
The Myth of American Meritocracy - edderly
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
======
DanielBMarkham
For anybody that's been paying attention in the last 20 years, the collegiate
funnel to success is broken in the technology/startup sector.

I'm not dismissing the role of _education_ , however. Education is vastly
important. A formal education with an expensive stamp on it? Not so much.

Continuing my discussion of the startup/technology sector, there was a time
when a great degree would get you into places where you worked with awesome
folks doing hugely important jobs. Over time, more awesome folks and hugely
important jobs existed separate from that great degree. We've now reached a
point where having that great degree many times is counter-indicative of
performance ability, so it becomes kind of a social club.

I hate to say it, but for run-of-the-mill high technology jobs where you
interact heavily with a business customer and make some magic happen? I view
deep dives in college as a warning sign that you might be validating yourself
against a model that has little practical impact in the larger world.

I really hated to admit that, because I deeply love education. But dang it, I
believe the tables are flipped. You are more likely to get great help in the
startup/technology sector from some 20-year-old who knows everything about
technology from his personal passions than you are from a 25-year-old with a
Master's degree from an Ivy League institution. And in terms of organizations,
it's a big red flag as far as productivity goes for those places with tight
controls over collegiate applicant. Unless you're building the next LHC.
Whenever I see some job that's a straight technology job that has "and a
masters degree in CS" _without_ the following "or equivalent experience"? I'm
thinking this isn't a place I want to be associated with. They have no idea
what they are doing.

~~~
jacques_chester
Disclaimer: I earned my BCompSci with 1st Class Honours -- ie, a miniature
research degree -- last year and I am _damn_ proud of the work I did to get
it.

> _You are more likely to get great help in the startup/technology sector from
> some 20-year-old who knows everything about technology from his personal
> passions than you are from a 25-year-old with a Master's degree from an Ivy
> League institution._

This is a false dichotomy with a side order of strawman.

Here, let me play:

"You are more likely to get great help in the startup/technology sector from
some 25-year-old who pursued their passion for websites and earned a Masters
from a dissertation on HTTP than you are from a 20-year-old with a who reads
two dozen blogs and keeps up with the tweets".

See how that works?

Whether a person has a degree or not is orthogonal to their passion for a
subject. But it so happens that you don't get a top score in a research degree
by just ticking the boxes or colouring between the lines. You need to be
passionate about the topic.

And it so happens that this is true of _mastery of any subject_. Those who are
passionate about a subject will obsessively read about it, study it, tinker
with it and spend the time to deeply grok a topic because that's what they
love doing.

Sometimes this happens in academia. Sometimes in industry.

~~~
paulsutter
So you would expect similar [technology startup] success rates between a YC
participant and a BCompSci with 1st Class Honours?

It's not a question of passion, it's a question of goal orientation. My
experience is that results-oriented environments (like YC) have better
outcomes than status-oriented environments (anyplace that confers come thing
called a "BCompSci with 1st Class Honours").

~~~
arethuza
Worth noting that the "1st Class Honours" thing is just the level of a degree
in some places (e.g. the UK). I can appreciate it sounds funny to some people,
but then grade point averages and _summa cum laude_ sound odd to me! :-)

~~~
paulsutter
Starting a post with a "summa cum laude" humblebrag would be an equally strong
indicator of a status orientation versus a results orientation.

EDIT: Jacques, did you notice the last line in Daniel Markham's response to
your comment? It will be great to see your awesome startup.

~~~
jacques_chester
What if I started my post with a "YC alum"?

Basically you're just arbitrarily attaching "status" and "results" labels to
things.

It's an argument I can't win, because by raising my own achievements by way of
disclaimer[1], I am "bragging", which is a "status orientation" on my part.

But the fact that I worked towards a measurable goal in a structured way
according to a plan of my own design -- that somehow _isn't_ results-seeking
behaviour?

[1] because usually, these discussions boil down to an argument between people
with a degree and people without a degree -- and there's a strong correlation
between the pro-degree/contra-degree camp and who has a degree.

------
EliRivers
The greatest trick the ruling classes in the US ever pulled was convincing
everyone else, especially those who suffer the most from the current system,
that they're not poor and they're not an underclass - they're temporarily
embarrassed millionaires.

When I was working in Italy I would sometimes listen to a US Forces radio
station on my drive in each morning, and the success story propaganda was
fascinating. Every so often, there would be a completely irrelevant and
disconnected sixty second summary of some lucky chap who did really well in
business, with an undertone that all you needed was to work hard and you'd
become a millionaire.

