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> But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist Not at all. There is little doubt that 'merit' defined as an capability or skill of an

by sago 12y ago

> But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist Not at all. There is little doubt that 'merit' defined as an capability or skill of an individual is not uniform. The point is that 'merit' is systemically produced. It is a function of money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors. Another way to phrase this is 'privilege', though that word is considered some kind of anathema by people who don't like to see their elevated status and capabilities as somehow a function of their environment. Absolutely Asian males are more privileged in terms of their ability to access tech jobs. Immigrant populations can have privileges in this way. Hindu families that are second or third generation immigrants to the UK from the Indian subcontinent are over-represented in medicine, for example. Is that because Indian people just make better doctors? Or is it because children of Indian descent are cultured and supported and mentored into medicine? Anyone who actually understands the last 20 years of social science, far from 'stopping intellectual discussion' are more likely to recognize that you've simply not found out or understood the issue. Which can, of course, be a sign of racism or sexism, if one is willingly ignorant. But can just be naivete or a Dunning Kruger effect.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
If you want to define "privilege" as pretty much anything which causes merit to be non-uniformly distributed, then the fact that Asian males are overrepresented due to privilege is tautologically true. Similarly, water is wet. All you've really said is "I assign the word 'privilege' to whatever the cause is for Asian males performing well in tech." That's not really relevant to this discussion. [edit: Sago, I think you've gotten off track. hackeruser was using the term "privilege" differently than you, treating it somewhat analogously to wealth and power and orthogonal to merit. When you use the word to describe anything that might cause disparities in merit, you are describing something far different than him.]
- sago 12y ago
  Nope, I've pointed out that the way you are using 'merit' overlaps with the way social scientists use the term 'privilege'. Change the word 'privilege' for 'boondoggle', it doesn't matter, the point still stands. But as I pointed out, the use of the word 'privilege' is often such anathema that it prevents certain groups of people listening to the point, instead having them focus on the word.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    To demonstrate that it's not a tautology, can you describe a world in which a group is overrepresented but not privileged? If you can't construct such a scenario, then by definition it is a tautology.
    - sago 12y ago
      Why are you so exorcised by the word privilege? My point was nothing to do with what you seem to have a problem with. My point was that what is seen as 'merit' is a function of a whole bunch of other factors, which means it isn't somehow a racists discussion stopping thing to point out that Asian men have higher levels of 'merit' (when merit is defined in the way I understood it to be in the post I was responding to). My point in using 'privilege' is to say that the idea of 'merit' overlaps with 'privilege' in the ways I described, and that the people the OP might thing of as wanting to 'stop' the discussion, do, in fact, have this discussion a lot, though they'd use 'privilege' instead to mean those things, because that is the term of art. You seem to have a problem with a word. Call it 'probabilistic causes of non-equal representation', then. Point out there are many such causes, and some of them are hardly things we could easily change (there are very few people with very low IQ in top tech jobs, so higher IQ is a 'privilege'). Your reaction to the word, rather than the point, seems rather ideological. Tautology is not a synonym for synonym. And the equation you accuse me of making is a strawman, my point was to unpack merit, not to define privilege. I'm sorry if it was unclear.
      - yummyfajitas 12y ago
        I don't know why you think I'm "exorcised" by a word. I'm simply pointing out that you are using a completely different definition of it than myself and hackeruser, and as a result your posts are completely missing the point. If privilege means "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", then that's a very broad definition and every non-deterministic unequal representation is caused by privilege. But you were responding to a discussion where we were using "privilege" to mean something along the lines of "social biases unfairly favoring one group". By definition, Asian males have 8x the "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation". It seems highly unlikely that they have 8x the "social biases unfairly favoring one group", which is what hackeruser and myself were actually discussing. You also don't seem to be using this definition consistently. For example, if I take this comment of yours and substitute this definition in, it makes no sense: "When you find achievement highly correlated with a cultural group, however, it is pretty likely to be a function of probabilistic causes of non-equal representation. The alternative hypothesis is that, for example, Jews are just innately better at science." I'm beginning to think you are attempting a Motte and Bailey: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...
- sago 12y ago
  Reply to your edit, I read hackeruser as using the term informally, to mean 'a good thing someone possesses', I was using it in the way it is normally used in discussions of equality, racism, sexism, and so on. I didn't actually note hackeruser's use of the term, so I wasn't responding to that. My point, I think, stands alone. It doesn't become a tautology, it has a specific meaning, and one important point is that when folks say 'merit' they are often bundling a bunch of stuff in there which is problematic and discriminatory. Merit sounds like a good thing. (Who wouldn't want to be Pro-Life, right?) But there are structural oppressions within it that deserve to be challenged.
