Five Lies Our Culture Tells – The cultural roots of our political problems | Hacker News Reader

Five Lies Our Culture Tells – The cultural roots of our political problems

nytimes.com

34 pointspseudolus13 comments

I used to believe in meritocracy. I used to think it was an objective and fair way to structure society.

As the article expounded, it just ends with people who has less to contribute being marginalized.

Meritocracy is something natural. Maybe less obvious today when we live in relative wealth and the fact that life is a struggle is obfuscated.

But in older times when failure led to starvation, increased vulnerability and death it was probably more clear. Those who contributed most was highly regareded by the simple fact that their existence increased your own chance of survival.

> Those who contributed most was highly regareded by the simple fact that their existence increased your own chance of survival.

Long term I think that you are right. But in the short term may be more useful an idiot that is on your side that a great contributor that plays against you.

It is better a 20% of 100 than a 5% of 150.

So, meritocracy and tribalism are two forces pushing in opposite directions. The past seems full of both.

And is very natural to mistake tribalism for meritocracy (my group deserves more because we are better - true or not).

What you mean by > great contributor that plays against you.

How? How contributor plays against you if you don't contribute anything?

I think the problem is not meritocracy but an idea that you can assign each person a number that is sum of their contributions to the world and that number can be roughly estimated. Then what follows is simplistic view that worth is a one dimensional thing and you can use < operator to compare people's worth. And this is childish, unnecessary and harmful.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." - https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/martin_luther_king_jr_115...

We give far too much importance to personality and achievement, and far too little importance to character.

What should the selection process be for the doctor who treats your life-threatening illness? For the pilot who holds your life in his hands?

"At the time of the accident, van Zanten was KLM's chief flight instructor, with 11,700 flight hours, of which 1,545 hours were on the 747." - Wikipedia. Meritocratic thinking was a major cause of the worst air accident ever.

With doctors, I think it's well established that the academic hurdle is pointlessly high. I.e, instead of picking the top 10 applicants to med school, you could shortlist 50, pick 10 at random, and the doctors who graduated would be indistinguishable. I couldn't cite any of the evidence for that.

>Meritocratic thinking was a major cause of the worst air accident ever.

What's the theory here? A random person off the street would be less likely than an experienced pilot to make such a mistake?

>I.e, instead of picking the top 10 applicants to med school, you could shortlist 50, pick 10 at random, and the doctors who graduated would be indistinguishable.

Sure, test scores are an imperfect proxy for competence, especially at the extreme ends. You're still allocating the slots to people you deem competent.

Meritocracy came to America in a big way starting in the 1950's, propelled by factors such as the space race and the discrediting of racism. It was a good idea. The unforeseen consequence of it was that it displaced the idea that wealth and power gave some additional responsibility to the wealthy and powerful to sustain the fairness of the social contract. When Americans adopted the concept that society ought to reward work of great merit, cause and effect were conflated and those of great wealth and great power were largely liberated from taboos against excessive exploitation, solipsism and hedonism.

Much of society is built on lies and delusions. Stories. Human beings are incapable of unraveling truth or reality from the stories they tell each other and themselves.

That is in fact metaphysics. And claiming that you don't believe in metaphysics and instead in science or whatever other ideology is itself metaphysics. Fundamental nature of reality for people are stories. And power tends to twist these stories to meet their own needs. The needs of capital and power in world is such that it needs us to believe these things. That only merit is to be rewarded, because that's how you make more money by merit seeking individuals looking to prove themselves. That wealth is to be admired, if you don't admire them then what are they playing this game for? That your isolation caused by their games and their metaphysics is your fault and you can fix it yourself without any of your own shared stories with other people.

>Career success is fulfilling. This is the lie we foist on the young >I remember when the editor of my first book called to tell me it had made the best-seller list. It felt like … nothing.

Man is projecting.

This article is crap

>Life is an individual journey. This is the lie books like Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” tell. In adulthood, each person goes on a personal trip and racks up a bunch of experiences, and whoever has the most experiences wins.

He made up some idiotic statemet, that no one brings up, and act like it was problem in society.

Oh, another David Brooks article desperately trying to insist the root of our political problems is cultural preferences among upper-middle class people.

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