7 ms·

You keep using that word "meritocracy"

49 points by bretthopper 14y ago

elisee 14y ago
Might be worth changing the submission title ("You keep using that word") to include the word "Meritocracy". It's really opaque right now.
kolektiv 14y ago
"If we met the utopian ideal we toss around in blog posts, we’d still have lots of middle-aged women in this field. We’d have black people. We’d have Asian people – not a smattering, but a majority, cause the world is mostly Asian people." Just had to pick up on this, purely because it's symptomatic of another form of blindness. We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia. There aren't many Asian programmers in companies in my current town because the demographic is not a small scale mirror of the world demographic. I wouldn't expect to find even 8% white guys in a programming office in Manila. That's not to ignore the fact that certain sections of populations are, for whatever reason, dramatically underrepresented in companies in various prominent countries, but throwing around random meaningless soundbites like that doesn't help anyone's argument.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  It's also worth noting that female developers seem much more common in asian countries too.
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    Better than the US, but not as much as you would think. Diversity hires in my office (in China for an American company) mean female, not even the various ethnic minorities that are a more than a bit underrepresented (I haven't met a Tibetan or Uighur programmer yet, but then we aren't out in West China).
  - sopooneo 14y ago
    That is new information for me. Anyone have any insight on why it would be the case?
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I can't find any information to back it up so it's possible I'm wrong. I've noticed this most specifically with Indians though. If you look at Indian outsourcing shops that employ programmers there do tend to be more females than you would find in an equivalent western company. If I had to hazard a guess I think the "nerdy" stigma attached to CS is more of a western thing. Whereas in a growing economy a woman who can go out and compete with men is perhaps viewed as more empowered somehow?
- saraid216 14y ago
  > We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia. Middle-aged women, on the other hand. Since the article he's responding to is about sexism, that seems a little more salient.
  - yahelc 14y ago
    >he's responding She.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  Look at how many asian computer scientists there are in Seattle and the valley, or even NYC? This just baffles me, because Microsoft (my employer) is very diverse, I would bet that Asians make up a super minority if not a majority of the Redmond office. As for my own office in China, I think we have 1 or 2% Caucasian, maybe less. But to be honest, it doesn't feel that much different from the west coast.
bithive123 14y ago
While I agree that we fall well short of the utopian ideal (rather than the farcical interpretation) there are plenty of other bureaucratic barriers to meritocracies as well. In my experience even the most dedicated, agile people hit organizational limits on complexity or continuity and ultimately have to settle for sub-par network topologies, software stacks, and yes even coworkers. To the extent that we all understand a meritocracy to refer to a system where things are evaluated on their merits, hopefully all agree that it is a fine ideal even if the historical meaning (like 'begging the question') is different.
- ktizo 14y ago
  As far as I am aware, meritocracy in the original definition is one which is ruled by people on the basis of their paper qualifications, which leads them to fundamentally believe that they are justified in holding power over others, despite the fact that those qualifications are often a consequence of a lot more than just ability. Part of the warning was that meritocracies can become both tautological and blind to corruption as the bits of paper become the main measure of the right to hold power.
ktizo 14y ago
I had this argument with my mum about the word 'meritocracy' a few years ago. She was convinced that it couldn't have originated in a satire, as otherwise politicians wouldn't have adopted it because that would just make them look silly.
ianterrell 14y ago
The inflammatory and rambly tone will likely cause a lot of people to miss what I think is actually a point worth considering: >A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to others like them or those who aren’t but are willing to play by their rules. It's analogous to IQ tests having cultural biases, but people's claiming they measure intelligence objectively. Whoever sets the metric controls the outcome, and whoever is currently in charge sets the metric. I'm not sure it's actionable information, but it seems worth remembering.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  It seems to me that in a truly meritocratic and also capitalistic society, the market would decide what the metric is, because public opinion of what constitutes "merit" will be aligned with what produces success in the market.
  - pron 14y ago
    But doesn't the market favor people of means? The market already has a metric - financial success - but the market cares not for justice. I think all the author is asking is of us to open our eyes, and do our best to further goals we deem worthy, and let the market do what it likes. We're people, we can act on our beliefs. Why should we be slaves to the blind yet unjust market?
- jd 14y ago
  > It's analogous to IQ tests having cultural biases, but people's claiming they measure intelligence objectively. No contradiction there. IQ tests clearly aren't completely unbiased and perfectly objective, but they don't have to live up to that impossible standard. Humans have a general intelligence factor G, and an IQ test can approximate it reasonably well. As far as I know IQ tests are the best and most objective way we have of measuring G. If we can't even call our most objective tools objective, then we're quickly entering the territory of total relativism. The idea that the outcome of IQ tests is mostly determined by cultural biases, which is what you suggest, seems extremely unlikely. Cultural aspects will make some demographics score better than other demographics, but smart people within a demographic will surely still outperform their peers. So I'm very skeptical about your claims.
Lazare 14y ago
I had issues with the way the article made the following argument: 1) If computer programming was a meritocracy, we'd only have the best computer programmers in the field. 2) Most computer programmers are white males. 3) Most people are not white males. 4) Ergo, computer programming is not a meritocracy. I trust most people saw the logical flaw - the author is assuming that the ability to program is currently evenly distributed. This is not the case. Pick 20 people at random, off the street in Palo Alto, put a gun to their head, and tell them they must solve FizzBuzz, in ANY language. FizzBuzz is famously hard, but it's not that hard; you've got a good chance of getting a few solutions. Now do the same thing in Bangui (capital and largest city of the Central African Republic). Odds are you'll get a lot fewer. Probably none. This doesn't tell us anything about whether white males are unusually good at programming; it tells us a lot about the availability of computers and programming training in the 179th (out of 187) poorest country in the world. In other words, the central argument of the blog rests on conflating ability with opportunities. Because a black female from the CAR is every bit as capable of being a good programmer as a white male from Brooklyn, it follows that black females ARE just as good as white males, and since there are more black females than white males in the world, if a tech company has more white males than black females, it is clear proof of racism and sexism. Except no; in the world we actually live in, the number of people who have the skills, background, and experience to work at, e.g., Google is quite small, and (sadly) mostly male and a mix of white and asian. And yes, that is due to racism, but it isn't itself racist. But the article seems unable to make that last step, and as such it renders the whole thing rather pointless.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  2) Most computer programmers are white Maybe in the USA, but in that context this is not surprising, as 72% of the USA is white. (The male part is a separate discussion) Do you have proof that when considering the entire world, most computer programmers are still white?