~~~
jakeonthemove
It's a better way of thinking than "I'm poor, I don't think I stand a chance".
Even if people don't become rich or successful, they still feel better about
themselves.

The "work hard and you _may_ become a millionaire" undertone is a good thing.

~~~
smutticus
Is it still a good thing if it convinces the poor to not act in their self
interest by not advocating for change?

OR

If we agree the american dream is fallacy then is the only purpose of it to
keep the rich from being guillotined?

I'm not sure what I think of the american dream or even what it means. But I
find the idea of lying to the disenfranchised so they can feel better about
themselves condescending.

~~~
philwelch
Socialism, or guillotines for that matter, do far less than the American dream
to actually help the poor.

~~~
mcguire
Source?

------
jacques_chester
One thing he mentions in passing is that the Ivy League process is built on
looking for "future leaders".

There's not really a test for such qualities. I mean, you can try, but it's
very difficult to see how someone performs in trying circumstances until you
put them there.

In _Thinking, Fast and Slow_ (which I'm sure many of HNers have read),
Kahneman gives an anecdote about his time working for the Israeli Defence
Force. The IDF wanted a way to identify who should be put through officer
training, and they turned to a team of psychologists to develop a testing
program.

Kahneman and his colleagues came up with a series of scenario-based tests.
Some problem would be posed to a group of soldiers ("move this log over the
top of this wall"). The group would be observed and notes taken.

One thing that the psychologists watched for was spontaneous leadership. Who
in the group took charge? Surely such a soldier was bound to command!

The problem is that, upon reviewing the performance of their selections,
Kahneman and his colleagues found that their candidates did no better --
either in training or in the field -- than candidates chosen by other means.
Simply seeing the "obvious" leadership qualities of a particular individual in
a highly artificial situation is a basically useless predictor of actual
outcomes.

It's satisfying noise.

~~~
bane
_Ivy League process is built on looking for "future leaders"._

One of the problems with this of course is that the kinds of things that get
you into such a school (grades, tests and extracurriculars) really have almost
nothing to do with finding a leader. Even tests looking for dominant
personality types (Type-A types) tend to find extroverts, not leaders. And
even worse, it's been my observation that formal leadership training programs
seems to churn out emotionally aloof general managers than "leaders".

 _One thing that the psychologists watched for was spontaneous leadership._

This is tough too. It ends up selecting for hardship leaders, not daily grind
leaders. It's easy to start barking orders and look like you know what you are
doing when there's an immediate task to accomplish and nobody else wants to.
It's _very_ hard to motivate a workforce for years at a time doing grind work.

An anecdote:

When I was a youngster, I knew a kid who was one of those emergent leader
types. In any group activity he instantly tried to take charge and started
organizing the other kids, barking orders etc. It didn't really matter what
the activity was, kickball, hide and go seek, and when we were a bit older
volunteer community work like habitat for humanity type things. And there were
usually a few of the kids that would follow him.

The problem was that he was also terribly annoying. When facing a complex
activity, one where there was no way he knew anything about the task or how to
direct it. He'd still inevitably march up and start pointing and ordering like
he had been doing this task for 20 years. The parents thought that he was such
a wonderful natural leader. The other kids wanted to punch him in the face. It
was only because of the trouble we'd get in that we didn't do exactly that
(but oh where there backroom conspiracies about how to deal with him).

Now, decades later, I look back and realize that a great deal of my problem
with him was likely due to differences in Keirsey Temperaments. He was
obviously a Fieldmarshal [1] (correlate to Myers-Briggs ENTJ) while I'm very
strongly a Mastermind [2] (MB:INTJ). According to the theory, my personality
type will assume a leadership role IFF they feel the dominant Fieldmarshal
personality has fundamentally failed. Basically I'm a coup maker and there was
nothing more that I wanted to do with this kid than to undermine him, usurp
him and delegitimize his assumption of power. I didn't want to necessarily be
his replacement, but boy oh boy did I ever want to humble him. What troubled
me the most was that there was inevitably a group of kids that _would_ follow
him simply _because_ he was giving the appearance of organizing things.

