Astral Codex Ten

meritocracy

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meritocracy

Article

meritocracy is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 18, 2021 and December 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “But it’s why I get confused when other people who aren’t obvious Marxists complain about “meritocracy” in the second sense”; “The debate around meritocracy”. It most often appears alongside 1957, Alexander H, Amalgamated Bank.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: February 18, 2021
  • Last seen: December 01, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Cult Of Smart
February 18, 2021 · Original source
Many people took issue with how I used "meritocracy" - see eg gbear605's comment here. Most of these converged on the idea that meritocracy can mean either (1) "high-status jobs like 'surgeon' go to the most qualified applicant" or (2) "jobs for smarter people pay better than jobs for less smart people, and the smarter people deserve the extra pay because of merit". I definitely support 1, and I haven't seen anything to suggest DeBoer doesn't either (though I think there are real people who oppose this, and that it's a common focus of meritocracy debates - see eg the move to switch magnet schools from high-scorers to lottery-assignment). DeBoer is complaining about (2). I'm a bit annoyed that people use the same word for (1) and (2), since I think (1) is trivially good and (2) is more complicated and you can do a lot of mischief by equivocating them. I wish people would just use "income inequality" for (2) and then we can debate whether income inequality is good or bad. But I understand people are trying to talk about some specific purported justification for income inequality separate from the overall concept and that getting them to abandon the term will be a hard sell.
Inline links: eg gbear605's comment here
This is a dead-boring, standard-issue capitalist argument and wouldn’t surprise DeBoer one whit. But it’s why I get confused when other people who aren’t obvious Marxists complain about “meritocracy” in the second sense. If you think incomes should be a little more equal but it still makes sense for a surgeon to earn more than a janitor, being against “meritocracy” seems like an especially bad way to frame your complaint.
4) Less meritocracy, even in your sense. If we segregate people by capacity then we’ll find people with a lot of capacity having more interests in common with each other, and poor communities with fewer leaders in their midst. I think the case for this is stronger the more you think IQ/capacity/whatever you want to call it is highly heritable.
Book Review: First Sixth Of Bobos In Paradise
December 01, 2022 · Original source
Around 1955 (Brooks writes, building on an earlier book by Nicholas Lemann) Harvard changed their admission policy. Why? Partly a personal decision by Harvard presidents James Conant, and Nathan Pusey, who sincerely believed in meritocracy. And partly because Harvard’s Jewish quota was becoming unpopular, as increased awareness of the Holocaust made anti-Semitism déclassé. Conant and Pusey decided to admit based on academic merit (measured mostly by SAT scores). The thing where Harvard would always admit WASP aristocrats because that was the whole point of Harvard was relegated to occasional “legacy admissions”, a new term for something which was now the exception and not the rule. Other Ivies quickly followed.
The debate around meritocracy. I previously wrote that it was hard to be against meritocracy, in that the alternatives - cronyism, nepotism, titled nobility - seemed worse. Bobos helps provide concrete details. The WASP aristocracy in fact seems bad to me; a lot of them really were arrogant boors who spent most of their energy conspicuously consuming and yachting. But if we grant a long chain of conjectures, they seemed to be better at some aspects of leading the country than their meritocratic successors. Why? Is there a simple patch, or is meritocracy inherently dangerous?
Inline links: The debate around meritocracy
What’s up with college admissions. I previously didn’t understand how pre-meritocracy colleges selected students. Brooks’ idea of the aristocratic establishment helps explain this. It also makes me understand why Ivies are so unwilling to admit more Asians despite their suppposed anti-racist principles. They consciously think of themselves as the gatekeeper of a US elite class, and having a 50% Asian ruling class in a 5% Asian country would be really jarring. Harvard might worry that this wouldn’t be great for the Asians themselves, who would face increased resentment. Or they might fear it would threaten the narrative of “all races are exactly alike except for how much discrimination they face”. Or they might worry that, faced with the prospect of a 50% Asian ruling class, America would say “no thanks” and come up with some other way to select their elites, costing the Ivies their monopoly on the process.
Inline links: What’s up with college admissions