4 ms·

It feels like more and more areas of life are regressing to the mean in terms of how status is distributed. The mean being some sort of centralized cabal-like s

It feels like more and more areas of life are regressing to the mean in terms of how status is distributed. The mean being some sort of centralized cabal-like structure (perhaps autonomously/accidentally centralized, like an algo) doling out status. By design, it is highly uneven, quasi-random (there are things that make you eligible but there are no guarantees), and their authority to do so unquestioned. Take social media: it is more about who they've said you are rather than _what_ you say. The key message of the medium is less the content of the message itself (though it figures in!) and more the combination of your online persona's followers + likes along with the message itself. I'd argue social media is a real shift in the Internet itself where we began to take online reputation very, very seriously, to the point that we decided we'd believe that likes were more than just Internet Points. And people _love_ this sort of structure because it means that something other than actual competence can be the deciding factor. They have a shot at being in the cabal and among the deciders. And it's a lot easier to evaluate people: simply see what other people say about them. Not saying that non-technical factors don't matter. They matter a lot and are often very easy wins to pick up. But it's clear people like systems that aren't centered around competence as much as they may claim otherwise. And areas where that isn't the case seem to eventually be converted to more conventional hierarchies.

Nasrudith 2y ago
That explains some of the absolute rabid hatred of the veey concept of meritocracy. Not even "this isn't based on real merit it's the same old boys club" style complaints/arguments but an absolutely furious hatred towards competence determining progression.
- mattgreenrocks 2y ago
  You see it in denials of 10x engineers, pushes for tooling to standardize everything, tons of transitive dependencies, obligatory blog posts about how tech is "really just about working well with others" and an overall un-seriousness about actually building things.
throwaway42668 2y ago
> And people _love_ this sort of structure because it means that something other than actual competence can be the deciding factor. It's different competence. Not incompetence. It's being competent at identifying marks to exploit, attention-seeking, etc. I don't particularly care for it myself and feel pretty strongly that it's narrowing the gap between humans and apes, rather than widening it, but it's still some kind of skill.
- mattgreenrocks 2y ago
  Good catch. It gets at technical competence, but it isn't constrained to that. It's more of "good at what the org ostensibly is about," vs "good at ensuring the org lives on."
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
mrcode007 2y ago
Thanks for a thoughtful comment
ryandv 2y ago
You can already see echoes of this in the software community, which was historically populated by such "weird nerds" and computer geeks who traded off social tact and grace for a childhood, or even a lifetime, spent understanding the technical minutiae of software, hardware, and computing in general. Now we have self-identifying "computer hackers" and "security researchers" and "red team operators" who probably have never heard the words "shellcode" or "ASLR" in their life, and whose technical chops cap out at wrapping payloads from hardcoded URLs in a 100-line golang script and call it an advanced exploit. We used to call them "script kiddies." "Compiler developers" who couldn't tell you the difference between a regular expression and a context-free grammar, and simply wrap babel in a javascript snippet, calling their glorified terminal alias a real compiler. Go look at the posers on r/programminghumor, or, god forbid, fucking Instagram influencers releasing content and memes about programming instead of having any technical competence with computing itself. While being a computer nerd used to be looked down upon with derision, it's now trendy and hip to be a "software engineer," much in the same way geek culture was appropriated and colonized by outsiders to the field. People think that 16 weeks spent studying JavaScript at a bootcamp puts them on even footing with shut-ins who spent tens of thousands of hours in front of a bash terminal and customizing their vim setups. It's the absolute depths of Dunning-Krugerism. These aren't geeks; they don't act or talk the same as people who have been embedded in this culture for years and lifetimes, even if they parade around superficial status markers to try to pose as one. It's as if an Anglophone went to a country where the predominant language was one other than English and started appropriating a few dozen words from the native tongue to pose as a local - "you're not from here, are you?" Perhaps this stance on computer geek culture is "elitist" or not "inclusive" enough, but be aware that maximum inclusivity tends to result in the same regression to the mean that you describe. It's much easier to spin a narrative about how 31337 at programming you are when you can write any bullshit you want on social media and pose and identify as something you are not, while those who are actually out there writing software instead of posting about it, pushing commits instead of simply updating their GitHub READMEs, have scant little to show to the blithering masses of people who confuse Internet Points, narratives, and hearsay for actual competence. It's a continuation of the postmodern trend to socially construct status, narrative, and indeed, even truth, by manufacturing simulacra and digital content to stand in for and completely replace any underlying reality.

Nasrudith 2y ago

That explains some of the absolute rabid hatred of the veey concept of meritocracy. Not even "this isn't based on real merit it's the same old boys club" style complaints/arguments but an absolutely furious hatred towards competence determining progression.

mattgreenrocks 2y ago
You see it in denials of 10x engineers, pushes for tooling to standardize everything, tons of transitive dependencies, obligatory blog posts about how tech is "really just about working well with others" and an overall un-seriousness about actually building things.

throwaway42668 2y ago

> And people _love_ this sort of structure because it means that something other than actual competence can be the deciding factor. It's different competence. Not incompetence. It's being competent at identifying marks to exploit, attention-seeking, etc. I don't particularly care for it myself and feel pretty strongly that it's narrowing the gap between humans and apes, rather than widening it, but it's still some kind of skill.

mattgreenrocks 2y ago
Good catch. It gets at technical competence, but it isn't constrained to that. It's more of "good at what the org ostensibly is about," vs "good at ensuring the org lives on."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

mrcode007 2y ago

Thanks for a thoughtful comment

ryandv 2y ago

You can already see echoes of this in the software community, which was historically populated by such "weird nerds" and computer geeks who traded off social tact and grace for a childhood, or even a lifetime, spent understanding the technical minutiae of software, hardware, and computing in general. Now we have self-identifying "computer hackers" and "security researchers" and "red team operators" who probably have never heard the words "shellcode" or "ASLR" in their life, and whose technical chops cap out at wrapping payloads from hardcoded URLs in a 100-line golang script and call it an advanced exploit. We used to call them "script kiddies." "Compiler developers" who couldn't tell you the difference between a regular expression and a context-free grammar, and simply wrap babel in a javascript snippet, calling their glorified terminal alias a real compiler. Go look at the posers on r/programminghumor, or, god forbid, fucking Instagram influencers releasing content and memes about programming instead of having any technical competence with computing itself. While being a computer nerd used to be looked down upon with derision, it's now trendy and hip to be a "software engineer," much in the same way geek culture was appropriated and colonized by outsiders to the field. People think that 16 weeks spent studying JavaScript at a bootcamp puts them on even footing with shut-ins who spent tens of thousands of hours in front of a bash terminal and customizing their vim setups. It's the absolute depths of Dunning-Krugerism. These aren't geeks; they don't act or talk the same as people who have been embedded in this culture for years and lifetimes, even if they parade around superficial status markers to try to pose as one. It's as if an Anglophone went to a country where the predominant language was one other than English and started appropriating a few dozen words from the native tongue to pose as a local - "you're not from here, are you?" Perhaps this stance on computer geek culture is "elitist" or not "inclusive" enough, but be aware that maximum inclusivity tends to result in the same regression to the mean that you describe. It's much easier to spin a narrative about how 31337 at programming you are when you can write any bullshit you want on social media and pose and identify as something you are not, while those who are actually out there writing software instead of posting about it, pushing commits instead of simply updating their GitHub READMEs, have scant little to show to the blithering masses of people who confuse Internet Points, narratives, and hearsay for actual competence. It's a continuation of the postmodern trend to socially construct status, narrative, and indeed, even truth, by manufacturing simulacra and digital content to stand in for and completely replace any underlying reality.