[rachofsunshine]

The interesting thing about this - if we assume for a moment that it is true, which I think it mostly is - is that it implies one of three things should be true.

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CASE 1: This gatekeeping is wrong, and is actually excluding a lot of good people and imposing a lot of arbitrary if not outright stupid requirements. In that case, there ought to be a huge market inefficiency. You should be able to build an elite university by finding all the smart people who didn't do a bunch of dumb signaling extracurriculars, or build a great company by hiring all the smart people who don't have great resumes, etc.

CASE 2: This gatekeeping would be wrong in isolation, but the smartest people mostly "play the game", and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we collectively agreed that smart people spend six months when they're 16 hopping on one foot in a purple clown suit, then everyone smart would do that, and it would actually become a good signal of e.g. conscientiousness and class.

CASE 3: This gatekeeping is right even in isolation, and we've gotten to a point where we can, with some reasonable reliability, tell who really won't amount to anything. And if that's the case...is it really a matter of hard work or virtue if we can tell ahead of time what you will or won't succeed at? And if it isn't, is it just to leave you to suffer because you happen not to be gifted in particular ways, whether in intelligence or in motivation or in class signals?

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I'm not really sure which one of these is true, to be honest. I've got my chips on case 1 at the moment, but I have no idea whether I'm right. And I think it's a decent ethical test to ask yourself what you believe about "meritocracy" in each of those cases. Personally, I think:

- In case 1, we don't really run into a conflict, because the incentives run the right direction. The market is just being irrational right now, and you can make your fortune exploiting that irrationality. That would be great news! The problem in case 1 ought to solve itself, if perhaps only to create new variants of the same problem.

- In case 2, the problem is fundamentally one of class. Like a peacock's tail, we've effectively created a system that demands costly signals of ability, signals that are costly to everyone. If that's the case, we should figure out how to minimize the "peacock factor" as best we can, perhaps via some form of regulation, so that we're not wasting a bunch of resources on things that fundamentally don't matter.

- In case 3, the problem is fundamentally one of (somewhat indelible) inequality. Some people will be ahead, and others behind, and it's not a matter of their decisions, but of their personalities or natures or formative experiences or whatever. And in that case, I'm not sure the idea of competing for a place in the world has any ethical justification, because it effectively means we reward those whose lives will already be inherently better and punish those whose lives will already be worse. Case 3 would undermine the entire case for a competitive social system, really.

[ndriscoll]

Personally, I believe in case 4: the gatekeeping is imagined. Maybe I just haven't perceived the changes and haven't noticed myself losing touch, but I was a B student who graduated from the local state university in the early 10's, and I've done fine. In fact, I've done far better than I could've imagined as a kid. My estimation is it's maybe people who are already in good careers that have created a bubble for themselves where they think their kids' only options are to go to Stanford or live in poverty.

I'm not seeing the issue with case 3 though. Our "competitive" social system isn't about being sporting or "fair" (in some cosmic sense where we consider counterfactual universes to try to distill some idealized metric for intrinsic "goodness" of each person). It's (ideally) about people's actual merit. What can they contribute? What do they contribute? The real world is full of people that have needs, and it makes sense to reward and appreciate people who help meet those needs.

If you had upper-class parents who had plenty of time and resources to raise you to be kind, thoughtful, wise, knowledgeable, strong, and driven, then congratulations! You're actually a great person. We should reward that because we want to see more of it.

[portaouflop]

It’s all luck and randomness - that’s why both of you fail to come up with any rational explanation.

You can be upper class and get all the best resources etc and still be a piece of shit human being that has a net negative impact.

You can be dirt poor and not have any education or even hope - and you can become one of the most influential people on the planet.

[ndriscoll]

Yes, there is an element of randomness. I was addressing the idea that if someone is nominally a great person, then it "doesn't count" as much if they were lucky enough to have good genetics or mentorship or circumstances or whatever, which is nonsense. The only reason to care about circumstances is so that we know what to encourage more of to shift that probability distribution (evidently I don't think "money" is the critical factor here).

[clayhacks]

We should look at statistics, not your anecdotal case. I’m sure there are plenty of people like you who are pretty smart, but perhaps not a genius. Statistically that is an outlier and most people are doing worse than their parents.