- 001sky 14y ago
  If a middle-class white boy who literally never had a job before getting a sweet internship at some cutting edge technology company can eventually, through practice, become a passable computer programmer, anyone can do it. -- This is not of the form you reference, though This is an argument about barriers to skill acquisition, and thus representative expression, not one of either innate or even actual ability or qualification level. Its not "conflating ability with opportunities" anymore than it is saying "there is learning by doing" and since the "doing is not evenly distributed"[1], therefore neither is the "learning".[2] Author is in part arguing that the only "doing" that matters is "branded doing" (ie, doing it for XYZ company or school), as as that is how the next level of doing is rationed, and there is therefore a recursive effect. This may or may not be a great argument, but I think its different than the one you allude to. In particular the low-threshold state and the (implied) recursive mechanism seem to have a more interesting dynamic. ______ [1] Or the option, etc. [2] This depends on (or implies) a certain elemental/relative triviality of the task.
sowhatquestion 14y ago
I'm astonished (in a good way) to see a perspective this radical represented on HN. Considering how the discussions of sexism usually go--i.e., a circle jerk in which we all congratulate ourselves for having slain the dragon of "political correctness"--I can't imagine it will be received well... but in any case, major kudos to the author and submitter.
- natrius 14y ago
  I was astonished to see it as well, but mainly because the logic was so poor. How is pretending that the attendance at conferences should reflect the world's population a useful addition to this discussion?
- mquander 14y ago
  I don't get what's radical about the perspective. I think most people would already agree that many demographics get fucked over when it comes to having an opportunity to learn and pursue a career in what they might otherwise wish to. As far as I can tell that is pretty much the only point that the author was making; the rest is just arguing about the semantics of the word "meritocracy."
aidenn0 14y ago
You can have a meritocracy, and still have an unfair demographic skew. Given a black box in which the inputs are infants and the outputs are people applying for software jobs, if the black-box is unfair, then even if you have a perfect evaluation function in your interviewing process, you will be skewed to the input of the black box. All that being said, of course we have an imperfect evaluation function. And it is almost certainly imperfect in ways that favor white males. However, given the pool of applicants, I think the bigger factor is the black box. As an example, the ratio of men to women at my company is similar to the ratio of men to women in my college computer science classes. If you shift the black box back a bit and you have inputs being babies and outputs being high-school graduates, you will see a huge skew still, and this is part of the reason for affirmative action at the HS level. I propose that it is easier to give unfair advantages to minorities at the college level than it is to fix the unfair disadvantages before that level. This is why I support affirmative action.
- Crake 14y ago
  I propose that it is easier to give unfair advantages to minorities at the college level than it is to fix the unfair disadvantages before that level. This is why I support affirmative action. This is interesting, because it really does get down to the core of the argument: how do we improve the academic success of minorities? Unfortunately, letting someone who can't do calculus into, say, Stanford, is not going to fix the fact that they will be WAY behind their peers. The psychological damage from this alone is tremendous. In fact, I believe there are some interesting studies done on this "mismatch" phenomenon, since racial minorities actually have a higher interest level in STEM careers, but are put at a disadvantage and become less likely to graduate as one due to being AA-ed into a student body where their capabilities are WAY below the mean of their classmates. This leads to an extremely high dropout rate which could have been avoided if they'd gone to a school that better suited their abilities. Instead, thanks to AA, the dropout rate for minorities in STEM departments is ridiculously high, and talented people who maybe just needed a less intense curriculum to adjust to instead end up becoming history or gender or racial studies majors or whatever major you can 4.0 in just for having a pulse. Personally, whether it's harder or easier to do it at the pre-college level, I think it far wiser to leave the college admissions race-blind (to prevent discrimination) and focus on fixing the broken infrastructure that is failing our socioeconomically disadvantaged students. That kid going to Stanford will do much better if he has AP calculus available at his high school, instead of just getting AA-ed in with an inferior skillset (which may or may not be their fault). We want people to be able to succeed, not set them up for failure. As a bonus, most people are fine with the idea of giving others an equal shot, but not so fine with the idea of race based discrimination. AA makes other groups resentful and suspicious of the AA-ed party, but helping people have equal access to preparation for college? Who's going to argue against that? The best way to end discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
evincarofautumn 14y ago
Even if the word has its origins in satire, a characteristic feature of human language is that it changes over time. The word “meritocracy” has been repurposed, and is now a legitimate ideal. The problem with the word is twofold: first, thinking that you live in a meritocratic society when you don’t, and second, thinking that merit is objectively measurable. The author does touch on both points, but I think it benefits from reframing. Fact is, “programming” means a lot of different things to different people, and most of it is easy enough that anyone could do it if they wanted to, and were given the opportunity to learn. The last point is key, because most people don’t get the chance to learn about programming, whether it’s not offered them, or they simply don’t see it as the last word in career choices. If you’d rather take photographs or make sushi, you don’t need to be a programmer. If you’re from a poor country where there aren’t any computers available, you’ve got other things on your mind. I strive to be at the top of my field; I’m sure many on HN feel the same way. But people with that desire form a vanishingly small fraction of the already small fraction of people who program. And people who will succeed in that accomplishment form an infinitesimally small proportion of that. Just have perspective.
- butterfi 14y ago
  There is truthiness to what you say, thank you for embiggening the conversation.
scarmig 14y ago
The great irony is that many people trumpeting the value of meritocracy are otherwise very well-acquainted with Hayekian arguments and public choice. Having a true meritocracy is impossible if you take public choice and Hayek seriously. We don't have all the knowledge necessary to set up a truly objective and universal system for sifting the chaft from the wheat, or even an idea of how to frame that knowledge. And even if we did have that ability, the people and institutions that the meritocracy is embedded in would twist that meritocracy and pervert its original aims. It's obvious when stated, but if you suggest that patriarchy or white supremacy might be undermining some imagined meritocracy, you're some kind of bitter idiot who is just looking for reason to complain.
Kilimanjaro 14y ago
Those who despise meritocracy simply lack, well, intelligence to understand it. Merit is not about IQ, merit is about knowledge and experience in a field. A cook can't build a bridge, a carpenter can't rule a kingdom, a ballet dancer can't run wall street, an altar boy can't run the vatican. We can't know it all, so we specialize, and the more we specialize the more valuable we are in that particular field. So if you want to know about quantum mechanics you ask Stephen Hawking not Emeril Lagasse, but if you want to know about beef stew you know who's the right man. Now guess who would be the perfect fit for the Newton's Chair and who for the Food Network's primetime show? That's meritocracy, it's not about IQ, it's about merits, you earn them, you can't take them or buy them, you just fucking earn them with sweat and tears.
