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Isn't the universe by default a meritocracy? Millions of years of evolution proves this... And society can either have policies that work against this default m

Isn't the universe by default a meritocracy? Millions of years of evolution proves this... And society can either have policies that work against this default meritocracy or with it to speed it up.

Evbn 14y ago
Define "merit" and whether such a thing is desirable to me. I don't have much love for a cockroach's merit.
- chrischen 14y ago
  I define merit as deserving to live. Because you can't cheat the universe, if you live then by definition you have merit. You can't create merit, it already is. You can only align yourself with merit.
  - ucee054 14y ago
    No, merit is deserving to live tomorrow when conditions change. Your peacock with the giant butt-feathers from the other post is not meritorious but lucky that the butt-feather-eating predator hasn't shown up yet. And your peahen that chooses to mate with the peacock with the giant butt-feathers, rather than the one that can fight off predators, is stupid. Take a look around and you'll see the universe is not ruled by meritocracy but by (often self-perpetuating) stupidity.
    - chrischen 14y ago
      > Your peacock with the giant butt-feathers from the other post is not meritorious but lucky that the butt-feather-eating predator hasn't shown up yet. I never said it was meritorious. In fact, I'm saying the opposite. It's probably going to die off because it doesn't deserve to live, assuming giant butt feathers have no real purpose. > And your peahen that chooses to mate with the peacock with the giant butt-feathers, rather than the one that can fight off predators, is stupid. Exactly. The stupid, useless, inane, will die off and be selected out of existence eventually. > Take a look around and you'll see the universe is not ruled by meritocracy but by (often self-perpetuating) stupidity. If this were true, society would be going backwards. This is not true though. Evolution was my example because of this. The more deserving to live will always have more probability of living, otherwise evolution wouldn't work. Sure stupidity exists, but only because a perfectly meritocratic society is quixotic. The universe is non-determistic, which means even if humans could be perfectly meritocratic, it wouldn't be perfectly meritocratic. And if the stupid around you seem to have more probability of perpetuating... then perhaps you should redefine who and what is stupid?
      - ucee054 14y ago
        You need to watch Idiocracy
        chrischen 14y ago
        That's just a movie. Actual evidence has shown that IQs have increased over time. And if in fact people are getting dumber, then there must be something about that which makes it... preferable, which means you either have to re-evaluate what dumb means or open your mind to the fact that maybe what you or I think is "smart" might not be good or desirable.
raganwald 14y ago
One humbling thing I try to remember, is that before an asteroid struck the Earth 65 million years ago, mammals were no bigger than a field mouse and our warm-bloodedness was specialized for hunting insects at night. Then this lucky strike caused a huge climate change, and those dinosaurs that hand't evolved warm feathers died off, and we were in the right place at the right time. The day before the asteroid strike, we had zero merit. Now, this is a narrative with many factual errors, but I like to remind myself that we happen to have been doing well for the last 100,000 years or so, but it's the blink of an eye and who knows what will happen next?
- chrischen 14y ago
  I didn't necessarily mean millions of years of evolution for humans (have we even been around for that long?). I meant evolution (the concept) as evidence that only those who deserve to live, live. Merit is a fundamental rule of the universe and that you have to be meritocratic. Anything but meritocracy is foolish and will ensure your demise and irrelevance. It's not one of many strategies you can use, it's the only strategy. It is a practice fundamental to survival just like breathing or procreating or being fit. Because it's fundamental, meritocracy should call for both minimizing false positives and negatives, as both work towards increasing survivability.
jacques_chester 14y ago
You've just made it a circular argument. Why is it a meritocracy? Because the meritorious survive. Why did the meritorious survive? Because it's a meritocracy. Value and virtue are not the same thing, is the problem.
- chrischen 14y ago
  > Why did the meritorious survive? Because it's a meritocracy. No, the meritorious survive because you can't cheat the universe. I'm saying you can't make the world meritocratic because it already is and it's not changeable. You can only align yourself with how the world works so you don't get screwed. For example, let's say I'm an employer and I decide to hire the least competent candidate for a new job. I, as the employer, cannot escape the consequences of this action and most likely I will pay for it in some form like the company failing or me losing my job. The world is still meritocratic despite my inane decision making. This forces me out of the equation and eventually my successor will have to do a better job hiring or else face the same fate of irrelevance as I. Eventually, all that's left is an employer who does pick candidates based on merit. But if this is true, the employer didn't really create a meritocracy, but merely aligned itself with the equilibrium state of the universe. This is just a way of looking at what meritocracy means, and it frames it as a purely practical construct necessary for survival.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    My point is that you're taking what is and then applying the label "meritocracy" to it. But the world itself has no moral content, it's humans who create and apply it. Meritocracy is essentially a statement that people are rewarded according to their merits, whatever those might be. It carries baggage in the form of an unstated moral component riding shotgun. If you ask people whether "meritocracy" is the same as "natural selection", they will tend not to agree, because merit implies a degree of human agency that is more than merely current emergent phenomena. The confusion of value and virtue, or natural selection and meritocracy, causes all sorts of trouble. The philosophers have had long beard-stroking discussions about all this under the heading of "teleology".
EthanHeilman 14y ago
1. As by the peacock, "fitness" is not the same as our everyday use of fitness (certainly a bird that spends most of it's energy on giant butt feathers is not fit in the traditional sense, but does have a sexually selective advantage) and is certainly not meritocratic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peafowl#Evolution_and_sexual_selection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peafowl#Evolution_and_sexual_se... 2. Consider the tragedies of the commons that often occur in nature. It is the structural arrangement of the system or colony which is disastrous but any individual organism within that system. http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1713/version/1 http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1713/version/1
- chrischen 14y ago
  1) If sexual preferences can be genetically predisposed or even predetermined, then sexual preferences can be selected for through evolution as well. This means that if giant butt feathers are destructive towards actual survival, then all the female peacocks sexually selecting for this otherwise useless trait are disadvantaging their offspring and every peacock in on this giant butt feather thing will be disadvantaged. For example, let's introduce a new predator that's also attracted to giant butt feathers. It doesn't matter how sexually attractive those giant butt feathers are, the offspring of giant butt feather peacocks will be at a survival disadvantage and will be selected out of the gene pool. The ones remaining are the female peacocks who don't like giant butt feathers, and their offspring (since they're more likely to not produce giant butt feathers).
  - UnFleshedOne 14y ago
    But until that butt-feather-loving predator comes along, the definition of merit continues to be how big a feather you have sticking out of your butt. It is just that the definitions change once in a while. Nothing bad about that, but nothing good either.
    - chrischen 14y ago
      Yes the definition is continuously changing. A meritocratic society must still constantly issue its merit accordingly though.

