[abaymado]

I can attest to this. I grew up outside of the US, where starting in middle school, there are national exams that determine what field of study you are going to end up in. A higher score is needed for STEM majors; the rest who pass end up in Arts and Business. If you fail, your only option is manual labor.

For students who don't come from "privilege" it was sink or swim, and those who survived the waves actually deserved their badge of honor. But for students whose parents were "fortunate" enough to send them to private school, they became a part of a corrupt system, whose only incentive is to have its students pass the national exams. Most private schools had high graduate rate, due to them bribing testing officials to allow cheating.

I was one of those privileged students who went a private school, who passed the national test without even reading a single question. I paid the price for it once I started college in the US. But unlike my origin, I had a chance to take a break from college and recalibrate my brain in a sense and find joy in learning.

If failing were normalized and did not have so much social stigma or financial implications (to an extent), we would produce more educated people instead of once just chasing credentials.

[godelski]

I think this is a more important comment than people might take it for.

We all want meritocracy. Really. But the problem is that meritocracies are never really meritocratic. The problem is that it's actually really hard to measure these things. It looks simple at first glance, but once you dive into things it starts to change.

Let's change your example above and ignore cheating. Let's say there's no cheating. The rich and well off still tend to have the advantage. Let's even pretend that a rich person and poor person goes to the same school, in the same class. It's more likely that rich person will get extra tutoring for those exams. The more important those exams are, the more valuable those tutors become (allowing them to charge more and more).

Are there not test taking strategies? The mere existence of this should tell you that the test is measuring something more than knowledge.

I'm just using this as a simple example but I'd encourage others to think more deeply about it because these things do matter if we're going to try to make a meritocracy. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but I'm saying one of the most critical parts to creating a meritocracy is recognizing the limitations in the metrics. It's an alignment problem and Goodhart always comes back to bite you. As soon as you become complacent you drift further from meritocracy.

Meritocracy will always be a dream. We should chase our dreams, but we need to recognize the difference between dreams and reality. You'll never make those dreams come true if you can't

[pclowes]

Standardized testing so far is the worst solution, except for all the others.

Sure, wealthy people can pay for standardized testing prep. However, test prep is a much lower barrier than having to pay for exotic experiences abroad to pad admissions essays or connections to gain political exposure so you know the appropriate shibboleths to utter or racial features to highlight.

[godelski]

My point implies that you have to be dynamic. If your evaluation methods are static for too long they get hacked. You have to balance that though. Change too often and your system is overly expensive and cumbersome. Change too infrequently and the cheaters end up at the top.

You're right that it can always be worse but you're wrong to say that we can't do better now

[stackbutterflow]

Is meritocracy a dream for a society?

The danger of a meritocracy is in the word. What do you merit? Your job? Fair enough. More rights? Certainly not. I'm afraid it's easy for some to start viewing others as lesser because they don't merit one's position, consequently one's status and thus should not have a seat at the important tables because after all they don't "merit" it.

What I want ultimately is that we strive to give a better life to everyone. And I don't think that's what meritocracy achieves.

[AnimalMuppet]

Well, meritocracy isn't just who gets the jobs. It's who gets the jobs that run society. And that's important for everyone, because it matters to everyone that society be competently run, rather than run by incompetents who have important parents.

[godelski]

  > I'm afraid it's easy for some to start viewing others as lesser

We already do this and we've done it throughout history too. There's always some excuse people will make to feel better than others. Wealth, religion, race, intelligence, education, all sorts of things.

But we do want high social mobility. If you work hard it is easy to climb the ladders. If you squander your wealth it is easy to slip. I'm not saying there should be no friction, the correct balance is always hard to find.

But whatever that merit is is something we need to decide as a society. It can be anything we want. It can be your work that contributes to monetary growth. It could be work that contributes to scientific growth. It could be how great of an artist you are. How popular you are. Our anything. We decide and we decide how much one means more than the other. Or we could even decide that there are no "lessers" and we could decide that the person traveling the world on their parent's dime has the same value to our society as a scientist, businessman, or artist. Mind you, I'm not talking about their value as a human, that's different

[BLKNSLVR]

This is just a thought bubble, but it makes a certain amount of sense as to why the current administration is so dead-against DEI initiatives. Whilst they say it's about merit (and we all know it's not - just look at almost all of the appointees), it's actually about the added barriers in the way of assigning the individual (not the 'type of person') that they would choose for the role, based on their personal network of contacts and / or those who have made "charitable contributions" (which probably brings them into the fold of personal network contacts anyway).

DEI quotas make it hard to bring along a whole team of boot lickers.

Or in the case of this administration, window lickers.

[charlie90]

I think people say they want a meritocracy, but they actually mean "everyone can succeed", which are different. In a meritocracy where everyone is trying hard (like in asian cultures), then hard work is not enough, not everyone can succeed. In America, there is some slack so hard workers can succeed with below average genetics (which is why, practically, meritocracy="everyone can succeed") but I think things are changing as competition is increasing.

[chadgpt3]

"Anyone can, but everyone can't" probably

[joquarky]

How can we claim to have a meritocracy if we allow inheritance?

[eudamoniac]

By not conflating wealth with merit

[cmxch]

So basically you want to tier bin people’s lives and careers because of one or two numbers?

Fuck No.

[mos_basik]

Friend, you've misunderstood. @abaymado's point was that tier binning people's lives and careers on one or two numbers is an awful approach, and doing it probably produces more poorly educated people.

(Much irony, given the topic of TFA.)

[cjbgkagh]

The problem is that as the education system degrades the products of that system gain power over it and accelerate the decline.