- marcus_holmes 12y ago
  hang on, but where are you drawing the lines between "merit due to innate skill/aptitude" and "merit due to favourable environmental factors"? Because similarly if you define merit as "anything that causes one person to do better in the tech industry than another" then the tech industry is tautologically a meritocracy - water is wet. Until and unless we can unpack merit and privilege in the manner that Sago is attempting then we will continue to misunderstand our problem and continue to let the best programmers become nurses because of that misunderstanding.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    I'm defining "merit" as the ability to get the job done and make the company money. For example, I'm trying to hire a data scientist/data oriented generalist. Knowledge of statistics and aptitude for learning contributes to merit, as does the ability to write scalable and deployable code. Sex appeal does not contribute to merit, nor does being a nerdy-but-attractive hipster. Does that clarify? Note that Sago's definition, "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", quite deliberately doesn't unpack anything. All it does is apply the label "privilege" to the cause, whether that cause is explicit deliberate racism (to take one extreme) or completely biological factors with entirely unbiased decisions (to take another).
    - sago 12y ago
      You do like ignoring that I actually gave a list, don't you: money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors (note, many was not intended to be exclusive) that you continue to think my point was to apply the label "privilege" seems obtuse, bordering on the willfully ignorant, since I've explicitly said that was not the point at all, and that the label is irrelevant.
kbenson 12y ago
The point is that 'merit' is systemically produced. It is a function of money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, and many other factors. Another way to phrase this is 'privilege', though that word is considered some kind of anathema by people who don't like to see their elevated status and capabilities as somehow a function of their environment. I don't think anyone is really arguing that privilege affects merit, but to say that what makes up merit can be called privilege is to say that they are one and the same, which they are note. Of course access to resources to grow whatever talent you have, and allow you to make the most of your ambition will affect your merit, but to discount talent and ambition entirely by making the conversation entirely about privilege is to error in the other direction. In modern western societies we attempt to smooth the privilege curve through socializing some aspects of it, such as education, and to differing degrees, health. While obviously not perfect, I would argue that we at least attempt to mitigate the problem by supplementing the biggest differentiators in merit that are based on privilege. Beyond that, what do you suggest? I don't think it's possible to eliminate the benefit of privilege, entire nations have gone to war to try, and the result was not what what I would call a success by that criteria. Meritocracy has the benefit of shepherding those most capable and qualified into the positions where they can do the most. There may be a system better for the individual and society, but I would need quite a bit of info and evidence before I endorsed it. >> But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist "creep" who can't get laid, and intellectual discussion stops. > Anyone who actually understands the last 20 years of social science, far from 'stopping intellectual discussion' are more likely to recognize that you've simply not found out or understood the issue. Which can, of course, be a sin of racism or sexism, if one is willingly ignorant. But can just be naivete or a Dunning Kruger effect. Did you really just do that? Did you just respond to someone complaining about how the conversation eventually degrades into the opposition tossing out labels instead of arguments by stating he's either racist, sexist or ignorant?
- sago 12y ago
  Right. Be careful of making semantic arguments about what words 'really' mean. It isn't very useful for getting to the bottom of what is actually happening. 'Merit' has its own problems, because it connotes 'deserving', and it is a problem to suggest that a rich, Harvard educated white male deserves a job more than a poor, community college educated black female. So language has baggage. But let's say we're talking about 'imminent capability (as opposed to potential capability) and qualifications', then yes, it is an undeniable short-term optimisation to fill roles with these people. The economic argument to take seriously is that, by doing so we propagate privilege, and that in doing so we miss bringing forward people with high potential capability but low social privilege, who would be, in the long term, a better optimised workforce. And that is irrespective of the moral argument, that an economic optimisation at the cost of the opportunity of all is perhaps too high a price to pay. > Did you really just do that? Yes. There's no problem with being ignorant of things we don't know. Every single article on HN is full of stuff that I'm ignorant of. The things I am ignorant of knows no bounds. The poster I responded to seemed unaware that the things he was bringing up have long histories of being discussed and wrestled with in more sophisticated terms. He seemed to think that discussions of such things were 'stopped' because they were not allowed in some way, where actually they are discussed in very great detail and sophisticated by hundreds perhaps thousands of writers. I think it more likely he is ignorant of that, than racist or sexist, though since he bought up the question of being accused of those things, I thought it wise to include those options.
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by sago 12y ago