I've reflected on this interaction deeply in my life to expose my own flaws,
but also to learn from. Even though he wasn't qualified to run things, the
fact that he simply stepped up and _acted_ like he knew what he was doing was
a terribly useful leadership technique. He really didn't seem to care that it
was resented by his peer group, and as children I'm sure there was an element
of parent pleasing to his behavior.

I've used this simple technique many times in business to organize out of
control efforts that have floundered under the "emotionally aloof general
manager types" mentioned before. Now that I'm aware of my Mastermind type
tendencies, I can also watch out for destructive "coup" traits.

I don't know if I have a point other than to say that "leadership" is a very
complex thing and that there are many many kinds of leadership we have to be
aware of.

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fieldmarshal_(role_variant)>

[2] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(role_variant)>

~~~
sigkill
I identify with the INTJ type as well, and I'm curious to know what
destructive traits you're talking about. Also, I do somewhat identify with the
description that you've given although I hate to put labels on people.

~~~
bane
According the the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) [1], xNTJs correlate very
closely to a type of Temperament called "Rationals" -- which make up about 3%
of the population.

I can't remember where I did the reading, but engineering disciplines seem to
have an unusually large concentration of them. All of the KTS types break down
into two subtypes which are pretty much the difference between the Myers-
Briggs E and I extraverts and intraverts.

All of the temperaments have strengths and weaknesses. In the case of an
INTJ/Mastermind [2], there's a tendancy to ignore social costs in the pursuit
of "getting shit done" (GSD). In some other readings on the type I've found
descriptions that basically describe Masterminds as masters of strategy who
prefer to sit in the backgroud behind a competent Field Marshall [3]. But when
they feel the Field Marshall is no longer competent, the need to GSD can
overwhelm them and they will attempt to assume control in order to accomplish
the goal. Then once the goal is accomplished, fade into the background behind
a new field marshall. Viewed negatively Masterminds are basically coup makers.
And that's very rarely something to be desired. I've found that it's usually
better to simply change positions and get away from under a poor leader than
try and overthrow them. It _almost_ never puts one in a good light.

Of course KTS and MB both have the feel of a kind of tarot card pseudo-science
hand waiving. But I've found that none of the other KTS types come as close to
matching the internal thought processes I have about my temperment. It's not a
perfect descriptor, but it's about 90% on the nose.

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirsey_Temperament_Sorter>

[2] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(role_variant)>

[3] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fieldmarshal_(role_variant)>

~~~
sigkill
>All of the temperaments...

The scary part of that paragraph is that it actually describes me accurately.
Without giving too much about myself, I can say that I have been in, and
utilized the situations where I've pulled strings behind the leader (this, was
in school/college, but still quite scary).

Although I too consider this as hand-wavy, pseudo-y stuff I seriously think I
should start looking at this and try to _know_ when I'm committing such
actions.

------
brianchu
I am proud (or ashamed) to admit that I read the whole thing. The article is
pretty dense and it took me a little over two hours to get through it.

Around the middle of the article, the author argues that Jewish whites are
_overrepresented_ in top colleges relative to non-Jewish whites, also arguing
that white Jew academic performance has declined over the past decade. He
argues that in essence, Jewish whites disproportionately dominate colleges,
and that both Asians and non-Jew whites are underrepresented relative to the
proportions of top students that are Asian and non-Jewish white. However, much
of his analysis is based on analyzing the last names of students who earned
National Merit Scholarship awards (these are awards given out nationwide among
nearly all high school students), a method which might work for Asian surnames
(which are highly distinctive), but one that is highly flawed when trying to
distinguish between a white Jewish and white non-Jewish surname. This is
rather shaky ground. In the author's defense, this is probably the only source
of data that he could get, given that it is difficult to find data on Jewish
vs. non Jewish white scholarly performance and college admissions.

If there's any section you should skim, that's it.

The later sections of the article are particularly eye-opening: the author
enters into a discussion of the personal biases that admissions officers can
hold. One example is that a researcher found that participating in certain
"high school activities actually reduced a student’s admission chances by
60–65 percent, ...these were ROTC, 4-H Clubs, Future Farmers of America, and
various similar organizations." Another interesting fact is that people (and
by extension admissions officers) have a tendency to drastically over-estimate
the proportion of blacks/Hispanics/Jews in the US population.

However, the article ends rather weakly; the author basically suggests that
the best solution is to have top colleges select a small portion of their
students by pure talent (geniuses), and then select the rest by lottery out of
a pool of academically qualified applicants. To me, this seems just as unfair
as the alternatives, and de-motivational for academic success.