ynniv 14y ago
I'm not sure why this person decided to redefine the essence of meritocracy to mean the biased notion of evaluated merit that keeps the powerful in power. This whole rant falls apart if you assume an honest desire to promote based on merit, which is often what people mean when they claim to be meritocratic. Granted they don't execute it properly, and aren't fully honest when they say that they value it, but lets get one thing straight: meritocracy is not "a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it". This rant is without base.
- kome 14y ago
  > I'm not sure why this person decided to redefine the essence of meritocracy Because the very word "meritocracy" was invented to describe an Orwellian society dystopia were "merit" was the only metric for value. He just use the original definition.
  - ynniv 14y ago
    It's a niche definition that was long since co-opted to describe how people should be promoted. It now roughly means selection based on some manner of successful execution, as opposed to personality, or personal relation. The problem with using "the original definition", is that the rant is now against something that was not the original conversation. Which is fine if the author wants to rant about cronyism ("the original definition"), but not about selection based on observable skill or success (what everyone is talking about lately).
    - anthonyb 14y ago
      Except that the original definition fits the current situation in IT very well.
- Maascamp 14y ago
  The question is, who and what defines merit in a meritocracy? The article claims that those already in power do and thus it is they that control who gets to move up the ladder.
guylhem 14y ago
The article seems full of hatred against "white men". A group of people, for some reason, has found it worth its time to do some activity. This group then trains more, invest more time, and compounding interests makes them better. Other groups see their success and feel like they don't belong. It's human - nothing mean in it. Why is Christophe Lemaitre one of the only decent white sprinters? Because. Why are boys dropping out more and more while girls study? Because. Why are there mostly asian in advanced classes, so much that some university (by their own words) do now discriminate against them in admissions? Because. Why are there mostly white men in the IT industry? Well - I guess you can now answer yourself. There is no conspiracy (except maybe for the universities preferring people from some ethnicities while other people are more qualified) - it's just a bunch of self maintaining tendency. Something interesting - look at the posts on 9gag to try to get the current untold opinions - apparently some white people are developing an inferiority complex on math and sciences when they have asian classmates. Self exclusion, once again. So drop the hatred and see the meritocracy. It's all around us. For the first time in history, with a very low amount of capital and education, a human being can create a profitable company. You should be celebrating such an achievement, not bashing meritocracy. EDIT: Downvote as much as you want, but I'd be interested to know for which reason exactly Occam razor is not being applied here
- roguecoder 14y ago
  "Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that." All of those social dynamics are explainable. Why are sprinters seldom White? Because fast people in Western cultures participate in the more-lucrative and high-status team sports instead. Why are boys dropping out? Well, African-American boys are punished more harshly for the same behavior, more likely to be diagnosed as learning-disabled and tracked out of regular classrooms, less likely to have their father at home due in large part to racist enforcement and prison terms. White boys aren't dropping out: they are under-performing because they don't have to work as hard to succeed as girls. Why are there mostly white men in the IT industry? I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Boys-Take-Over/dp/0262050935 http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Boys-Take-Over/dp/0262050... It answers your question and it has nothing to do with who the best programmers are. If you can't explain something, maybe you should do more research.
natrius 14y ago
"What a meritocracy really protects us from is challenge." Are you suggesting that we not choose who to work with by our assessments of their talent? I think I'll pass. Let us know how your business works out with that strategy. This is an absurd misdiagnosis of the cause of underrepresentation in technology. Every computer science class I've been in has had a similar ratio of genders and ethnicities as the industry does. It's not that we're not finding talented female and minority developers; it's that there are so few of them to begin with. Even if changing the way we evaluate talent were a good idea, it wouldn't change the makeup of the industry.
amplitwist 14y ago
If the PC police could do Fermi problems, they wouldn't be polluting my news feed with inane conspiracy theories. http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm
- Crake 14y ago
  Honestly, there are so many studies with conflicting results that I feel like it's hard to tell to what extent there may or may not be a sex based difference in math aptitude. However, I feel like we can't throw out the possibility of it having an effect just because it's politically incorrect. It's bad science to assume you know the results before even doing the experiment. Sex based differences (and/or similarities) are really fascinating to me. I wish they weren't so politicized.
  - amplitwist 14y ago
    There's another article that makes an attempt to disentangle nature and nurture in the sex gap at http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm . Like I mentioned earlier, these articles are a few steps above Fermi problems; there are ways to calculate these things more accurately. However, these calculations should agree with the estimates, and the estimates indicate a significant genetic gender gap.
beatpanda 14y ago
Terribly, terribly sorry for the meta-comment, but I have to say, it's been thrilling lately to watch the intersection of two bubbles that are usually totally isolated — the "social justice" community and the "hacker" community — and to see the naivetes of both groups exposed, especially because both groups are composed of people who usually take themselves and their own intelligence very seriously. I work as a programmer, but my social circle is mostly semi-luddite radicals and hippies. Somebody got chocolate in my peanut butter. Why this is happening is intensely interesting to me. Programmers have emerged as a highly visible priveleged social group, whose actions have huge and often unexamined social consequences. One example is the rising cost of living in San Francisco. For a group that isn't used to considering itself "priveleged" in the usual sense, it must be disorienting to suddenly be scrutinized in this way. I wonder what the response from "hackers" will look like over the long term.
- Crake 14y ago
  Honestly, I'd really rather the crazy social justice warriors stay on their infernally poorly constructed home base of tumblr. I find them really annoying. (Surf around for 20 minutes there and you'll see what I mean. Age is a "social construct"? Come on. And no, you are not "transabled" or "transethnic" or whatever's in style this week.) I do agree that the rise of programmers as they become rich and enter a new social group has created a very interesting class of people that I believe merits further study. Still, denigrating the efforts of intelligent people who have impacted society in a positive way just doesn't seem like sound strategy to me if you're trying to raise awareness of something.
  - beatpanda 14y ago
    HAHA! THERE IT IS! I've "surfed around" those discussions IRL, and believe me, the ignorance comes on strong from both directions. (By "there it is" I'm talking about the assumption that "the social justice community" is mainly represented by a handful of Tumblogs, and dismissing decades upon decades of serious academic research as "poorly constructed", although you might have just been dissing Tumblr. Not to insult you, it's just a lack of knowledge on both sides.)
