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Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand. Either we're not properly measuring merit, in which case you may have a point, or selecting random people will reduce the competence of the boards.

Of course, if we're not good at selecting competent people, one might argue that we should address that issue, instead of substituting the goal of competence for the goal of fairness. Who knows, we could even focus on properly training a more diverse set of people in addition to making things more meritocratic...

I really don't understand your reasoning, here. I'm at a complete loss.

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It's not my reasoning, it's my attempt to repeat the reasoning I've heard from highly intelligent people who really don't think individual differences in competence matter much -- even when their own clearly does. I think they do matter, a lot.

One of the most competent people I've ever known is one of them. He told me that Elon Musk is somewhat intelligent, but his success is due to luck and underhandedness, and he could be easily replaced by another somewhat intelligent and similarly underhanded person. He seemed sincere in believing that merit wasn't much of a thing and meritocracy is a racist trope. I got roundly mocked on twitter for arguing that merit is real. I'd like to understand that point of view better, because I'm at a loss too.

Ah i see! Makes much more sense now :)

People are probably getting angry at you because you are explicitly invoking a politicized definition of the word merit which basically boils down to "best at maintaining the political status quo." In other contexts the definition is different. (For example Elon Musk's business merits seem to be his track record of making a lot of money, or at least that's what they are on twitter anyway)

If you want other examples of people who are pissed off at the concept of merit for other reasons, talk to some PhDs (or other holders of high academic merit) that are struggling to find work.

When did he engage in "explicitly invoking a politicized definition of the word merit"?

I'm very new to the understanding that the word "merit" is now politicized, and I find it very unfortunate.

For the sake of humanity, I would hope that at least the _definition_ of "merit" could be commonly accepted..

I didn't see any of the tweets so I can't say for sure, that's just my read on the situation judging by the reactions. That's why I said "probably."

If you find a definition of merit that everyone can agree on, please let us know, because that would be news to me. In my experience in the US at least, most people seem to object to there being a central organization that decides who has merit and who doesn't.

Intelligence and merit are not the same thing. Elon Musk, Steve Jobs etc did not succeed because they are extremely intelligent.

Almost all successful people are somewhat intelligent coupled with a lot of luck/street-smart/hard work/underhandedness etc. These are what constitute "merit" in a businessman.

So your friend is partly right. But certainly you couldn't just replace Musk with someone of the same intelligence, that is not what determines success at that level.

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