~~~
valgaze
Yah it's _very_ long- truth be told, when I first came across the talk about
Jewish administrators & saw the length of the article I assumed it was written
by some crank with an axe to grind. Whatever one makes of the analysis &
conclusions, if you hear the author out it becomes clear that this was done in
a very thoughtful & thorough manner.

For some context: The author is Ron Unz, an "activist" type & former financial
software guy whose company was acquired by Moodys in the mid 00s. He's quite
difficult to pin down with traditional USA political shorthand (see his other
positions on social services for immigrants vs bilingual education in CA for
example.) It seems that whatever subject on which he focuses, he really goes
all in.

This is a pretty interesting profile of him from the late nineties:
<http://www.onenation.org/9907/071999.html>

If you're familiar with Steven Colbert's SuperPAC shenanigans you might
remember that someone named Trevor Potter (former FEC) was Colbert's legal
advisor & "straight" counterbalance. This is what that Potter said about Unz's
unsuccessful campaign finance reform initiative:

"[...] Unz's "California Voters Bill of Rights" includes voluntary spending
limits accompanied by partial public financing, a ban on corporate giving to
candidates, overnight Web-based disclosure, and reasonable contribution caps
(e.g., $5,000 for statewide races) that should survive a court challenge.
"It's far wider-reaching than McCain-Feingold," says Trevor Potter, former
chairman of the Federal Election Commission

This post was provocative & definitely passed the "...anything that gratifies
one's intellectual curiosity" test.

------
nsxwolf
Why does everyone seem to ignore today's standards of living for even the
poorest classes in America?

All this talk about the top 1% just sounds like envy. Why do we compare
ourselves to that?

I live in a neighborhood of a thousand 3000 square foot houses with three car
garages. I imagine all the people in them reading that article and shaking
their fists with anger at the 1% and realizing they're all failures who will
never get ahead.

I just don't get that mentality.

~~~
randomdata
I, like most programmers, am comfortably in the top 5% and cannot even imaging
being able to own a home like you describe at my income level. There is a good
chance those people are part of the 1% themselves. It actually doesn't take
that much money to get there. Though it has been sold as a domain of people
making tens of thousands of dollars per hour, so I can see why some may not
even realize where they stand.

~~~
twoodfin
_I, like most programmers, am comfortably in the top 5% and cannot even
imaging being able to own a home like you describe at my income level._

Sure you can. Anyone "comfortably in the top 5%" can afford a very large home,
it just might not be exactly where you'd want it to be.

You're choosing instead to devote more of your income to being close to where
you work and/or living in an area with ready access to services you find
valuable.

~~~
randomdata
I just did a quick mortgage affordability calculation and someone who earns at
the bottom end of the 5% can only afford a $300,000-400,000 home.

Even where I live, which is very rural with comparatively cheap homes, only
gets you a modest sized home. You need at least $500K to even start looking at
3000 sq. feet homes with big garages unless they are complete dives.

~~~
nsxwolf
Don't forget about dual income families.

~~~
twoodfin
Yes. Obviously a 3000 square foot house with a three car garage is a bit much
for a single person, so I was assuming top 5% household income. Top 5% there
is ~$200K/year.

I'd be interested to see which calculator and which figures randomdata was
using. I have a hard time getting less than $750,000 for a "conservative"
figure, assuming your debt isn't absurd and you save up for a $100K down
payment (should be very manageable with $200K gross).

~~~
randomdata
Fair, though not all households have multiple earners either. I think it is
still quite conceivable for someone to be in the top 1% and still feel like
they are failing in life.

And what about local wealth distributions? A $100K income puts you in like the
top 0.5% in my community. Someone making that much here is part of a 1% group,
just not at the country scale. If houses are cheap in your locality, I expect
things to be similar.

------
ht_th
To me, these two paragraphs below were enlightening. Not only the admission is
sketchy, but the study program can be as well. I wonder why other USA-ians as
a community/society seem to accept this kind of favoritism. As the author
repeatedly notes, here in Western Europe this is unthinkable. Time and time I
am confronted with the differences between USA and Western Europe, even though
we seem so close culturally. I find it fascinating. Thanks for linking the
article here on HackerNews.