Isn't the universe by default a meritocracy? Millions of years of evolution proves this... And society can either have policies that work against this default meritocracy or with it to speed it up.

Evbn 14y ago

Define "merit" and whether such a thing is desirable to me. I don't have much love for a cockroach's merit.

chrischen 14y ago
I define merit as deserving to live. Because you can't cheat the universe, if you live then by definition you have merit. You can't create merit, it already is. You can only align yourself with merit.
- ucee054 14y ago
  No, merit is deserving to live tomorrow when conditions change. Your peacock with the giant butt-feathers from the other post is not meritorious but lucky that the butt-feather-eating predator hasn't shown up yet. And your peahen that chooses to mate with the peacock with the giant butt-feathers, rather than the one that can fight off predators, is stupid. Take a look around and you'll see the universe is not ruled by meritocracy but by (often self-perpetuating) stupidity.
  - chrischen 14y ago
    > Your peacock with the giant butt-feathers from the other post is not meritorious but lucky that the butt-feather-eating predator hasn't shown up yet. I never said it was meritorious. In fact, I'm saying the opposite. It's probably going to die off because it doesn't deserve to live, assuming giant butt feathers have no real purpose. > And your peahen that chooses to mate with the peacock with the giant butt-feathers, rather than the one that can fight off predators, is stupid. Exactly. The stupid, useless, inane, will die off and be selected out of existence eventually. > Take a look around and you'll see the universe is not ruled by meritocracy but by (often self-perpetuating) stupidity. If this were true, society would be going backwards. This is not true though. Evolution was my example because of this. The more deserving to live will always have more probability of living, otherwise evolution wouldn't work. Sure stupidity exists, but only because a perfectly meritocratic society is quixotic. The universe is non-determistic, which means even if humans could be perfectly meritocratic, it wouldn't be perfectly meritocratic. And if the stupid around you seem to have more probability of perpetuating... then perhaps you should redefine who and what is stupid?
    - ucee054 14y ago
      You need to watch Idiocracy
      - chrischen 14y ago
        That's just a movie. Actual evidence has shown that IQs have increased over time. And if in fact people are getting dumber, then there must be something about that which makes it... preferable, which means you either have to re-evaluate what dumb means or open your mind to the fact that maybe what you or I think is "smart" might not be good or desirable.

