You keep using that word "meritocracy"
garann.com
garann.com
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.
Every time I see something like this, I cringe inside and wonder at how memes get distorted.
FizzBuzz is not supposed to be hard. In fact it is supposed to be as EASY as you can possibly make an actual programming task. So easy that most programmers would have trouble believing that there are people calling themselves programmers who can't solve it in their sleep. Seriously if you know enough of a programming language to print output, run a loop, take remainders, and write if tests, then you can write FizzBuzz.
Put another way, if you can't write FizzBuzz, then you probably can't write ANY useful program. And your interview can safely stop right there because you failed.
-- 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.
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[1] Or the option, etc.
[2] This depends on (or implies) a certain elemental/relative triviality of the task.
Are industry responsible or is the educational system responsible for developing interest and providing guidance to the newer generations (in addition to initiative by the student body)?
I think you missed that note [2] above. I'm not necessarily supporting or defending the position. The point was it was not as simple an argument to dismiss as was suggested in the Parent. Couple of points to consider, more generally: (1) Its not clear that the condition of footnote 2 holds, per-se; That being said (2) its also very far from clear that decisions of Merit (in the context discussed) are ever/always fully informed.[#] Ironically, the further away you get from footnote 2 in some areas, the less informed the key gatekeepers are.
In other areas that might not be the case. These would be characterized by non-trivial skill obviously required, easily, cheaply, and repeatedly observable/measurable by multiple parties, etc. Timed running in 100m, would be an example of the latter.[##] But this is circumventing the actual argument by changing the relevant context. So its sort of a valid counter-argument, but its not quite-central to the point the Author was trying to make.
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[#] see comment> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4658045
[##] Still, this might not be the most diverse group if the olympics are your benchmark. But its non-trivial but highly specialized, and we can presume uneven native talent distrubution cannot be ruled out.
I think you need to edit your posts more carefully. Clarity matters, particularly when you're discussing things in written form.
The above poster responded to a weakness in the OP's argument, and leveled a valid counter argument. My footnote was there to highlight this same weakness in the argument. But my footnote wasn't really there as a point of exposition (either), and in hinting at the weakness it also articulated the weakness in a way which illustrated a more valid (central) line of attack. That's why I highlighted it again.
But I could probably have chosen better words in my response.
> In general its Clarity, Brevity, Precision = Pick 2
One of those would be a good start ;)
Those three actually go hand in hand. I reread your initial post - I'm still not sure what you're trying to say. You and the post you reference seem to be saying the same thing.
Footnotes are supposed to be extra bits, not central to your argument, and you seem to ramble, and have complicated sentence structures, rather than cutting to the chase.
-- Ha ha yes, That is the chase. I was re-phrasing the OP/article argument, which was mis-understood by the parent comment.
The footnote articulated something else altogether, namely a weakness in the argument. It was an more-deeply implied (or imlicit) assumption (so I didn't spell it out), i kept it seperate.
The post you are referring to picked up on this same weakness, but attributed it to me. Which wasn't the end of the world, but his counter-argument was lacking to actually critique the original Post/article.
Hope this helps clarify, the general direction.
Its a tough call on when to clarify a weak or potentially flawed argument, and when to actually argue against it. Here, I thought it added something interesting (namely, recursive logic), which is worth noting and considering.
Without throwing the whole insight out.
If I was smarter, I could probably do that faster, better, stonger. As Arnie says, I'll be Baak. =D
I don't see that argument in her post.
Author is arguing/implying that overcoming this "gate" was the source of [the example's] later (developed, proven,etc) skill. It might not be a perfect argument, but its there IMHO. I think if you believe it's not a good argument/ point, its best to attack it directly. That is all.
Hiring is not the problem. Getting underrepresented folks to choose computer science in the first place is.
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[1] The whole context is as follows:
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after thirty-three years of being alive, it’s that if you see middle-class white boys flocking in droves to a particular career path, it’s a pretty fucking easy job and you should try and get yourself one like that.
I guess that’s a little mean. Sorry, middle-class white boys. I’m not calling you dumb. I’m calling you soft.
I don't see anything from the author which can be construed as the statement, "ability, is at present, evenly distributed." If you withdraw that stipulation, what you have is:
4. Ergo, opportunities to become a computer programmer [e.g. education] are not distributed according to merit [e.g. by identifying and cultivating potential in individuals.]
