A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you

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A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you

I believe in meritocracies.

I don't believe in getting trophies for third place.

I believe second place can be pretty good-----at least one really made an effort, and came up just short.

In golf, second place wins you lots of money. But...you're still not a winner (but you're not a loser, either).

The only "losers," I believe, are people who don't even make the attempt.

Saying this, when I was 12, I won a third-place bowling trophy; all I wanted to do was to throw the damn thing away.

Excerpt from the speech "Citizenship In A Republic" delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." -- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), former Prime-Minister of England

In my opinion, Clifton Mark could well have been the kind of critic whom Sir Winston referred to.

People have to try-----that's all there is to it.....

That's one of my core beliefs.

No one ever won a race by staying home from it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4Oyi1T-HmU

Growth mindset tempers the effects of poverty on academic achievement: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/31/8664.short

"Furthermore, we find that students from lower-income families were less likely to hold a growth mindset than their wealthier peers, but those who did hold a growth mindset were appreciably buffered against the deleterious effects of poverty on achievement: students in the lowest 10th percentile of family income who exhibited a growth mindset showed academic performance as high as that of fixed mindset students from the 80th income percentile."

Characteristics of a growth mindset (emphasis mine):

1. Intelligence can be developed.

2. Embrace challenges.

3. See effort as the path to mastery.

4. Learn from criticism.

5. Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others.

It's very difficult to have a growth mindset if you don't believe in a meritocracy. There are things in life you can control, and things you can't control. Focusing on the things you can control will lead to greater success.

I do think it's horrible when we have a system that leads low IQ people to a life of perpetual struggle. We beat people with an ugly stick for what they can't control and then beat them more when they cave in some way as a result. The ideal would be to reinforce the 'have a good work ethic, be responsible, and things will turn out' and then actually make it true. When that persistently fails people, especially for things they have no control over, you get incredibly toxic subcultures and you get third-world pockets in first-world countries.

Yes, reward the exceptional, give them high status and give them the right to be rich - I'm on board with that. OTOH don't tell the people at the other end that they'd be better off dead. If we don't get our heads around the shrinking of the workplace and permanent replacement of workers we'll be cultivating several generations of sociopaths. If we go that way we'll get the future we deserve.

OK, there's "casual luck" and "genetic luck".

I don't see how acknowledging either will benefit us.

Usain Bolt fastest runner