raganwald 14y ago

One humbling thing I try to remember, is that before an asteroid struck the Earth 65 million years ago, mammals were no bigger than a field mouse and our warm-bloodedness was specialized for hunting insects at night. Then this lucky strike caused a huge climate change, and those dinosaurs that hand't evolved warm feathers died off, and we were in the right place at the right time. The day before the asteroid strike, we had zero merit. Now, this is a narrative with many factual errors, but I like to remind myself that we happen to have been doing well for the last 100,000 years or so, but it's the blink of an eye and who knows what will happen next?

chrischen 14y ago
I didn't necessarily mean millions of years of evolution for humans (have we even been around for that long?). I meant evolution (the concept) as evidence that only those who deserve to live, live. Merit is a fundamental rule of the universe and that you have to be meritocratic. Anything but meritocracy is foolish and will ensure your demise and irrelevance. It's not one of many strategies you can use, it's the only strategy. It is a practice fundamental to survival just like breathing or procreating or being fit. Because it's fundamental, meritocracy should call for both minimizing false positives and negatives, as both work towards increasing survivability.

jacques_chester 14y ago

You've just made it a circular argument. Why is it a meritocracy? Because the meritorious survive. Why did the meritorious survive? Because it's a meritocracy. Value and virtue are not the same thing, is the problem.

chrischen 14y ago
> Why did the meritorious survive? Because it's a meritocracy. No, the meritorious survive because you can't cheat the universe. I'm saying you can't make the world meritocratic because it already is and it's not changeable. You can only align yourself with how the world works so you don't get screwed. For example, let's say I'm an employer and I decide to hire the least competent candidate for a new job. I, as the employer, cannot escape the consequences of this action and most likely I will pay for it in some form like the company failing or me losing my job. The world is still meritocratic despite my inane decision making. This forces me out of the equation and eventually my successor will have to do a better job hiring or else face the same fate of irrelevance as I. Eventually, all that's left is an employer who does pick candidates based on merit. But if this is true, the employer didn't really create a meritocracy, but merely aligned itself with the equilibrium state of the universe. This is just a way of looking at what meritocracy means, and it frames it as a purely practical construct necessary for survival.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  My point is that you're taking what is and then applying the label "meritocracy" to it. But the world itself has no moral content, it's humans who create and apply it. Meritocracy is essentially a statement that people are rewarded according to their merits, whatever those might be. It carries baggage in the form of an unstated moral component riding shotgun. If you ask people whether "meritocracy" is the same as "natural selection", they will tend not to agree, because merit implies a degree of human agency that is more than merely current emergent phenomena. The confusion of value and virtue, or natural selection and meritocracy, causes all sorts of trouble. The philosophers have had long beard-stroking discussions about all this under the heading of "teleology".

EthanHeilman 14y ago

1. As by the peacock, "fitness" is not the same as our everyday use of fitness (certainly a bird that spends most of it's energy on giant butt feathers is not fit in the traditional sense, but does have a sexually selective advantage) and is certainly not meritocratic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peafowl#Evolution_and_sexual_selection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peafowl#Evolution_and_sexual_se... 2. Consider the tragedies of the commons that often occur in nature. It is the structural arrangement of the system or colony which is disastrous but any individual organism within that system. http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1713/version/1 http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1713/version/1

chrischen 14y ago
1) If sexual preferences can be genetically predisposed or even predetermined, then sexual preferences can be selected for through evolution as well. This means that if giant butt feathers are destructive towards actual survival, then all the female peacocks sexually selecting for this otherwise useless trait are disadvantaging their offspring and every peacock in on this giant butt feather thing will be disadvantaged. For example, let's introduce a new predator that's also attracted to giant butt feathers. It doesn't matter how sexually attractive those giant butt feathers are, the offspring of giant butt feather peacocks will be at a survival disadvantage and will be selected out of the gene pool. The ones remaining are the female peacocks who don't like giant butt feathers, and their offspring (since they're more likely to not produce giant butt feathers).
- UnFleshedOne 14y ago
  But until that butt-feather-loving predator comes along, the definition of merit continues to be how big a feather you have sticking out of your butt. It is just that the definitions change once in a while. Nothing bad about that, but nothing good either.
  - chrischen 14y ago
    Yes the definition is continuously changing. A meritocratic society must still constantly issue its merit accordingly though.