""" Finally, there was the case of Becca Jannol, a girl from a very affluent
Jewish family near Beverly Hills, who attended the same elite prep school as
Julianna, but with her parents paying the full annual tuition. Despite her
every possible advantage, including test-prep courses and retaking the exam,
her SAT scores were some 240 points lower on the 1600 point scale, placing her
toward the bottom of the Wesleyan range, while her application essay focused
on the philosophical challenges she encountered when she was suspended for
illegal drug use. But she was a great favorite of her prep school counselor,
who was an old college friend of the Wesleyan admissions officer, and using
his discretion, he stamped her “Admit.” Her dismal academic record then caused
this initial decision to be overturned by a unanimous vote of the other
members of the full admissions committee, but he refused to give up, and moved
heaven and earth to gain her a spot, even offering to rescind the admissions
of one or more already selected applicants to create a place for her.
Eventually he got her shifted from the Reject category to wait-list status,
after which he secretly moved her folder to the very top of the large waiting
list pile.90

In the end “connections” triumphed, and she received admission to Wesleyan,
although she turned it down in favor of an offer from more prestigious
Cornell, which she had obtained through similar means. But at Cornell, she
found herself “miserable,” hating the classes and saying she “didn’t see the
usefulness of [her] being there.” However, her poor academic ability proved no
hindrance, since the same administrator who had arranged her admission also
wrangled her a quick entrance into a special “honors program” he personally
ran, containing just 40 of the 3500 students in her year. This exempted her
from all academic graduation requirements, apparently including classes or
tests, thereby allowing her to spend her four college years mostly traveling
around the world while working on a so-called “special project.” After
graduation, she eventually took a job at her father’s successful law firm,
thereby realizing her obvious potential as a member of America’s ruling Ivy
League elite, or in her own words, as being one of “the best of the best.”91

"""

------
mudil
As some who is Jewish from the former Soviet Union, and who was denied even to
take an entrance exam to a Moscow college, I am saddened to see that American
educational admission process looks more and more "Soviet" nowadays. Kids are
denied opportunities because of their ethnic or social background, in a
supposedly free and fair country!

But this is just a tip of the iceberg. The American groupthink of political
correctness, lowest common denominator, and political posturing toward various
political/ethnic/religious/sexual orientation groups is rotting this country
inside out.

Worse things are yet to come.

/rant over

~~~
mcguire
" _American educational admission process looks more and more 'Soviet'
nowadays_ "

Be careful when choosing your enemies. You become them.

------
tom_b
The proposed "inner ring/outer ring" admissions solution is interesting. The
inner ring of admission slots (say 20%) are filled purely on academic merit
metrics (NMS, GPA, SAT score, etc), then 80% of slots are filled based on
dumping everybody else who meets some much lower cut-off on those academic
merits into a lottery for the remaining admissions slots.

I'm not entirely sure the author appreciates the likelihood of various strange
outcomes using a purely random lottery for admissions, for example "outlier"
admissions classes that heavily over-represent one racial/gender group by
chance.

Another rather damning point of the article is that university admission
officers may be spectactularly unqualified to actually make admissions
decisions. But I have been privy to the admissions decision process at the
graduate level and bucketing applicants into the "will succeed" and "will not
succeed" and "who knows" bucket usually winds up with a rather sizable number
in the "who knows" bucket. So maybe the critque on the admission officers
should be less worrisome than presented. I think PG has made statements that
one of the biggest problems with YC applicants is that there just isn't an
easy way to look at many applicants and make any reasonable determination
about whether or not they could create successful startups.

Anyway, this is an excellently thought-provoking article and thanks for
bringing it here.

------
hudibras
The chart showing the number of Asian students at Caltech vs. the Ivy League
is shocking. Caltech's numbers have risen in proportion to the number of
Asian-Americans aged 18-21, but the Ivy League numbers have been flat for many
years. There's no doubt that a de facto quota system exists for Asians in the
Ivy League.

------
nuje
Anyone know how big the Asian demographic is in the US? Would help in
guesstimating sincerity of this (vs just a play to get their vote after losing
the black and hispanic groups)

Regardless, the bigger story of the alarming anti-meritocratic direction in
the US is the poor social mobility in general.

edit: WP says Asians are 5.6% of US population.