Which is entirely defensible as a conclusion.
The HR department at Joe's House of Discount Programming may well be biased, but you can't conclude that from the evidence presented. More broadly, you cannot tar the programming profession as racist and sexist because we don't hire people who don't actually exist (even if, yes, the reason those people don't exist is because of racism and sexism and all the rest).
1. Construct a system to deliver engineering educations. For whatever reason, white males are overrepresented in this system.
2. Place those engineers at top engineering firms and startups, where they succeed.
3. Conclude that the system rewards effort and ability fairly, and therefore the current beneficiaries are the best and most deserving.
Step #3 is ignorant and stupid.
To cast this another way, this would be like going back to a pre-Jackie Robinson period of baseball history, or the pre-integration period in basketball history, and concluding that the best baseball players in the world are white.
Yes, in a very literal sense that is true, if you define basketball players as only those people who can right now play basketball professionally, in a system which is accessible only to a small subset of the population. Even if there were people playing amateur or street ball, who had great raw potential, without being able to enter programs where they could hone and refine their skill they would be inferior in many ways to the pros. And a person who would hew to that literal rendering would be considered myopic, shallow and intellectually dishonest.
Similarly, to say that the current crop of engineering talent represents the most deserving talent in the world is a backhand to all the people who are excluded from participating in the system to begin with.
So yes, you can't say "programming is a racist institution because it doesn't hire people who don't exist." You can, however, say that programming is a racist institution because it benefits from a lopsided system of selection, and then arrogantly declares that the selection system is fair, that those selected received no undue benefit in their selection, and therefore those selected are the best.
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?
Personally, I'd like more women in the field as well. I wouldn't mind working somewhere where, I don't know, even 1 out of 3 people were women, instead of 1/10. But I think availability has a lot to do with it.
Are we talking about the thing of writing "fizz" for multiples of 3 and "buzz" for multiples of 5 and "fizzbuzz" for both, for the numbers 1 - 100? If that is famously hard, then the definition of hard must have changed massively while I wasn't looking.
A lot of people applying for programming jobs can't solve it. Any programmer, pretty much by definition, can. The lesson is that a lot of people who apply for programming jobs can't program. :)
I know this may be derailing the conversation, and it bothers people, I'll not mind deleting this post.
Of course in an interview, one should presumably just say "hey this seems too easy, is this a trick question?" but ...
>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.
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.
This is quite an unusual definition. I always thought that a meritocracy was about giving the people best able to do a job the greatest rewards. The article seems to be assuming that all meritocracies are actually corrupt meritocracies, which is a rather sweeping generalisation...
More to the point; a corrupt meritocracy can hardly be distinguished from any other form of power/political structure that has become corrupt (in the sense of rewarding people through crony-ism and other discriminatory practices), so I don't really see any valid argument here other than "corrupt systems are bad, mmkay?".
the term [was] originally coined by Michael Young in 1958, who critically defined it as a system where "merit is equated with intelligence-plus-effort, its possessors are identified at an early age and selected for appropriate intensive education, and there is an obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and qualifications."
Essentially, the predictions become reality through confirmation bias, rather than any real measure of ability. This seems relevant to every existing 'meritocracy', such as academic tenure.
But I concede the point that the original definition can lead to a serious bias towards rewarding the certificate of accomplishment itself rather than any real accomplishments of themself.
I think it's more of a case of engineers filtering out using the tools which have worked in the past and perhaps not revising them, if they need revising, but not from some kind of nefarious conspiracy.
It's a tricky dilemma trying to work out whether background affects peoples ability to learn rather than their ability to do. An -innate- quality wasn't what I was trying to get at in saying that some people are better at their jobs than others, but I can certainly see the implications. I'll have to think about it...
If it helps, my background is from a UK perspective, so a lot of the biases may not be all that similar cross-culture.
If we take this as a definition for 'meritocracy', what do we call situations where there is an objective test of skill that everyone is equally prepared to meet, but not everyone is equally able to meet? Does the author dispute that such a thing can exist? If so, does the dispute lie in the existence of an 'objective test' or in 'equal preparation'?
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.
