Item — HN Reader

Yes. Not to mince words, as others frequently do, but that's basically what's happening. The alterntive, so-called "pure meritocracy", is a farce because the implied implicit "merit" is, by the very nature of the systemic inequalities that exist, unequally distributed. And merit is transferred down the generations. Privilege begets privilege. Etc. This is the issue that we are rightfully trying to counter.

It is right to try to take systemic steps to equalize access to opportunity across the board. The best (but imho still incredibly flawed) way of doing this is to use "anti-biased" hueristics to increase representation of certain people. In school admissions, for example, this might mean prioritizing applications from poorer areas. In other places this means having minimum quotas for hiring certain genders or ethnicities.

Yes, to be utterly semantic, it is discriminatory. I don't know how this sits with me, but it is technically true. But, whether it sits well or not, it is virtually impossible to fiddle ourselves out of this quagmire of inequality without taking proactive _opposite_ steps. We need to somehow equalise the playing field, thus equalising access to merit, thus equalising the soundness of the so-hailed "pure meritocracy" that so many seem to uphold as the ideal.

9 comments

>And merit is transferred down the generations. Privilege begets privilege. Etc. This is the issue that we are rightfully trying to counter.

Counter that by providing less privileged people with more opportunities, not by changing the definitions of merit.

It's basically impossible for anyone to become a chess grandmaster without exposure to competitive chess when you're less than 10. This obviously favors the children of the well off, but you can't deny that these children end up being better at chess.

The same goes for education in general. If elite preparatory schools didn't offer a better education than public schools, nobody would pay for them. You shouldn't use their doing better on standardized tests as an indictment on standardized tests because they're genuinely better educated. Asians tend to have the highest SAT scores of all races, and they're the least likely to drop out. Black people tend to have the lowest SAT scores, and they're also the most likely to drop out. This is a sign that the SAT is a good metric. Yet, the far left frames this two examples of racism: that both the SAT and colleges themselves are systemically racist.

By principle, I actually am in favor of affirmative action, but I'm tired of all the anti-merit rhetoric used to justify it.

It's typically easier to go after the words and meaning than it is to do the hard work like getting kids to actually be better at school and have better home lives (aka culture wars).

Which is why this sort of slacktivist approach to everything is so popular today on social media. It's easy and lower effort to go after western culture while sitting behind a keyboard than to fix the hard problems happening IRL.

If affirmative action was being applied with the same care as a scientific study, then you might be able to say that it's moral discrimination.

But it's not. It's being applied with the same level of knee-jerk emotional reaction and sloppiness of classic "I don't like people of skin color x" racial prejudice - which is what it is.

The theory that you're describing is quite different from what is being applied in the real world.

>> Yes, to be utterly semantic, it is discriminatory. I don't know how this sits with me, but it is technically true. But, whether it sits well or not, it is virtually impossible to fiddle ourselves out of this quagmire of inequality without taking proactive _opposite_ steps.

I think there are additional externalities that need to be considered. For example, some of these discriminatory policies are going to cause strife, hate, and resentment, etc. in the people who need to be discriminated against. I think there may be unintended consequences that we're only beginning to see.

Discrimination causes problems that can take a long time to emerge and a long time to address. We're STILL seeing the effects of this on many minority groups - but the solution IMO isn't to do it all over again.

It feels BAD to be discriminated against.

All of which is deeply immoral. Racism is bad mmkay? Hard to believe this is still controversial.

You're not wrong if you align with categorical imperative views on ethics. If however you see the scaled utilitarianist perspective (disentrenching systemic -isms and gaining more equality), then perhaps you'll conclude it is a more muddy landscape than simply "immoral". FWIW, I don't disagree with you. Consider it's not as simple as we want it to be.

I’ve learned most people tend to have different intuitions on giving vs. taking, even when arithmetically they are equivalent. It depends if the narrative is zero or positive-sum.

If people perceive that some groups are getting extra at the expense of others then that is seen as wrong, but if those in need are given communal surplus that is seen as just. In the circumstances of historical injustice you have competing claims that overlap depending upon which details are in focus.

>Yes. Not to mince words, as others frequently do, but that's basically what's happening.

Any data to show this is happening? From what I have seen, the primary benefactors of diversity initiatives come from the upper crusts of society(mostly upperclass white women, white lgbt, and some asian sprinkled in).

I have yet to see a diversity report that bins by intersections instead of broad categories. There's a reason for it.

> And merit is transferred down the generations. Privilege begets privilege. Etc. This is the issue that we are rightfully trying to counter.

As a migrant from dirt poor family from ex-Soviet Republic, I seem to forgot to collect my generational merit, where and when can I do that? And can I add it to my own merit?

Are you going to complain when other people seize power and run the same game against your side, or will you say well played?

Rather than fight to make the system equal and fair, you favour tilting it in your direction assuming it will never tilt the other way?

Had to scroll down too far to see this comment, HN being HN I guess.

People shit on meritocracy until the planes start falling out of the sky and we're murdering sparrows for being capitalist saboteurs.

I'm guessing that the Boeing fiasco was because they were trying to meet quotas, then /s

Like the Boeing 737 MAX?