yummyfajitas 12y ago

If you want to define "privilege" as pretty much anything which causes merit to be non-uniformly distributed, then the fact that Asian males are overrepresented due to privilege is tautologically true. Similarly, water is wet. All you've really said is "I assign the word 'privilege' to whatever the cause is for Asian males performing well in tech." That's not really relevant to this discussion. [edit: Sago, I think you've gotten off track. hackeruser was using the term "privilege" differently than you, treating it somewhat analogously to wealth and power and orthogonal to merit. When you use the word to describe anything that might cause disparities in merit, you are describing something far different than him.]

sago 12y ago
Nope, I've pointed out that the way you are using 'merit' overlaps with the way social scientists use the term 'privilege'. Change the word 'privilege' for 'boondoggle', it doesn't matter, the point still stands. But as I pointed out, the use of the word 'privilege' is often such anathema that it prevents certain groups of people listening to the point, instead having them focus on the word.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  To demonstrate that it's not a tautology, can you describe a world in which a group is overrepresented but not privileged? If you can't construct such a scenario, then by definition it is a tautology.
  - sago 12y ago
    Why are you so exorcised by the word privilege? My point was nothing to do with what you seem to have a problem with. My point was that what is seen as 'merit' is a function of a whole bunch of other factors, which means it isn't somehow a racists discussion stopping thing to point out that Asian men have higher levels of 'merit' (when merit is defined in the way I understood it to be in the post I was responding to). My point in using 'privilege' is to say that the idea of 'merit' overlaps with 'privilege' in the ways I described, and that the people the OP might thing of as wanting to 'stop' the discussion, do, in fact, have this discussion a lot, though they'd use 'privilege' instead to mean those things, because that is the term of art. You seem to have a problem with a word. Call it 'probabilistic causes of non-equal representation', then. Point out there are many such causes, and some of them are hardly things we could easily change (there are very few people with very low IQ in top tech jobs, so higher IQ is a 'privilege'). Your reaction to the word, rather than the point, seems rather ideological. Tautology is not a synonym for synonym. And the equation you accuse me of making is a strawman, my point was to unpack merit, not to define privilege. I'm sorry if it was unclear.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      I don't know why you think I'm "exorcised" by a word. I'm simply pointing out that you are using a completely different definition of it than myself and hackeruser, and as a result your posts are completely missing the point. If privilege means "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", then that's a very broad definition and every non-deterministic unequal representation is caused by privilege. But you were responding to a discussion where we were using "privilege" to mean something along the lines of "social biases unfairly favoring one group". By definition, Asian males have 8x the "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation". It seems highly unlikely that they have 8x the "social biases unfairly favoring one group", which is what hackeruser and myself were actually discussing. You also don't seem to be using this definition consistently. For example, if I take this comment of yours and substitute this definition in, it makes no sense: "When you find achievement highly correlated with a cultural group, however, it is pretty likely to be a function of probabilistic causes of non-equal representation. The alternative hypothesis is that, for example, Jews are just innately better at science." I'm beginning to think you are attempting a Motte and Bailey: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...
sago 12y ago
Reply to your edit, I read hackeruser as using the term informally, to mean 'a good thing someone possesses', I was using it in the way it is normally used in discussions of equality, racism, sexism, and so on. I didn't actually note hackeruser's use of the term, so I wasn't responding to that. My point, I think, stands alone. It doesn't become a tautology, it has a specific meaning, and one important point is that when folks say 'merit' they are often bundling a bunch of stuff in there which is problematic and discriminatory. Merit sounds like a good thing. (Who wouldn't want to be Pro-Life, right?) But there are structural oppressions within it that deserve to be challenged.
marcus_holmes 12y ago
hang on, but where are you drawing the lines between "merit due to innate skill/aptitude" and "merit due to favourable environmental factors"? Because similarly if you define merit as "anything that causes one person to do better in the tech industry than another" then the tech industry is tautologically a meritocracy - water is wet. Until and unless we can unpack merit and privilege in the manner that Sago is attempting then we will continue to misunderstand our problem and continue to let the best programmers become nurses because of that misunderstanding.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  I'm defining "merit" as the ability to get the job done and make the company money. For example, I'm trying to hire a data scientist/data oriented generalist. Knowledge of statistics and aptitude for learning contributes to merit, as does the ability to write scalable and deployable code. Sex appeal does not contribute to merit, nor does being a nerdy-but-attractive hipster. Does that clarify? Note that Sago's definition, "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", quite deliberately doesn't unpack anything. All it does is apply the label "privilege" to the cause, whether that cause is explicit deliberate racism (to take one extreme) or completely biological factors with entirely unbiased decisions (to take another).
  - sago 12y ago
    You do like ignoring that I actually gave a list, don't you: money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors (note, many was not intended to be exclusive) that you continue to think my point was to apply the label "privilege" seems obtuse, bordering on the willfully ignorant, since I've explicitly said that was not the point at all, and that the label is irrelevant.

