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JDaveF's avatar

Meritocracy is racist! We must insist more unintelligent lazy people be appointed to positions of power!!!

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Jim Jackson's avatar

It's likely that another variable, work ethic, is correlated with cognitive ability, and thus is a confounder with regard to wealth in a causal model. A genetic covariance between IQ and diligence could conceivably have been selected for prehistorically. Alternatively in complex societies, the feedback of wealth to cognitively superior persons could simply incentivize diligence.

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Norman G. Angleson's avatar

Meritocracy is racist so we need to replace it with kakistocracy.

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TheNeverEndingFall's avatar

Daniel Markovitz the author of "The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite" was on Sam Harris' podcast this week.

I haven't listened to it yet. Sam Harris is "red-pilled" on IQ. I wonder how that podcast went. I'll give it a listen.

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Emil O. W. Kirkegaard's avatar

What did you learn?

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TheNeverEndingFall's avatar

You're better off watching this 1 hour Glenn Loury podcast than the 2 hour Sam Harris conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsdpnU10he8

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TheNeverEndingFall's avatar

Nothing. It's a boring and false premise and he often conflates "winner take all-ism" with meritocracy. Standard anti-meritocracy drivel.

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Joe Canimal's avatar

Re: "maybe the grading standards have been eroded to hide social gaps etc." -- the 70s and 80s saw a rapid alteration in school standards in Britain, likely lowering the ceiling for IQ. Cf. https://tidesofhistory.com/2021/04/20/james-callaghan-and-the-great-education-debate/

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