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Quote of the Day – Meritocracy
“The SAT 50 years ago pulled a lot of smart people out of every little town in America and funneled them into a small number of elite institutions, where they married each other, had kids, and moved to an even smaller number of elite neighborhoods. We created the most effective meritocracy ever.”
“The problem with the meritocracy, is that it leeches all the empathy out of your society … The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid—I mean all the stuff that our ruling class is.”
— Tucker Carlson
Let me observe Carlson’s quote about meritocracy echoes something Tennyson wrote in the poem The Passing of Arthur:
The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
It is not our vices which are corrupting as it is our virtues carried to an extreme.
Published in General
As a former lawyer who can’t find a decent plumber, . . .
Some people in this thread seem to view intelligence as a virtue (and yes, this seems to be the attitude of our meritocratic “elites”). It isnt. It’s a trait, like blond hair or blue eyes*. Virtues (prudence, honesty, compassion, etc.) are things we can choose to do – or not.
* When I was in school a distinction was made between “fluid” and “crystalline” intelligence. The former (and I’m not sure how to describe it, other than the direct perception , without conscious effort, of relations) is a trait, an accident of birth. The latter is the application of knowledge, of facts and of techniques of problem solving, which can be acquired through education and experience. A lot of people without exceptional amounts of the former have quite a lot of the latter. And many people with a lot of the former can get by without a great deal of the latter. Which explains @drbastiat‘s observation in # 51 above. Achievement always requires effort (which is a virtue).
If you had visited UCSB you would have stayed. UCSD is a fine institution, but their bong team is Busch League.
There was an article some years ago (in the Atlantic, I think) that pointed out that this suctioning of talent out of smaller communities had the unanticipated effect of reducing the social capital in such communities. That this was to the benefit of the individuals so elevated is beyond question, but whether it is beneficial to society as a whole is much less obvious.
I’m not convinced it’s better for the individuals elevated. I think communities are healthier and more successful with diversity of this sort. What are the depression rates of high iq people in high iq environments vs high iq people in diverse environments?
Or as the old question goes, is it better to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond?
High IQ often coincides with social awkwardness and loneliness, so it isn’t always a boon to the person.
You apparently encountered some of the same “various reasons” that I did…
But not necessarily to those with high SAT scores, since SAT scores do not correlate to either physical ability or strength . . .
Seawriter
Yeah, intelligence is like money; once a minimum threshold is hit, more doesn’t significantly increase happiness or success.
Ha. I don’t have a high opinion of the worth of SAT scores. I actually got a perfect score myself, but suspect that I am not nearly as smart or creative as most people on Ricochet… I’m just really good at taking tests :)
Whoa!
I would say this started at least twenty years ago.
The problem with Ivy league schools is that they get so many good applicants that it is hard for students to stand out. That is why the diversity markers have taken over.
This point rings true and it does affect those who overcome tough backgrounds. I speak from experience where my background was economically poor, dysfunctional family, and social awkwardness. In my youthful folly I would look down at the individuals who don’t make it through a similar background. Only through experiences that caused personal growth, maturity, and introspection did I begin to have more compassion for individuals. I still hold people accountable but I now have a healthy dose of understanding and compassion knowing that but for the Grace of God go I.
That’s not very impressive. I got a 400 on my SAT’s!
From what I’ve seen, a lot of absurdly smart people have a tough go of it in “regular” jobs (i.e. those not in things like astrophysics). Their brains just work differently, which comes off as “weird” to people and makes it tough to fit in. For those who are willing to start at the bottom and work their way up, there’s also an element of “You’re too smart for this [entry level] job and should be doing something better” that makes it tough.
(The latter effect happens not infrequently to people with advanced degrees who want jobs not directly related to their field of study – that being a credential thing and not a brainpower thing, but a related concept.)
I’d have gone and put a phony number on my forehead, something outrageous like 257. Then when people asked me if it was legit I would just smile condescendingly and tell them “I can’t explain it to you, you wouldn’t understand”.
(PS: My IQ REALLY IS 257. No, seriously. Don’t believe me? See the comment above.) ;-)
RA, don’t be obtuse (see what I did there?). He was hitting on you.
Yes it is. I scored high enough on certain tests to fill out the forms in various courses that said later on in my career as an officer, I would like to get screened for going back to be a professor (“P,” in WP terminology).
Strangely, I never got a call.
May well be true. But I had a “higher” calling.
Good job, Mama Toad! Yowza!
He was not!
I was thinking the same thing.
Yup. 2 fun stories from my 3 years at Barnes and Noble.
Been that way for a while. Of the 2 perfect scorers in my class, one, a white male, got right into Harvard as his parents were alums. The other, a Korean girl, got wait-listed instead – this was 1994 and the Ivies were known at the time for turning away Asians to meet diversity quotas.
One of the funniest, truest movies of the last 50 years, Broadcast News, supports your conclusions. Especially the part about “appearance.”
Was, too.
I’m not among the vaunted 1600 SAT scorers here – 3 questions wrong on the verbal kept me from that – but there were two distinct advantages to getting that score.
The first is that it is an outstanding way to mock people who think that I was admitted to engineering school because of my reproductive organs. “So very sorry that I took the place of a more deserving man. I’ll gladly give my degree to a man who outscored me on the math SAT and wasn’t admitted. Oh, wait, that’s never happened. Ever.”
The second is that it made it a win-win for me to attend my alma mater, where I’m a legacy. My family member was thrilled to see someone finally go; it was the perfect school for me, academically and socially; and the powers-that-be were quite happy to take me and not gritting their teeth about the whole thing.
Ah! I kept remembering that our son scored 800 and 750 and I couldn’t remember a third category. Guess that’s been a couple years ago ;)
Re: comment 16 and comment 28
St. Augustine,
I’ll be reading your paper before the day is over. But, from your video, and from the little I’ve already read of your paper, I get enough of the general idea of Plato’s 8th book of The Republic to wonder this: While I know John Keats would have to have known the Bible’s Song of Songs, couldn’t he have been influenced by Plato’s work when he wrote the poem I read this past week ?
The poem is The Eve of St. Agnes. To me, after seeing your video and paper, this poem’s Beadsman and Porphyro seem to represent reason and our ability to reason. Madeline and the old servant, Angela, seem to represent our spirit. The wassailing revelers, who finally collapse stupefied, (and, so, make it possible for Prophyro and Madeline to sneak out of the castle together) are our appetites. The castle, the beautiful clothing that Madeline sheds, the same clothing on the floor, the Beadsman’s poverty and lack of protection from the cold, Angela’s decrepitude—all these seem to allude to our bodies. The cold is death.
Have you read this poem? A lot of stuff written about it that I read on the Internet—stuff written by very degreed people—seems dense. But there’s an enthralling performance of it on You Tube put up by someone calling himself Gottfried Leibniz.