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Comment by ianterrell | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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?".

Quoth Wikipedia:

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.

Perhaps, but unless my personal definition of meritocracy is quite off (definitely possible), the general perception of a meritocracy - now - in the IT/CS terms that are being considered, is that we are talking about raw practically verifiable ability rather than academic qualifications. Or even certifications - which are a somewhat distinct category that IMO, are a bit more subject to corruption. Pay enough and you get the cert...

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 that people who might consider IT to be a meritocracy are blind to the fact that the things we measure are determined by the people with power, and thus it's a self-perpetuating sort of hierarchy.

Doesn't this suggest that way back when Informatics/IT was boring and unattractive to the great majority but a few 'engineering types' that people set up in advance a system that would filter out undesirables? I think that's giving these theoretical gatekeepers more credit than they deserve. People don't typically plan that far in advance for a day when their profession might be 'displaced by the other'. (for example Y2K)

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.

You're dancing around the point of the article, which is that what most people here consider a programming/technical meritocracy is a corrupt meritocracy. Most people who can program, can do so because of their background, not because of some innate quality.

I'll have to give up here. My personal experience is therefore colliding with forum experience, and my anecdotal evidence should never be given too much sway if so.

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.

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.

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?

> 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.

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'?

My reading of that is that the author would reject both of those. My personal thoughts (as you can probably tell from my other comments on this thread) are that we are much closer to having an objective test than equal preparation.

Could you please NOT use the word 'actionable' ever again? Please?

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