kbenson 12y ago

The point is that 'merit' is systemically produced. It is a function of money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, and many other factors. Another way to phrase this is 'privilege', though that word is considered some kind of anathema by people who don't like to see their elevated status and capabilities as somehow a function of their environment. I don't think anyone is really arguing that privilege affects merit, but to say that what makes up merit can be called privilege is to say that they are one and the same, which they are note. Of course access to resources to grow whatever talent you have, and allow you to make the most of your ambition will affect your merit, but to discount talent and ambition entirely by making the conversation entirely about privilege is to error in the other direction. In modern western societies we attempt to smooth the privilege curve through socializing some aspects of it, such as education, and to differing degrees, health. While obviously not perfect, I would argue that we at least attempt to mitigate the problem by supplementing the biggest differentiators in merit that are based on privilege. Beyond that, what do you suggest? I don't think it's possible to eliminate the benefit of privilege, entire nations have gone to war to try, and the result was not what what I would call a success by that criteria. Meritocracy has the benefit of shepherding those most capable and qualified into the positions where they can do the most. There may be a system better for the individual and society, but I would need quite a bit of info and evidence before I endorsed it. >> But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist "creep" who can't get laid, and intellectual discussion stops. > Anyone who actually understands the last 20 years of social science, far from 'stopping intellectual discussion' are more likely to recognize that you've simply not found out or understood the issue. Which can, of course, be a sin of racism or sexism, if one is willingly ignorant. But can just be naivete or a Dunning Kruger effect. Did you really just do that? Did you just respond to someone complaining about how the conversation eventually degrades into the opposition tossing out labels instead of arguments by stating he's either racist, sexist or ignorant?

sago 12y ago
Right. Be careful of making semantic arguments about what words 'really' mean. It isn't very useful for getting to the bottom of what is actually happening. 'Merit' has its own problems, because it connotes 'deserving', and it is a problem to suggest that a rich, Harvard educated white male deserves a job more than a poor, community college educated black female. So language has baggage. But let's say we're talking about 'imminent capability (as opposed to potential capability) and qualifications', then yes, it is an undeniable short-term optimisation to fill roles with these people. The economic argument to take seriously is that, by doing so we propagate privilege, and that in doing so we miss bringing forward people with high potential capability but low social privilege, who would be, in the long term, a better optimised workforce. And that is irrespective of the moral argument, that an economic optimisation at the cost of the opportunity of all is perhaps too high a price to pay. > Did you really just do that? Yes. There's no problem with being ignorant of things we don't know. Every single article on HN is full of stuff that I'm ignorant of. The things I am ignorant of knows no bounds. The poster I responded to seemed unaware that the things he was bringing up have long histories of being discussed and wrestled with in more sophisticated terms. He seemed to think that discussions of such things were 'stopped' because they were not allowed in some way, where actually they are discussed in very great detail and sophisticated by hundreds perhaps thousands of writers. I think it more likely he is ignorant of that, than racist or sexist, though since he bought up the question of being accused of those things, I thought it wise to include those options.

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