001sky 14y ago
The biggest point in this stands out as follows: The gatekeepers of "Merit" rely on <Hueristics> for selection. They do this precisely because they do not know actual merit. Cue: Irony. Applications to top-tier selective Universities, for example, are read for ~20 minutes. The reason they do not know actual merit, is a fundamental issue: Bounded Rationality. The costs (in time, money, and brain damage) associated with "factual" merit testing would be rediculous/uneconomic. We can verify this somewhat orthogonally, by looking at a couple different similar selection processees. eg. Job interviews. Same problem, same solution. 20 min resume screens. Next, we can compare a resource-unconstrained organization: How does it recruit top 1-5%'er? (special forces, test-pilots, and astronauts, etc): long, exhaustive, actual-failure-mode testing. No 20 minute skims. If every job or educational credential was allocated in this manner (and you'd have to assume access to the test and test prep), it would be a more interesting test of "Merit". As a second best, it would be interesting if schools actually failed out their weakest students (ie, proving that only the best had a credential). But that is not how the world works. Merit is, rather, a politically correct (and practically expedient) heuristic for preferential treatment. And that is the main point of this post, I believe. The fair debate, of course, is on the resolution and applicability of filters under various contexts. And if they are inefficient, are they remdiably so?. &tc.
Crake 14y ago
I guess that’s a little mean. Sorry, middle-class white boys. I’m not calling you dumb. I’m calling you soft. That's really inflammatory. I'd be pretty mad if that were directed at me, not inspired to consider the guy's point (if he even had one). I, for one, am grateful for all the magnificent things that hacker culture has brought to society. My life would be much more difficult without them. And actually, one of the things I love most about hacker culture is how open access it is. You do need a computer, but you don't need a $200,000 degree. Compare the cost of a computer and maybe some overdue library fines (minimum needs for becoming a proficient coder--maybe along with some coffee funds) vs. becoming a doctor. A lot of people can't afford 8+ years of expensive education, but a desktop or laptop is much more likely to be within reach. I like the word meritocracy, even if the roots are satirical. As a society, we should help the people who are most suited and most interested in a certain thing become the people best trained in and responsible for working in that field. Anything else is just poor and inefficient allocation of labor capital. Do you want someone who could be a genius physicist working at target? Do you want your starbucks cashier to be performing open heart surgery on you?
imgabe 14y ago
There's a fallacy at work here that is difficult to point out without being accused of bias, but I'll try anyway. It's that in order for a profession to be considered completely fair with regard to race and gender issues, the makeup of people in that profession must exactly reflect the proportion of people in the general population. I would argue that this is a sufficient condition, but not a necessary one. Yes, for example, if it did happen to be the case that 50% of programmers were women and 50% of the general population were women, you could say there was no gender bias. But, I don't think that forcing a 50% ratio of women is the right way to go about eliminating the gender bias in the programming profession. It's also possible that there could be no bias, but the proportions would still not be equivalent to those in the general population for other, unrelated, reasons. I'm not trying to pretend that such biases don't exist. I know they do. It's important that we go about eliminating them. It's also important that we do so by eliminating their causes, not by trying to artificially create scenarios that are coincident with a solution. It's like, a symptom of the measles is having red dots all over your skin, and the proposed solution here is to cover them up with makeup.
- wonderzombie 14y ago
  It's that in order for a profession to be considered completely fair with regard to race and gender issues, the makeup of people in that profession must exactly reflect the proportion of people in the general population. Hmm. No, I don't think that's quite it. I don't think anybody has any illusions about actually achieving that in the near-term, nor anything so simplistic as pass/fail. It'll probably be asymptotic. And, with respect, what you're talking about is so far from reality — like discussing what we'll do with all that extra food when we've solved world hunger — that it's a bit premature (or optimistic, depending on how cynical you are) to discuss exit conditions. Maybe once we're pretty well convinced that racism/sexism doesn't play a dominant role in this, we'll be able to study cultural or socioeconomic factors which influence people's choice of career. But any measurement you try to make now about how or why is going to be dominated by existing bias.
cantastoria 14y ago
Once again we see members of the social justice community promoting "privilege" as the metric for which all achievements should be judged. Developed an amazing search technology? "Well, they're two straight white males... big deal". Revolutionized the mobile devices industry? "He's a straight white male of course it's easy for him". Created the largest social network on Earth? Pfff...all he had to do was show up. The fundamental flaw with privilege theory is that there is no way of discerning where someones supposed privilege ends and where their actual achievements and talent begin. Unless you're gong to simple say "anyone could of done that and the only reason you were able to was because you're a white male" or a "dude" or "boy" as this author seems to be fond of calling men (misandrist much?). In other words we're all equally talented, smart, motivated and lucky and the only differentiator is race, class and gender. Which I think most would agree is absurd. One question I have though is what would be the ideal world for the OP? A system where everyone's race, class, gender and privilege are considered when making hiring decisions and then adjusting applicants qualifications accordingly? Is that really the world we want to live in?
jsnell 14y ago
> A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to others like them or those who aren’t but are willing to play by their rules. So the whole argument seems to be centered around this idea, but it seems horribly flawed. Let's assume for the moment that this theory is true. There really is an implicit homogeneous conspiracy that's in charge of distributing "merit", and they only give it to people who are "like" the existing members. Even if that's true, why in the world would you assume that this conspiracy is defining similarity by skin color or sex? It's very easy for somebody whose self-identity is defined by a certain characteristic to assume that others see the world the same way. That since I define myself primarily by being an X and secondarily by being a Y, others are treating me primarily as a member of groups X and Y. Which is clearly absurd since there are so many ways to categorize people, and since people are perfectly capable of building an identity around each of them. It could well be religion, sexual orientation, nationality, language, politics, age, occupation, school, sports team, a hobby, etc. And many of these categories have fractal complexity. AFAIK, my sense of identity isn't really tied up in race or gender. So why would I as an extremely prejudiced gatekeeper of meritocracy make decisions based on whether somebody is male of female, rather than whether they're a Java programmer (eew) or a CL hacker (yay!).
drcube 14y ago
Somebody decides how to measure merit and certifies who has it. Then you have regulatory capture[1]. That's why you have all the white guys deciding who will be doctors, business executives, lawyers, engineers, etc. And people like people they can relate to, no individual maliciousness or racism needed. It's inherent in the system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

