.
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      If we're talking about job hiring, meritocracy is just defined as hiring the person who is going to be the most competent in the role. That's what people mean when they talk about meritocracy. This leads to the best outcome for the org and is the most fair for candidates since it means people aren't being discriminated against on irrelevant dimensions (such as how much Asian ancestry they happen to have). The old status quo of hiring only men was decidedly not meritocratic, given that less competent men were being hired over more competent women by virtue of gender. In higher education, when people talk about meritocratic admissions, what they mean is selecting students based on dimensions such as intelligence, character, capability for leadership, etc, and straying away from irrelevant dimensions that colleges currently consider such as race, how famous the parents are, etc. If we're critiquing meritocracy, we should adopt the definition that proponents themselves use, which is the above.
      - cratermoon 5y ago
        > selecting students based on dimensions such as intelligence, character, capability for leadership Yes, and who gets to define what "intelligence" means and how it is measured? By what criteria are character and capability for leadership determined, and why? But most importantly, are these criteria really the best ones to use to determine academic success, or are they arbitrary and contingent ideas imposed by those who look at their own station, determine that it is best, and decide, post hoc ergo propter hoc, that their own attributes are what lead to their station? > we should adopt the definition that proponents themselves use But the proponents of meritocracy have defined it to mean just what they like. They have conveniently defined it such that they themselves are meritorious. In any case, the term of "meritocracy" is not a positive one. The word was coined in the 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy. The author, sociologist Michael Dunlop Young, was writing about a dystopia, one where intelligence and merit have replaced social class as the central tenet of society, and as a result society is stratified between a merited power-holding elite and a disenfranchised underclass of the less merited. Young was criticizing a society so ordered, not advocating for it. See "Down with meritocracy", by Michael Young, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

cratermoon 5y ago

> they have turned education into a positional good Positional goods are highly valued not just for their scarcity but also because they convey a high relative standing within society. The term "high relative standing" is just a fancy way of saying "merit".

fighterpilot 5y ago
A Harvard legacy/donor/child-of-famous-person admission gets the same amount of prestige (and the same amount of "high relative standing") as someone that got there by virtue of their intelligence and competence. The former isn't meritocratic but the latter is, and it's this distinction that shows why it's a mistake to conflate "high relative standing" with "merit".
- cratermoon 5y ago
  But that Harvard legacy/donor/child-of-famous-person student started with more prestige. So even if they don't gain any more, they are still ahead individuals who got there otherwise. Besides, the problem with merit is in how what is meritorious is defined. And coincidentally, the people who get to define what is meritorious are the ones who just happen to already be rich in the things they define as meritorious.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    If we're talking about job hiring, meritocracy is just defined as hiring the person who is going to be the most competent in the role. That's what people mean when they talk about meritocracy. This leads to the best outcome for the org and is the most fair for candidates since it means people aren't being discriminated against on irrelevant dimensions (such as how much Asian ancestry they happen to have). The old status quo of hiring only men was decidedly not meritocratic, given that less competent men were being hired over more competent women by virtue of gender. In higher education, when people talk about meritocratic admissions, what they mean is selecting students based on dimensions such as intelligence, character, capability for leadership, etc, and straying away from irrelevant dimensions that colleges currently consider such as race, how famous the parents are, etc. If we're critiquing meritocracy, we should adopt the definition that proponents themselves use, which is the above.
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      > selecting students based on dimensions such as intelligence, character, capability for leadership Yes, and who gets to define what "intelligence" means and how it is measured? By what criteria are character and capability for leadership determined, and why? But most importantly, are these criteria really the best ones to use to determine academic success, or are they arbitrary and contingent ideas imposed by those who look at their own station, determine that it is best, and decide, post hoc ergo propter hoc, that their own attributes are what lead to their station? > we should adopt the definition that proponents themselves use But the proponents of meritocracy have defined it to mean just what they like. They have conveniently defined it such that they themselves are meritorious. In any case, the term of "meritocracy" is not a positive one. The word was coined in the 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy. The author, sociologist Michael Dunlop Young, was writing about a dystopia, one where intelligence and merit have replaced social class as the central tenet of society, and as a result society is stratified between a merited power-holding elite and a disenfranchised underclass of the less merited. Young was criticizing a society so ordered, not advocating for it. See "Down with meritocracy", by Michael Young, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment