Well, then I misspoke. For the concept of meritocracy to make any sense, there has to be some “ontology” of merit – i.e., we have to agree upon some objective property that a person has by which we can predict his or her success. Otherwise, the statement that Jones succeeded “because he was good” makes no sense. Larding below:
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 9:52 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] meritocracy (was Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?)
Following Glen's lead to move the discussion of meritocracy here:
Nick... I think your understanding of a meritocracy is limited. To rephrase your assertions:Meritocracies favor the children of the meritorious, if those parents do something to instil their meritorious nature into their children. My guess is that the variance explained by this at mid-adulthood is under .3. Regression towards the mean is a strong effect, and having gone to a better elementary school can only help you so much at age 40.
[NST==>Well, nothing guarantees that the idiot child of the objectively meritorious individual will become wealthy, but even conceding regression toward the mean, it sure as hell is more likely, no? Variance .3? Where the dickens do you get that? <==nst]
Meritocracies favor those who disregard their families, unless individuals also have to compete with meritorious couples and larger social units that work collaboratively together to achieve even greater ends. Sure, we often socially assign the "merit" to an individual member of such groups, but that is a different problem all together.
[NST==>Seems like you are starting to beat me over the head with my own point. If there is such a thing as ontological individual merit, , the nepotism and cooperation work against it. I don’t happen to think there IS any such thing. The argument is a reduction. You are supposed to get to the end of it and have doubts about the concept of merit. My conclusion is that the social and political system should contain powerful biases to favor the children of those that are currently less powerful. <==nst]
Meritocracies favor those who disregard their communities, unless regard for community is taken into account as one of the metrics of merit. For example, in a healthy company (mythic entities, it would sometimes seem) "managers" are people skilled at nurturing communities of a particular size and scale. They also tend to be "good community members" by other metrics, supporting Rotary, charity functions, etc., because, at the least, being a good community member creates good business connections.
Finally: Does meritocracy favor those in the group that gets to decide merit? Yeah, probably most of the time, unless some metric of otherness is given merit - for example, if we think decisions are made better in teams consisting of people who are not all from the group that holds power.
Also, valuing diversity is not contrary to being libertarian: http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/03/libertarianism-and-american-philosophy.html
Eric
P.S. I know this is a bit delayed. It is my first post in a year or two, and it took a while to figure out how to get around the changes in email address. Thanks Stephen for getting me back on the list with an address from which I can send!
-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" value="+12028853867" target="_blank">(202) 885-3867 fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" value="+12028851190" target="_blank">(202) 885-1190
email: [hidden email]
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:
Following Glen's lead to move the discussion of meritocracy here:
Nick... I think your understanding of a meritocracy is limited. To rephrase your assertions:Meritocracies favor the children of the meritorious, if those parents do something to instil their meritorious nature into their children. My guess is that the variance explained by this at mid-adulthood is under .3. Regression towards the mean is a strong effect, and having gone to a better elementary school can only help you so much at age 40.
Meritocracies favor those who disregard their families, unless individuals also have to compete with meritorious couples and larger social units that work collaboratively together to achieve even greater ends. Sure, we often socially assign the "merit" to an individual member of such groups, but that is a different problem all together.
Meritocracies favor those who disregard their communities, unless regard for community is taken into account as one of the metrics of merit. For example, in a healthy company (mythic entities, it would sometimes seem) "managers" are people skilled at nurturing communities of a particular size and scale. They also tend to be "good community members" by other metrics, supporting Rotary, charity functions, etc., because, at the least, being a good community member creates good business connections.
Finally: Does meritocracy favor those in the group that gets to decide merit? Yeah, probably most of the time, unless some metric of otherness is given merit - for example, if we think decisions are made better in teams consisting of people who are not all from the group that holds power.
Also, valuing diversity is not contrary to being libertarian: http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/03/libertarianism-and-american-philosophy.html
Eric
P.S. I think this is my first post in a year or two. Hi everyone! And thanks Stephen for getting the change in my email address fixed.
-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" target="_blank">(202) 885-3867 fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" target="_blank">(202) 885-1190
email: [hidden email]
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 5:52 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:
Just to be a little more clear and to avoid the presumption that we're not making some progress already, I have something like this in mind:
Human Resources Management Ontology
http://mayor2.dia.fi.upm.es/oeg-upm/index.php/en/ontologies/99-hrmontology
But my suspicion is that such an ontology will still be lacking in a large number of the variables we consider when thinking about an individual's health, well-being, happiness, usefulness, and value/merit ... most notably it's missing all the ecological, biological, and medical ontologies. (Don't _you_ think about ticks and the epidemiology of lyme disease when you consider a new job offer?)
And, of course, even though the ontolog[y|ies] might be huge, it's still just a start. We'd need to use such a scheme to build and falsify models of how any given individual or company (vector) might wander in the spanned space. Are there unreachable pockets? Unconnnected pockets? Etc.
--
⇒⇐ glen
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