~~~
bane
Caveat for those outside the U.S. American vernacular generally does not
include people from the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Central Asian
countries or Siberia as "Asian".

So there are lots of qualifications needed for what constitutes this number.
If it is a self-selected demographic choice it may include these groups, e.g.
many peoples from the Indian subcontinent refer to themselves as "Asian" even
though this doesn't align with the American use of the word.

~~~
codegeek
I know where you are coming from. But on paper, Asians include people from
Indian subcontinent etc. See this wp link
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_Americans>

------
api
Some good points in here, but one thing to keep in mind:

The American right hates higher education for reasons that have nothing to do
with meritocracy. Higher education takes young people away from their small
often rural and suburban cultural bubbles and exposes them to a larger world.
This exposure undermines the parochial teachings of fundamentalism, and tends
to corrode prejudices through contact. (E.g. seeing that gay people are not
monsters or twisted freaks that only want to get in your pants.) The
cosmopolitan influence of universities is deeply hated and resented by social
conservatives.

~~~
twoodfin
That must be why Harvard and Yale grads are automatically disqualified from
being nominated for President by America's mainstream right-wing party.

Your comment might make sense in the bubble in which you live, but it's
balderdash.

------
olalonde
> The rise of a Henry Ford, from farm boy mechanic to world business tycoon,
> seems virtually impossible today, as even America’s most successful college
> dropouts such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg often turn out to be
> extremely well-connected former Harvard students.

I find the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg examples poorly chosen. Silicon
Valley is probably one of the few remaining industries that largely resembles
a meritocracy in America. There are countless cases of people succeeding
despite lacking a formal/prestigious education or having the right
connections.

~~~
jwoah12
Can you give a few of those examples? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I do
have this (possibly unwarranted) feeling that most of the supposedly
unconnected people succeeding in the startup world today at least have wealthy
parents allowing them to work full-time on their startup ambitions without
worrying about a job.

~~~
gadders
Steve Jobs? I don't believe his adopted family was particularly wealthy.

------
sayYaeah
Wow, I'd be pissed reading this as an Asian American.

------
adjwilli
While I agree with the premise of academia not really being a meritocracy,
this article limited scope focusing solely on academia just comes across as
thinly veiled anti-intellectualism that conservatives have been preaching
forever. Why didn't the author take any time to focus on the lack of
meritocracy in corporate culture or even political culture? They hate science,
they hate facts, and they want to "defund the left" but destroying our
institutions of higher learning and research.

------
joshbert
This is a massive over simplication, but my personal take is that the people
who make it big always had a nag that they were going to be successful.

Success doesn't strike me as something that you just stumble upon. There is
always work to be done, but most people just won't do it. I'm not saying most
people are lazy, I just think that they decide to work on the wrong things.

Furthermore, if your determination can be deterred by an article, I wouldn't
bet for you to be successful to begin with.

------
hayksaakian
Its much longer than I expected (I'm .25 of the way through), but so far a
much higher quality read than I expected from the domain of 'the american
conservative'

~~~
jacques_chester
That was a cheap shot.

There is an intellectual foundation for many parts of conservatism; see
Michael Oakeshott in particular as the leading 20th century philosopher of
conservatism as a serious intellectual movement.

For the pro-market counter-case, see FA Hayek's _Why I Am Not A Conservative_
; though I think Hayek later contradicted himself in _The Origins and Effects
of Our Morals_.

------
flurie
I find it a bit curious to call Harvard's entrance exam[1] a "simple objective
test of academic merit". I would call it a glorified spelling bee whose word
list was handed out only to the most privileged.

[1]
[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvarde...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf)

------
confluence
You know what I find funny? The creator of the word meritocracy created it to
parody how people think the world is mostly just. Curious no?

I was going to write more on this topic but I'm tired of it like I am with the
religious. Instead I will say the following condensed sentence.

Libertarianism/conservatism/Republicans/meritocracy are merely derivations of
humanity's sociopathic bias known as the just world fallacy. Furthermore most
explanations in all business books, magazines and articles focusing on the
people make the fundamental attribution error and are mostly bunk.

Finally once you understand the complexity of the world you live in you see
how people have no fucking clue what they are taking about outside of the hard
sciences.