49 points by bretthopper 14y ago

Might be worth changing the submission title ("You keep using that word") to include the word "Meritocracy". It's really opaque right now.

kolektiv 14y ago

"If we met the utopian ideal we toss around in blog posts, we’d still have lots of middle-aged women in this field. We’d have black people. We’d have Asian people – not a smattering, but a majority, cause the world is mostly Asian people." Just had to pick up on this, purely because it's symptomatic of another form of blindness. We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia. There aren't many Asian programmers in companies in my current town because the demographic is not a small scale mirror of the world demographic. I wouldn't expect to find even 8% white guys in a programming office in Manila. That's not to ignore the fact that certain sections of populations are, for whatever reason, dramatically underrepresented in companies in various prominent countries, but throwing around random meaningless soundbites like that doesn't help anyone's argument.

jiggy2011 14y ago
It's also worth noting that female developers seem much more common in asian countries too.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  Better than the US, but not as much as you would think. Diversity hires in my office (in China for an American company) mean female, not even the various ethnic minorities that are a more than a bit underrepresented (I haven't met a Tibetan or Uighur programmer yet, but then we aren't out in West China).
- sopooneo 14y ago
  That is new information for me. Anyone have any insight on why it would be the case?
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I can't find any information to back it up so it's possible I'm wrong. I've noticed this most specifically with Indians though. If you look at Indian outsourcing shops that employ programmers there do tend to be more females than you would find in an equivalent western company. If I had to hazard a guess I think the "nerdy" stigma attached to CS is more of a western thing. Whereas in a growing economy a woman who can go out and compete with men is perhaps viewed as more empowered somehow?
saraid216 14y ago
> We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia. Middle-aged women, on the other hand. Since the article he's responding to is about sexism, that seems a little more salient.
- yahelc 14y ago
  >he's responding She.
seanmcdirmid 14y ago
Look at how many asian computer scientists there are in Seattle and the valley, or even NYC? This just baffles me, because Microsoft (my employer) is very diverse, I would bet that Asians make up a super minority if not a majority of the Redmond office. As for my own office in China, I think we have 1 or 2% Caucasian, maybe less. But to be honest, it doesn't feel that much different from the west coast.

bithive123 14y ago

While I agree that we fall well short of the utopian ideal (rather than the farcical interpretation) there are plenty of other bureaucratic barriers to meritocracies as well. In my experience even the most dedicated, agile people hit organizational limits on complexity or continuity and ultimately have to settle for sub-par network topologies, software stacks, and yes even coworkers. To the extent that we all understand a meritocracy to refer to a system where things are evaluated on their merits, hopefully all agree that it is a fine ideal even if the historical meaning (like 'begging the question') is different.

ktizo 14y ago
As far as I am aware, meritocracy in the original definition is one which is ruled by people on the basis of their paper qualifications, which leads them to fundamentally believe that they are justified in holding power over others, despite the fact that those qualifications are often a consequence of a lot more than just ability. Part of the warning was that meritocracies can become both tautological and blind to corruption as the bits of paper become the main measure of the right to hold power.

ktizo 14y ago

I had this argument with my mum about the word 'meritocracy' a few years ago. She was convinced that it couldn't have originated in a satire, as otherwise politicians wouldn't have adopted it because that would just make them look silly.

ianterrell 14y ago

The inflammatory and rambly tone will likely cause a lot of people to miss what I think is actually a point worth considering: >A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to others like them or those who aren’t but are willing to play by their rules. It's analogous to IQ tests having cultural biases, but people's claiming they measure intelligence objectively. Whoever sets the metric controls the outcome, and whoever is currently in charge sets the metric. I'm not sure it's actionable information, but it seems worth remembering.

sliverstorm 14y ago
It seems to me that in a truly meritocratic and also capitalistic society, the market would decide what the metric is, because public opinion of what constitutes "merit" will be aligned with what produces success in the market.
- pron 14y ago
  But doesn't the market favor people of means? The market already has a metric - financial success - but the market cares not for justice. I think all the author is asking is of us to open our eyes, and do our best to further goals we deem worthy, and let the market do what it likes. We're people, we can act on our beliefs. Why should we be slaves to the blind yet unjust market?
jd 14y ago
> It's analogous to IQ tests having cultural biases, but people's claiming they measure intelligence objectively. No contradiction there. IQ tests clearly aren't completely unbiased and perfectly objective, but they don't have to live up to that impossible standard. Humans have a general intelligence factor G, and an IQ test can approximate it reasonably well. As far as I know IQ tests are the best and most objective way we have of measuring G. If we can't even call our most objective tools objective, then we're quickly entering the territory of total relativism. The idea that the outcome of IQ tests is mostly determined by cultural biases, which is what you suggest, seems extremely unlikely. Cultural aspects will make some demographics score better than other demographics, but smart people within a demographic will surely still outperform their peers. So I'm very skeptical about your claims.

Lazare 14y ago

I had issues with the way the article made the following argument: 1) If computer programming was a meritocracy, we'd only have the best computer programmers in the field. 2) Most computer programmers are white males. 3) Most people are not white males. 4) Ergo, computer programming is not a meritocracy. I trust most people saw the logical flaw - the author is assuming that the ability to program is currently evenly distributed. This is not the case. Pick 20 people at random, off the street in Palo Alto, put a gun to their head, and tell them they must solve FizzBuzz, in ANY language. FizzBuzz is famously hard, but it's not that hard; you've got a good chance of getting a few solutions. Now do the same thing in Bangui (capital and largest city of the Central African Republic). Odds are you'll get a lot fewer. Probably none. This doesn't tell us anything about whether white males are unusually good at programming; it tells us a lot about the availability of computers and programming training in the 179th (out of 187) poorest country in the world. In other words, the central argument of the blog rests on conflating ability with opportunities. Because a black female from the CAR is every bit as capable of being a good programmer as a white male from Brooklyn, it follows that black females ARE just as good as white males, and since there are more black females than white males in the world, if a tech company has more white males than black females, it is clear proof of racism and sexism. Except no; in the world we actually live in, the number of people who have the skills, background, and experience to work at, e.g., Google is quite small, and (sadly) mostly male and a mix of white and asian. And yes, that is due to racism, but it isn't itself racist. But the article seems unable to make that last step, and as such it renders the whole thing rather pointless.

