> It won't be, because different groups answer questions differently.
And the common currently practices don't control for that any better. The parent's idea (blind or double-blind screening of candidates) seems like it would, to me, be inherently better if we can figure out how to deal with the logistical complexities it adds. (E.g., how does on-site work? Are there on-sites?) If anything, it would be interesting to weigh against current practices of a few phones screens and a on-site.
(It doesn't seem worse that the world I'm living in, where I'm at the bottom rung doing my damndest to make sure I'm not part of the problem by treating people equally, while at the same time I see some employers offering hiring bonuses for "diversity hires".)
The query in the paper allows the candidate to say "they don't know"; if you force their hand in answering by removing that option, they should be again on equal footing, no?
Additionally, I've also read about mathematical means of recording uncertainty in answers and weighting score with that. (That is, correct answer to which you were more certain net more points, incorrect answers to which you were uncertain lose less points than incorrect answers to which you were more certain.) The end result you're trying to get at is which person is giving better answers and certainties.
> Meritocracy is a lie used by the privileged.
Sure, people can twist things into something they're not, but that doesn't inherently make the original thing wrong or evil.
The issue is that developing a Meritocracy requires that you first solve bigotry. It's arguably fine in theory, but it presupposes what is (at least in my mind) impossible.
It's literally where we get the name "Meritocracy" from. The book "The rise of the Meritocracy" was a satire, not a manual.
> I'm not part of the problem by treating people equally,
If you (think) treat people equally, you are part of the problem. When one group is more vocal than the other, you have to amplify the other group. If not, you're just keeping the current bias in place.
I don't understand this point of view. It sounds like, by calling it a lie, your real complaint is the ways attempts at meritocracy have fallen short of being an actual meritocracy. That being the case, isn't meritocracy still the correct ideal that we should be doing a better job of striving for?
If this is not how you feel, what is the word for the appropriate assignment strategy that we should be strive to use to decide who gets jobs and promotions?
> That being the case, isn't meritocracy still the correct ideal that we should be doing a better job of striving for?
I would actually say no, at least when it comes to when arguments for a meritocracy are used as arguments against redistribution of wealth from the more "meritocratic" to the less.
Consider, as a thought experiment, if instead of features like intelligence, communication skills, self-confidence, etc., that our economic system instead only valued basketball skills as the means for distributing wealth. That system would be a meritocracy: great basketball players with tons of talent and effort would be really wealthy and successful, while talentless or lazy basketball players would be poor.
I think this is a good thought experiment because of some of the things it highlights. Perhaps most importantly, all short people are pretty much destined to be forever poor in this meritocratic system. If you are short, what value would you see in abiding by this system at all if tall, great basketball players took all the gains? What about if instead great basketball players could be wealthy and successful, but they still had to pay a very large amount of taxes to ensure that short people didn't starve (or revolt).
While a (true) meritocracy may be ideal for how jobs are to be distributed, if it is also how wealth is distributed it means that it is also, by and large, a lottery of DNA. How is that any more "fair" than an aristocracy?
I'm not sure that "fairness" is exactly the right ideal if our goal is the most health and wealth for the most people? I want my doctor to be really great--to be in that job because he is the best at it. I don't want someone placed there by a truly random lottery, and I do want the guy who won the intelligence DNA drawing to be the one I talk to. I also want wealth to motivate people to get into that job, as it is so tough to gain that knowledge, I don't know if there will be enough people without a financial reward.
So, first off, fair point for calling out that I said "guy." I tried to edit it once I saw my mistake, but the post was locked.
I'm curious, though, why you would not want someone who was genetically smart? Why would you want a "dumb" healthcare professional treating you? Do you not believe intelligence to be related to genetics?
Also, how does being male make one a worse healthcare professional?
If you are saying you want fairness in opportunities, then isn't discriminating on the basis of someone being male the opposite of fairness?
To be coldly rational, you want to pick from the group that is the most discriminated against for entry into medical school. Right now in the USA, that would be Asian males.
An exception is if you may need the doctor to insert a hand into your body. In this case, note that Asian female doctors generally have the smallest hands.
An exception is if you are very heavy and might require feats of strength for your care. In this case, young non-Asian males are most likely to have the needed strength.
Maybe? My primary care doctor is female, so whatever bias using a gendered pronoun might show, at the end of the day, I picked who I thought was best. On merit.
This argument for meritocracy is what a real communist will tell you about communism now. It works basically for anything that we don't have good working examples for right this second. Given that there are no good working examples and/or haven't been any so far, how would we fix the problems that we have seen and can foresee?
Given those concerns, I think it is not reasonable to just say "we need to try again and try harder" because it does a disservice to those times it was tried in the past. Maybe there is a fundamental problem there that still has to be solved?
For a meritocracy, this isn't super complicated. Who decides what has merit? How will you measure this? Are the things that you measure the right things? Given that there is a possibility for side-channel information (for example, certain groups of people having terms they "look for" and that you only know about being part of this group), how will we solve this?
You'd also be doing injustice to his saying. A (liberal) democracy gives every one the same opportunity. This isn't the case with so called meritocracy.
Well isn't giving everyone the same opportunity the definintion of a meritocracy? Of course no society is a meritocracy, but it is hard to think of a better system.
No; Meritocracy is judging by the results. If we're both in a dancing competition, but you have dance shoes and I wear a workman's steel toed both, giving you the win is meritocratic, even though the opportunity isn't equal.
If you judging system by it's ideal implementation, then you should argue for Communism (we all know how that turns out, and to what a douchy sausage fest so called "meritocracies" ends as)
Say you need brain surgery. Are you telling me you will choose based on some criteria other than results?
I will pick a 9 headed purple alien if it will do the best job. And I won't care that it had the advantage of 7 parents who were rich doctors and harvard alumni. The place to fix inequality is upstream.
The cure for those advantages is to level the playing field.
> If you judging system by it's ideal implementation, then you should argue for Communism
Straw man. Like visiting a junkyard and concluding all cars don't move. That line of reasoning lets you conclude anything with a failed example can never work.
It is not possible to have an "actual" meritocracy. There's simply no way to account for all personal biases and all the historical context that you'd need to to get a truly "objective" decision made.
> Meritocracy is a lie used by the privileged. There is no such thing in the real world.
I remember an essay by a black female engineer. She said what helped her were three things, her dad had a union job, disability payments from the uncle who came home from Korea with no legs. These meant they could fake a middle class lifestyle. And her mother teaching her how to dress and talk like a white person.
Seriously a lot of 'Meritocracy' is nothing more than soft affinity fraud.
An interesting solution would be to score differently based on known biases; but that would be a can of worms in itself.
Meritocracy is a lie used by the privileged. There is no such thing in the real world.