Comment by josephg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josephg | Hacker News Reader

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Sure; but we don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of the good. “Fair capitalism” also doesn’t exist in society. But in both cases it’s worth asking - do we want more capitalism / meritocracy or do we want less? Is the problem that our assessment tools are too easy for rich people to game, or is the problem meritocracy itself?

Random selection would get obviously terrible outcomes too, but for different reasons. I’ve yet to hear anyone who complains about the inherent biases in meritocracy propose any system which isn’t just as pathological. Like, what does “fair” actually mean here? Should we select based on IQ tests? That’s illegal. Select based on conscientious? That biases for people who have free time - and hence it biases for wealth. Select randomly? Actually it turns out society benefits more from educating our best and brightest.

“Meritocracy“ is never perfect. But it’s better than any other system I can think of. Complaining is easy. If you were in charge, how would you make it better?

Random selection is important to know if your system actually improves anything, or if the results are only good because the input was good to begin with.

For all we know, those universities that only pick the best and brightest may actually produce inferior results that are nevertheless still very good.

Thomas Sowell, when challenged on the success of charter schools in New York as being biased due to a "better selection" of students, was able to point out that this bias was limited by the fact that admission was based on a lottery.

> Random selection is important to know if your system actually improves anything, or if the results are only good because the input was good to begin with.

Right, this is the scientific approach. You have to disprove the null hypothesis, otherwise your theory is unsubstantiated.

Great! This is getting closer to a testable hypothesis. I’m imagining “students chosen randomly from the applicant pool, and students chosen based on merit will have indistinguishable academic results”. This isn’t perfect yet but it’s closer to being testable.

However, my hazy understanding from psych lectures years past is that similar experiments have already happened and the results are in. University achievement was found to be correlated with big 5 consciousness and IQ. (I can’t remember the effect sizes.) I have no idea how well the US collage admissions process selects for those traits. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I would bet money a lottery would lower the average academic achievement of collage graduates.

(Edit: first result on google scholar talks about the positive correlation between GPA and consciousness: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/per.732 )

> I’m imagining “students chosen randomly from the applicant pool, and students chosen based on merit will have indistinguishable academic results”. This isn’t perfect yet but it’s closer to being testable.

That's not the point though.

Remember, the article proposes to draw a random sample from all applicants who are "good enough", so you would have some sort of aptitude test. However, instead of selecting the best N results from that test, you select a random N.

I wouldn't hypothesize that the results are going to indistinguishable or even that they will be better. I would argue that total welfare may improve as a result and that is worth testing.

The reason is as follows: If you only take the "best and brightest", there's little room for improvement.

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