sliverstorm 14y ago
2) Most computer programmers are white Maybe in the USA, but in that context this is not surprising, as 72% of the USA is white. (The male part is a separate discussion) Do you have proof that when considering the entire world, most computer programmers are still white?
001sky 14y ago
If a middle-class white boy who literally never had a job before getting a sweet internship at some cutting edge technology company can eventually, through practice, become a passable computer programmer, anyone can do it. -- This is not of the form you reference, though This is an argument about barriers to skill acquisition, and thus representative expression, not one of either innate or even actual ability or qualification level. Its not "conflating ability with opportunities" anymore than it is saying "there is learning by doing" and since the "doing is not evenly distributed"[1], therefore neither is the "learning".[2] Author is in part arguing that the only "doing" that matters is "branded doing" (ie, doing it for XYZ company or school), as as that is how the next level of doing is rationed, and there is therefore a recursive effect. This may or may not be a great argument, but I think its different than the one you allude to. In particular the low-threshold state and the (implied) recursive mechanism seem to have a more interesting dynamic. ______ [1] Or the option, etc. [2] This depends on (or implies) a certain elemental/relative triviality of the task.

sowhatquestion 14y ago

I'm astonished (in a good way) to see a perspective this radical represented on HN. Considering how the discussions of sexism usually go--i.e., a circle jerk in which we all congratulate ourselves for having slain the dragon of "political correctness"--I can't imagine it will be received well... but in any case, major kudos to the author and submitter.

natrius 14y ago
I was astonished to see it as well, but mainly because the logic was so poor. How is pretending that the attendance at conferences should reflect the world's population a useful addition to this discussion?
mquander 14y ago
I don't get what's radical about the perspective. I think most people would already agree that many demographics get fucked over when it comes to having an opportunity to learn and pursue a career in what they might otherwise wish to. As far as I can tell that is pretty much the only point that the author was making; the rest is just arguing about the semantics of the word "meritocracy."

aidenn0 14y ago

You can have a meritocracy, and still have an unfair demographic skew. Given a black box in which the inputs are infants and the outputs are people applying for software jobs, if the black-box is unfair, then even if you have a perfect evaluation function in your interviewing process, you will be skewed to the input of the black box. All that being said, of course we have an imperfect evaluation function. And it is almost certainly imperfect in ways that favor white males. However, given the pool of applicants, I think the bigger factor is the black box. As an example, the ratio of men to women at my company is similar to the ratio of men to women in my college computer science classes. If you shift the black box back a bit and you have inputs being babies and outputs being high-school graduates, you will see a huge skew still, and this is part of the reason for affirmative action at the HS level. I propose that it is easier to give unfair advantages to minorities at the college level than it is to fix the unfair disadvantages before that level. This is why I support affirmative action.

Crake 14y ago
I propose that it is easier to give unfair advantages to minorities at the college level than it is to fix the unfair disadvantages before that level. This is why I support affirmative action. This is interesting, because it really does get down to the core of the argument: how do we improve the academic success of minorities? Unfortunately, letting someone who can't do calculus into, say, Stanford, is not going to fix the fact that they will be WAY behind their peers. The psychological damage from this alone is tremendous. In fact, I believe there are some interesting studies done on this "mismatch" phenomenon, since racial minorities actually have a higher interest level in STEM careers, but are put at a disadvantage and become less likely to graduate as one due to being AA-ed into a student body where their capabilities are WAY below the mean of their classmates. This leads to an extremely high dropout rate which could have been avoided if they'd gone to a school that better suited their abilities. Instead, thanks to AA, the dropout rate for minorities in STEM departments is ridiculously high, and talented people who maybe just needed a less intense curriculum to adjust to instead end up becoming history or gender or racial studies majors or whatever major you can 4.0 in just for having a pulse. Personally, whether it's harder or easier to do it at the pre-college level, I think it far wiser to leave the college admissions race-blind (to prevent discrimination) and focus on fixing the broken infrastructure that is failing our socioeconomically disadvantaged students. That kid going to Stanford will do much better if he has AP calculus available at his high school, instead of just getting AA-ed in with an inferior skillset (which may or may not be their fault). We want people to be able to succeed, not set them up for failure. As a bonus, most people are fine with the idea of giving others an equal shot, but not so fine with the idea of race based discrimination. AA makes other groups resentful and suspicious of the AA-ed party, but helping people have equal access to preparation for college? Who's going to argue against that? The best way to end discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

evincarofautumn 14y ago

Even if the word has its origins in satire, a characteristic feature of human language is that it changes over time. The word “meritocracy” has been repurposed, and is now a legitimate ideal. The problem with the word is twofold: first, thinking that you live in a meritocratic society when you don’t, and second, thinking that merit is objectively measurable. The author does touch on both points, but I think it benefits from reframing. Fact is, “programming” means a lot of different things to different people, and most of it is easy enough that anyone could do it if they wanted to, and were given the opportunity to learn. The last point is key, because most people don’t get the chance to learn about programming, whether it’s not offered them, or they simply don’t see it as the last word in career choices. If you’d rather take photographs or make sushi, you don’t need to be a programmer. If you’re from a poor country where there aren’t any computers available, you’ve got other things on your mind. I strive to be at the top of my field; I’m sure many on HN feel the same way. But people with that desire form a vanishingly small fraction of the already small fraction of people who program. And people who will succeed in that accomplishment form an infinitesimally small proportion of that. Just have perspective.

butterfi 14y ago
There is truthiness to what you say, thank you for embiggening the conversation.

scarmig 14y ago

The great irony is that many people trumpeting the value of meritocracy are otherwise very well-acquainted with Hayekian arguments and public choice. Having a true meritocracy is impossible if you take public choice and Hayek seriously. We don't have all the knowledge necessary to set up a truly objective and universal system for sifting the chaft from the wheat, or even an idea of how to frame that knowledge. And even if we did have that ability, the people and institutions that the meritocracy is embedded in would twist that meritocracy and pervert its original aims. It's obvious when stated, but if you suggest that patriarchy or white supremacy might be undermining some imagined meritocracy, you're some kind of bitter idiot who is just looking for reason to complain.