Having the qualities you’ve listed does not automatically entitle you or earn you rewards. Frequently there is extra buffer with having generational wealth to help give leg up and extra chances to do better.

[ndriscoll]

What does it mean to say statistically people are doing worse than their parents? By what metrics?

Educational attainment has been increasing for decades so it's hard to believe that it's become significantly more difficult to get in. The school I went to has an 86% acceptance rate, for example. It's also hard to believe that going to a state school is going to doom you. There just aren't enough ivy graduates for that to be practical. The BLS stats also indicate that getting a math/engineering/CS degree is a pretty solid choice and is more likely than not to bring you success (e.g. the median personal income with those degrees is a decent amount higher than the overall median household income. Want to have a single-income household? You can do that while living better than average).

If comparing to one's parents, obviously the bar is different if you come from lower vs. upper-middle classes, which is sort of my point. My B performance put me in a much better position than my parents. I could've done a decent amount worse and still met that bar. The child of an MIT-graduated engineer has a higher bar to meet, but that's not actually necessary to do okay in life.

I didn't imply that having these qualities will automatically reward you. I was addressing the idea that if we can tell ahead of time who will "amount to something", those people are somehow less deserving of their success, which is ridiculous. My teachers identified that I was likely to be successful starting in kindergarten, but I've still had to spend the rest of my life consistently showing up and doing the work. I'm sure I also could be more aggressive about chasing career success, but I'm happy not to. If others want to do that, good for them. Maybe they had engineer tiger parents that taught them not to be such slackers, and now they can be rewarded for that. If they're happy then that's great.

[watwut]

> This gatekeeping is wrong, and is actually excluding a lot of good people and imposing a lot of arbitrary if not outright stupid requirements. In that case, there ought to be a huge market inefficiency. You should be able to build an elite university by finding all the smart people who didn't do a bunch of dumb signaling extracurriculars

The University you went to matter and the smart people know that. It would be dumb of them to go to your no-name, untested university. Smart people will do what is good for them and practically, doing those dumb signaling extracurriculars is better for their future then skip on them and bet on your new establishment.

[bradlys]

The issue with this is assuming all “smart people” value social status elements.

A lot of us “smart people” when we’re younger rebel against social status qualifiers and so on due to ideals and hopes that we can change the system. It’s only with vast experience that you realize that the system is so hopelessly fucked and you’ll never make a dent in anything. You can have incredible ambition and then watch it get drowned by a shit world.

I’m pretty sure everyone’s hopes for universal healthcare in the US died along with Bernie’s run for presidency. We haven’t talked about healthcare in politics for about eight years now. That should give you an idea of how optimistic people were and then saw the system completely fuck them over and realized there was never going to be a hope for change.

It’s also why most people are apathetic about most every societal issue right now. We all hoped we could change things but now we realize the capitalists own it all and we’ll never be able to do anything.

[watwut]

Being able to pay better healthcare, food and housing is not merely social status element. Having a choice in terms of which employer you will have is not merely social status element. The fact is, if you have a choice between no-name new university and elite school, you will have more control and agency over your own life if you pick the elite school.

Rebels are found on the whole spectrum of "smart" however you define smart and we are talking about statistics here.

[bradlys]

Strawman.

There is no reason to believe someone who is rebelling will do all the socially accepted status seeking norms to get into an elite college. They will not seek an elite college to begin with because they do not believe in the status of it.

[watwut]

> They will not seek an elite college to begin with because they do not believe in the status of it.

My claim is that smart will believe in advantages it gives them, because well it gives them better position in life.

Rebels can be both smart and dumb. But neither group has any reason to go to no-name university that was just created.

[ndriscoll]

Being smart doesn't mean you value optimizing for economic advantage in life. If you can coast through a stress-free life and have fun with friends while still being decently successful, you might opt to do that rather than grind at a status competition. And that's just when being analytical about it; people may also make irrational decisions due to things like depression where they just stop caring altogether.

The choices aren't elite or no-name. There are large institutions called state schools where tons of normal people go. They're not very picky (the one I went to has an 86% acceptance rate and a student body in the 10s of thousands), and if you're shooting for middle or upper-middle class they're probably fine.

The median engineering graduate for example makes $100k[0], and almost tautologically did not go to an elite school. They can afford food, housing, and healthcare just fine.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/field-of-degree/engineering/engineer...