Either way, I think the hacker community's long term response will be really interesting. When looking for historical examples, I can really only see one clear path -- the path taken by industries whose employees already consider themselves privileged, namely those in finance and banking. They've had ongoing conflicts with the social justice community for a while now, and we've seen their response. Will the hacker community respond similarly? Hackers seem to value non-conformity and despise credentialism, so I doubt it.
So, I think the long term path of the hacker community will probably be unique. Suppose the hackers recognize that they might be privileged in some ways (e.g. high IQ). Will we see a restored sense of noblesse oblige? I doubt the social justice community let that stand. Maybe the hackers will undergo a cultural transform that satisfies them? Though I'd like to believe this is possible, no examples come to mind that give me any confidence.
[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/nl/the_cluster_structure_of_thingspa...
(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.
(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.)
I don't deny that there is some relevance of gender studies to reality, but now it seems that "privilege" and "trigger warnings" are being thrown around as insults so much that they've lost all of their meaning. As someone who would benefit from those words not being diluted to the point of absurdity, I wish that the crazy tumblerites would kindly shut up and not presume to speak for people like me.
I 100% do not condone phrases like "die cis scum." Hatred towards cis people is just as gross as hatred towards GLBT persons. Just because you're GLBT doesn't make it ok to start hating on other people for their gender/sexual orientation. The goal is to get discrimination based on these things to stop, not just reverse the polarity. :/
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.
Middle-aged women, on the other hand. Since the article he's responding to is about sexism, that seems a little more salient.
She.
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?
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.
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.
I don't know how it is in the US, but in Sweden the skew in education is the other way - recently girls do better in school than boys. It hasn't changed the men/women ratio in computer science though (it has in fields such as law and medicine though)
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.
I'm all for fixing problems at the local level, but the problems are huge. On a micro level, within school districts there are issues of gerrymandering and even absent gerrymandering there is a terrible positive feedback loop where properties within the boundaries of good schools increase in value, putting them out-of-reach of lower income families.
Also, consider the range of things the child of an engineer is exposed to regularly by the age of 7 to the range of things the child of someone working 60 hours a week in a non-skilled service industry job.
The obviously wrong on so many levels solution would be to shuffle all children to random parents in. That would give you true equality of opportunity. Things like big brother/sister and other mentorship programs fix this in a more sane manner, and I can recommend those to anyone on HN who wants to make a difference.
Actually, this is something that can be studied in the form of California's college system, which banned race based discrimination a while ago. Minority enrollment at selective colleges decreased, but overall enrollment and graduation rates for minorities greatly increased.
Funding schools via property taxes is a TERRIBLE idea and whoever came up with it ought to be shot. Schools should be distributed funds more equally.
I really want to help via mentoring or tutoring someday. Life circumstances won't permit it right now, but I really do believe that helping kids learn algebra when they are young is a critical step for achieving success in science at all of the later stages.
There is a $150k premium on houses in the best vs. worst school district; this means that any time the lines are adjusted, there are huge incentives to draw them "creatively"
Furthermore, there is de-facto segregation. Schools are either 80%+ latino or 80%+ white/asian. I grew up in Virginia, and if schools were that racially split there, then there would be forced cross-town busing.
AP! AP! AP! the cry goes. How can our kids succeed without the AP classes the suburbs have? But then you are really just renaming trig as "AP Calc" and with very few (but again important) exceptions, no one scores above a one.
Math takes time and lots of practice to learn. Trying to cram it all in at the college level via AA is just Not Going To Work.
As a side note, I really wish we'd had AP Calc at my high school. We only had two english APs, alas. (got 5s on 'em, though)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!).
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?
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.
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.
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
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/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.
The racism based explanation doesn't seems to work - just like for fast people, where you gave a great example: they self select more lucrative and higher status alternatives.
Under performing pupils also self select, for failure, but the reason is different : it's based on their own prejudice and a cultural norm saying XX people should do YY.
Anyway, in the end people self select in or out - and that's a self perpetrating tendency based on an initial trend for whatever reason.
"racist" enforcement and society couldn't do that much damage by themselves. However, cultural norms most certainly could - especially when people believe them.
IMHO, the simplest explain is the better.
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.
meritocracy is not "a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it".
This rant is without base.
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.
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).
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.
Sex based differences (and/or similarities) are really fascinating to me. I wish they weren't so politicized.