Kilimanjaro 14y ago

Those who despise meritocracy simply lack, well, intelligence to understand it. Merit is not about IQ, merit is about knowledge and experience in a field. A cook can't build a bridge, a carpenter can't rule a kingdom, a ballet dancer can't run wall street, an altar boy can't run the vatican. We can't know it all, so we specialize, and the more we specialize the more valuable we are in that particular field. So if you want to know about quantum mechanics you ask Stephen Hawking not Emeril Lagasse, but if you want to know about beef stew you know who's the right man. Now guess who would be the perfect fit for the Newton's Chair and who for the Food Network's primetime show? That's meritocracy, it's not about IQ, it's about merits, you earn them, you can't take them or buy them, you just fucking earn them with sweat and tears.

ynniv 14y ago

I'm not sure why this person decided to redefine the essence of meritocracy to mean the biased notion of evaluated merit that keeps the powerful in power. This whole rant falls apart if you assume an honest desire to promote based on merit, which is often what people mean when they claim to be meritocratic. Granted they don't execute it properly, and aren't fully honest when they say that they value it, but lets get one thing straight: meritocracy is not "a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it". This rant is without base.

kome 14y ago
> I'm not sure why this person decided to redefine the essence of meritocracy Because the very word "meritocracy" was invented to describe an Orwellian society dystopia were "merit" was the only metric for value. He just use the original definition.
- ynniv 14y ago
  It's a niche definition that was long since co-opted to describe how people should be promoted. It now roughly means selection based on some manner of successful execution, as opposed to personality, or personal relation. The problem with using "the original definition", is that the rant is now against something that was not the original conversation. Which is fine if the author wants to rant about cronyism ("the original definition"), but not about selection based on observable skill or success (what everyone is talking about lately).
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    Except that the original definition fits the current situation in IT very well.
Maascamp 14y ago
The question is, who and what defines merit in a meritocracy? The article claims that those already in power do and thus it is they that control who gets to move up the ladder.

guylhem 14y ago

The article seems full of hatred against "white men". A group of people, for some reason, has found it worth its time to do some activity. This group then trains more, invest more time, and compounding interests makes them better. Other groups see their success and feel like they don't belong. It's human - nothing mean in it. Why is Christophe Lemaitre one of the only decent white sprinters? Because. Why are boys dropping out more and more while girls study? Because. Why are there mostly asian in advanced classes, so much that some university (by their own words) do now discriminate against them in admissions? Because. Why are there mostly white men in the IT industry? Well - I guess you can now answer yourself. There is no conspiracy (except maybe for the universities preferring people from some ethnicities while other people are more qualified) - it's just a bunch of self maintaining tendency. Something interesting - look at the posts on 9gag to try to get the current untold opinions - apparently some white people are developing an inferiority complex on math and sciences when they have asian classmates. Self exclusion, once again. So drop the hatred and see the meritocracy. It's all around us. For the first time in history, with a very low amount of capital and education, a human being can create a profitable company. You should be celebrating such an achievement, not bashing meritocracy. EDIT: Downvote as much as you want, but I'd be interested to know for which reason exactly Occam razor is not being applied here

roguecoder 14y ago
"Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that." All of those social dynamics are explainable. Why are sprinters seldom White? Because fast people in Western cultures participate in the more-lucrative and high-status team sports instead. Why are boys dropping out? Well, African-American boys are punished more harshly for the same behavior, more likely to be diagnosed as learning-disabled and tracked out of regular classrooms, less likely to have their father at home due in large part to racist enforcement and prison terms. White boys aren't dropping out: they are under-performing because they don't have to work as hard to succeed as girls. Why are there mostly white men in the IT industry? I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Boys-Take-Over/dp/0262050935 http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Boys-Take-Over/dp/0262050... It answers your question and it has nothing to do with who the best programmers are. If you can't explain something, maybe you should do more research.

natrius 14y ago

"What a meritocracy really protects us from is challenge." Are you suggesting that we not choose who to work with by our assessments of their talent? I think I'll pass. Let us know how your business works out with that strategy. This is an absurd misdiagnosis of the cause of underrepresentation in technology. Every computer science class I've been in has had a similar ratio of genders and ethnicities as the industry does. It's not that we're not finding talented female and minority developers; it's that there are so few of them to begin with. Even if changing the way we evaluate talent were a good idea, it wouldn't change the makeup of the industry.

amplitwist 14y ago

If the PC police could do Fermi problems, they wouldn't be polluting my news feed with inane conspiracy theories. http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm

Crake 14y ago
Honestly, there are so many studies with conflicting results that I feel like it's hard to tell to what extent there may or may not be a sex based difference in math aptitude. However, I feel like we can't throw out the possibility of it having an effect just because it's politically incorrect. It's bad science to assume you know the results before even doing the experiment. Sex based differences (and/or similarities) are really fascinating to me. I wish they weren't so politicized.
- amplitwist 14y ago
  There's another article that makes an attempt to disentangle nature and nurture in the sex gap at http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm . Like I mentioned earlier, these articles are a few steps above Fermi problems; there are ways to calculate these things more accurately. However, these calculations should agree with the estimates, and the estimates indicate a significant genetic gender gap.

beatpanda 14y ago

Terribly, terribly sorry for the meta-comment, but I have to say, it's been thrilling lately to watch the intersection of two bubbles that are usually totally isolated — the "social justice" community and the "hacker" community — and to see the naivetes of both groups exposed, especially because both groups are composed of people who usually take themselves and their own intelligence very seriously. I work as a programmer, but my social circle is mostly semi-luddite radicals and hippies. Somebody got chocolate in my peanut butter. Why this is happening is intensely interesting to me. Programmers have emerged as a highly visible priveleged social group, whose actions have huge and often unexamined social consequences. One example is the rising cost of living in San Francisco. For a group that isn't used to considering itself "priveleged" in the usual sense, it must be disorienting to suddenly be scrutinized in this way. I wonder what the response from "hackers" will look like over the long term.

Crake 14y ago
Honestly, I'd really rather the crazy social justice warriors stay on their infernally poorly constructed home base of tumblr. I find them really annoying. (Surf around for 20 minutes there and you'll see what I mean. Age is a "social construct"? Come on. And no, you are not "transabled" or "transethnic" or whatever's in style this week.) I do agree that the rise of programmers as they become rich and enter a new social group has created a very interesting class of people that I believe merits further study. Still, denigrating the efforts of intelligent people who have impacted society in a positive way just doesn't seem like sound strategy to me if you're trying to raise awareness of something.
- beatpanda 14y ago
  HAHA! THERE IT IS! I've "surfed around" those discussions IRL, and believe me, the ignorance comes on strong from both directions. (By "there it is" I'm talking about the assumption that "the social justice community" is mainly represented by a handful of Tumblogs, and dismissing decades upon decades of serious academic research as "poorly constructed", although you might have just been dissing Tumblr. Not to insult you, it's just a lack of knowledge on both sides.)