~~~
cantastoria
_The creator of the word meritocracy created it to parody how people think the
world is mostly just. Curious no?_

It would be if it were true. The satire you're referring to, used the word as
a way to criticize how the British government of the period was selecting
people into an elite ruling class based on suspect standards of intelligence
and aptitude. The word itself was invented as a shorthand to refer to that
process and its justifications. It was not a parody of the idea of meritocracy
as it is understood today.

From wikipedia; _Meritocracy is the implementation of advancement based upon
intellectual talent. Often, advancement is determined by demonstrated
achievement in the field where it is implemented._

Aside from that, I'm curious, If you believe that meritocracy is indeed
evidence of right-wing sociopathic behavior. What would be the
Communist/Liberal/Democratic alternative? Surely you're not advocating a
kakistocracy (i.e. rule by the worst).

~~~
confluence
The liberal version is paternalistic totalitarianism. You need a mix.

I'm not against meritocracy or ownership. I'm against not capping poverty and
I'm against worshipping those who are lucky in life.

------
michaelochurch
I wiped my LinkedIn profile. I have no problem with them as a business, but
this touches on one of the things that's been getting to me about "social"
(and I will bring this around to education) over the past few years.

There's an inherent exploit/explore tradeoff in "social". Or, more to the
point, are you going to _document_ social relationships or _improve_ them (in
spite of the fact that there are powerful people who don't want improvements
to occur)? There's a lot more money and less risk in the former, but I'm more
a fan of the latter, because that's where the great companies come from. Which
is why I like Meetup a lot (with its unusual focus on _growing_ the social
graph) and feel more tepid about LinkedIn. They're a great company and they've
executed well, but their model is still stuck in the old, broken, credential-
and-resume way of doing things.

Since my colorful Google history has (against my will) been exposed to public
digestion, I'll admit that what started that fracas was a document-vs.-improve
debate regarding Google+ that I, unwisely and half-unintentionally, got myself
caught in. (I was on the "improve" side.)

What on earth does this have to do with the Ivy League and college admissions?
Well, this talk about "disrupting" education through online courses (e.g. edX,
Coursera) is really about _improving_ social and knowledge graphs, and that's
really exciting. Admissions officers just _document_ ; they take notes on who
looked impressive at a young age. I see admissions as a less interesting
problem with time. If our generation does its job, no one will give a shit
about college admissions in 30 years.

~~~
pitt1980
that's one of the most profound comments I've read in a really long time, an
upvote doesn't really seem sufficient

I wish I had thoughts that could further this comment, right now they are
failing me though

tangentially related thoughts
[http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?forum_id=2&thread_id=2...](http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?forum_id=2&thread_id=2087697&PHPSESSID=6103edf7a49f646e8c440bc72c04a9eb#21851580)

~~~
michaelochurch
I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I had the courage(?) to
click an xoxohth link at work.

I think people are going to be averse to having their minute-by-minute
activity mined for any purpose, so I don't see that as a recruiting angle.
What I do think is that there's more signal in a person's willingness to learn
later in life rather than at age 20 when it's expected. I'm more impressed by
the 37-year-old who picked up a machine learning course or textbook on his own
and, in a year, picked up a respectable working knowledge of it. Whether he
went to college is immaterial, at that point.

~~~
pitt1980
the branding of "hey have your minute by minute activity mined" is weak on
alot of different levels

but that's not so different from alot of real world activity, showing face
time at work, being 5 minutes early for meetings, that sort of thing

those sorts of little things go into your real world reputation, ie do you
feel good about recommending someone for a job that's always 5 minutes late?
(superficial as that may be)

part of that is why personal recommendations carry the weight they do

if taking classes with minute by minute monitoring were shown to correlated
with better chances a monetary reward at the end (x% gets a job, x+y% gets a
job with monitoring), that'd change the calculus for alot of people

admittedly, the branding for that is pretty weak

------
guelo
Damn, there should be a length warning before you start down that thing. Looks
like about an hour read.

~~~
digitalsushi
Are we so ardently lazy, so passionate about sloth that we should feel
entitled to warnings that we might inadvertently devote ourselves to
something? Would someone make a similar claim were they to accidentally sit
down at a free, seven course dinner?