001sky 14y ago

The biggest point in this stands out as follows: The gatekeepers of "Merit" rely on <Hueristics> for selection. They do this precisely because they do not know actual merit. Cue: Irony. Applications to top-tier selective Universities, for example, are read for ~20 minutes. The reason they do not know actual merit, is a fundamental issue: Bounded Rationality. The costs (in time, money, and brain damage) associated with "factual" merit testing would be rediculous/uneconomic. We can verify this somewhat orthogonally, by looking at a couple different similar selection processees. eg. Job interviews. Same problem, same solution. 20 min resume screens. Next, we can compare a resource-unconstrained organization: How does it recruit top 1-5%'er? (special forces, test-pilots, and astronauts, etc): long, exhaustive, actual-failure-mode testing. No 20 minute skims. If every job or educational credential was allocated in this manner (and you'd have to assume access to the test and test prep), it would be a more interesting test of "Merit". As a second best, it would be interesting if schools actually failed out their weakest students (ie, proving that only the best had a credential). But that is not how the world works. Merit is, rather, a politically correct (and practically expedient) heuristic for preferential treatment. And that is the main point of this post, I believe. The fair debate, of course, is on the resolution and applicability of filters under various contexts. And if they are inefficient, are they remdiably so?. &tc.

Crake 14y ago

I guess that’s a little mean. Sorry, middle-class white boys. I’m not calling you dumb. I’m calling you soft. That's really inflammatory. I'd be pretty mad if that were directed at me, not inspired to consider the guy's point (if he even had one). I, for one, am grateful for all the magnificent things that hacker culture has brought to society. My life would be much more difficult without them. And actually, one of the things I love most about hacker culture is how open access it is. You do need a computer, but you don't need a $200,000 degree. Compare the cost of a computer and maybe some overdue library fines (minimum needs for becoming a proficient coder--maybe along with some coffee funds) vs. becoming a doctor. A lot of people can't afford 8+ years of expensive education, but a desktop or laptop is much more likely to be within reach. I like the word meritocracy, even if the roots are satirical. As a society, we should help the people who are most suited and most interested in a certain thing become the people best trained in and responsible for working in that field. Anything else is just poor and inefficient allocation of labor capital. Do you want someone who could be a genius physicist working at target? Do you want your starbucks cashier to be performing open heart surgery on you?

imgabe 14y ago

There's a fallacy at work here that is difficult to point out without being accused of bias, but I'll try anyway. It's that in order for a profession to be considered completely fair with regard to race and gender issues, the makeup of people in that profession must exactly reflect the proportion of people in the general population. I would argue that this is a sufficient condition, but not a necessary one. Yes, for example, if it did happen to be the case that 50% of programmers were women and 50% of the general population were women, you could say there was no gender bias. But, I don't think that forcing a 50% ratio of women is the right way to go about eliminating the gender bias in the programming profession. It's also possible that there could be no bias, but the proportions would still not be equivalent to those in the general population for other, unrelated, reasons. I'm not trying to pretend that such biases don't exist. I know they do. It's important that we go about eliminating them. It's also important that we do so by eliminating their causes, not by trying to artificially create scenarios that are coincident with a solution. It's like, a symptom of the measles is having red dots all over your skin, and the proposed solution here is to cover them up with makeup.

wonderzombie 14y ago
It's that in order for a profession to be considered completely fair with regard to race and gender issues, the makeup of people in that profession must exactly reflect the proportion of people in the general population. Hmm. No, I don't think that's quite it. I don't think anybody has any illusions about actually achieving that in the near-term, nor anything so simplistic as pass/fail. It'll probably be asymptotic. And, with respect, what you're talking about is so far from reality — like discussing what we'll do with all that extra food when we've solved world hunger — that it's a bit premature (or optimistic, depending on how cynical you are) to discuss exit conditions. Maybe once we're pretty well convinced that racism/sexism doesn't play a dominant role in this, we'll be able to study cultural or socioeconomic factors which influence people's choice of career. But any measurement you try to make now about how or why is going to be dominated by existing bias.

cantastoria 14y ago

Once again we see members of the social justice community promoting "privilege" as the metric for which all achievements should be judged. Developed an amazing search technology? "Well, they're two straight white males... big deal". Revolutionized the mobile devices industry? "He's a straight white male of course it's easy for him". Created the largest social network on Earth? Pfff...all he had to do was show up. The fundamental flaw with privilege theory is that there is no way of discerning where someones supposed privilege ends and where their actual achievements and talent begin. Unless you're gong to simple say "anyone could of done that and the only reason you were able to was because you're a white male" or a "dude" or "boy" as this author seems to be fond of calling men (misandrist much?). In other words we're all equally talented, smart, motivated and lucky and the only differentiator is race, class and gender. Which I think most would agree is absurd. One question I have though is what would be the ideal world for the OP? A system where everyone's race, class, gender and privilege are considered when making hiring decisions and then adjusting applicants qualifications accordingly? Is that really the world we want to live in?

jsnell 14y ago

> A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to others like them or those who aren’t but are willing to play by their rules. So the whole argument seems to be centered around this idea, but it seems horribly flawed. Let's assume for the moment that this theory is true. There really is an implicit homogeneous conspiracy that's in charge of distributing "merit", and they only give it to people who are "like" the existing members. Even if that's true, why in the world would you assume that this conspiracy is defining similarity by skin color or sex? It's very easy for somebody whose self-identity is defined by a certain characteristic to assume that others see the world the same way. That since I define myself primarily by being an X and secondarily by being a Y, others are treating me primarily as a member of groups X and Y. Which is clearly absurd since there are so many ways to categorize people, and since people are perfectly capable of building an identity around each of them. It could well be religion, sexual orientation, nationality, language, politics, age, occupation, school, sports team, a hobby, etc. And many of these categories have fractal complexity. AFAIK, my sense of identity isn't really tied up in race or gender. So why would I as an extremely prejudiced gatekeeper of meritocracy make decisions based on whether somebody is male of female, rather than whether they're a Java programmer (eew) or a CL hacker (yay!).

drcube 14y ago

Somebody decides how to measure merit and certifies who has it. Then you have regulatory capture[1]. That's why you have all the white guys deciding who will be doctors, business executives, lawyers, engineers, etc. And people like people they can relate to, no individual maliciousness or racism needed. It's inherent in the system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture