Remember folks, we cannot cherry pick from the failed science of psychology even when it appears to be interesting.
Sounds like we should be less generous to CS findings, not more generous to other fields. (And yes, we should be skeptical of findings in CS as well.)
> given the hardware to do so is limited to such few entities...
That said - what research is happening in CS that needs specific hardware? The theoretical stuff can still happen on chalk boards, and interesting algorithmic or technical advances tend to propagate quickly precisely because someone will reproduce them.
We really shouldn't.
> given the fact that we cannot reproduce many findings in our own field (computer science)
Computer science isn't a "science". Computer science is really a branch of mathematics. For example, when you study computation theory, you prove theorems (deduction). You don't generate a hypothesis and test it.
> given the hardware to do so is limited to such few entities...
Unless you are talking about computer engineering, which isn't really science either but engineering. Computer science isn't done in "hardware". Maybe you should go learn what computer science is.
For example, if you propose some new technique to make databases faster (e.g. "store tuples column-wise instead of row-wise"), you'll implement it and run various workloads with and without the technique enabled. That gives you a quantitative measurement of the merit of the technique.
The engineering artifact is just a by-product. More often than not, the code is thrown away or never used again, once the experiments have been run and the paper has been published.
I came to an opinion that most of the current AI research can be easily reproduced on the small scale. CoT is possibly the only exception as it sounds like it requires certain emergent behavior, but even there I am not sure it is impossible to retrofit to tiny models.
"Analyzing fairness ideals, we find that MBA students are less likely to be strict meritocrats than the broader population"
You can't escape 3+ billion years of evolution through natural selection.
Yes, everyone looks after their own interests, but some more than others, like in this example the students above: > implement substantially more unequal earnings distributions than the average American
I.e., unequal earnings distribution looks better and better as you climb the social ladder because you benefit more and more. On the other hand, if you are at the bottom you may strongly support more equal distibution because that can only benefit you.
Same reasoning as to why workers unions emerged from the bottom, not the top.
The group that maximizes their long-term reproduction is the one that inherits the earth.
> The group that maximizes their long-term reproduction is the one that inherits the earth.
Yes, that's an interesting paradox in a world where the poorer tend to have more (surviving) children that the richer. But it emerged only very recently on evolutionary scales.
This is why in a village where everyone knows each other people help each other but in a holiday resort locals screw tourists.
1. Total compensation varies obscenely within the organization. It correlates moderately with intelligence and in no way with effort. Some of the most useless articles you work with make the most money.
2. Leadership really, really, really does not want peers sharing compensation info. I have been offered seven figure equity boosters on the condition of absolute confidentiality. This is the “efficiency” metric of the linked paper. If it is hard for leadership to distribute compensation in ways that would be seen as non-meritocratic, they lose an enormous amount of power over the management team.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
My wife works for a very large company that you've heard of. Everyone is assigned a pay band that corresponds to their title. Everyone can go on to the portal and see approximately how much someone else earns (within a narrow range) based on their level and geographical location.
It hasn't brought compensation up. If anything, it has kept it down. My wife was objectively underpaid for a while and on the verge of leaving, but HR wouldn't allow higher pay because it didn't fit the band. They pointed to her peers and showed that they were earning the same amount. Eventually she did an end-run around it by transferring divisions and getting promoted to another level, but it would have been so much easier for everyone if her boss could have just given her a raise even though it violated the pay band.
I have friends who work for the local government including the state run university. There is a website where anyone can go search for their name and see exactly how much they were paid per year, down to the penny. Having browsed the website I can say it has not resulted in higher compensation, as they're all paid surprisingly little.
1. There are skillsets/capabilities that the organization finds difficult to get on the market, as well as brings disproportionate profits to the organization. For example, a database company may need to hire two software engineers, one writing CRUD apps or infrastructure automation, and the other one for distributed systems implementation. In such a setting, while both people's titles may say "software engineer", the reality is that one is paid much higher than the other, both because the database is the bread and butter for that company, while the CRUD/infrastructure thing may be a very small part used by an internal team or by a few customers.
2. People usually like to believe that they're at least better than average and bring the same level of contributions to the team. This is most definitely not the case, and an engineering manager, VP, sales manager who simply appears to talk to people all day long may actually have important contributions such as overseeing key projects, talking to customers etc. which may be the thing that the company needs to lock that large sale or prevent customer attrition, or whatever the case may be.
The thing is that people will often jump to favoritism or bias or another explanation, and in some cases, they absolutely happen. But that is not the only explanation, and without data to distinguish between the two, people will gravitate towards the uncharitable interpretation.
Many people born into or groomed for an elite status (via inherited wealth, rich families, strong support systems, etc) are rationally self preservationists. They were born on third base and know it. Many subconsciously know they do not belong there and cannot live up to the level of performance, intellectualism and hard work that laid the foundation for their current state or that others had to endure. Thus, they need support from the system to preserve their current state.
People who became elite in nature, are far more likely to value meritocracy. They lacked support, didnt know there was a "system" to be leveraged (eg getting unlimited time for an SAT score with a doctors note), had a chip on their shoulder, grinded their way to be top of their class, were the most productive, knocked on more doors, took risks others would consider irrational, etc.
At every level they've had to fight for what they have in a world where the criteria is often opaque. Being genuinely competent, they don't have an innate imposter syndrome, and thus, they value a system that has a clear and objective criteria for them and others, because they are confident they will operate fine within it.
EDIT 1: to add: With the above in mind, the more useful analysis in my opinion would be to assess the extent to which ethical frameworks and the role of fairness and meritocracy differ between those who were self-made (eg 1st of their generation to go to an IVY or get an MBA) vs not in "elite" positions of wealth or power.
EDIT 2: I'm not suggesting all people born rich don't deserve their success or do not possess these qualities of hard work, etc.
All they really say is some people have an advantage. It doesn't mean they have it easy. We get advantages from all parts of life, and refusing to engage with recognizing them is a decision, but I don't find it particularly healthy.
Due to various reasons outside of my control, my life has been objectively easier than others. It doesn't mean it was easy. Just easier. If even one or two of those things changed my life could have ended up very different.
I've had challenges in my life. At no time have I ever lived somewhere for more than two weeks with no running water, because I was born American and sufficiently affluent and lucky to be both in towns with municipal water and in buildings connected to that water. So I get to completely cross off "Has clean running water all the time" from my list of needs and wants, and not everyone does.
... and I gotta say, potential employers like you a lot better when you've had a shower that morning.
A commonly-held belief is that that statement is true and we deal with all of the follow-on effects of that belief as a result.
This is not a statement about competence, but about inflated ego.
Or use the accurate term: elitists
The people popularly referred to as “elites” are in practice status seekers who adhere to elitism, the belief that certain people are superior to others. Using the word “elites” without quotes is really creepy
Milton Hershey is known for his candy company. Somewhat less known is the fact that his successful candy company was his fourth; his three previous bankrupted (mostly due to fluctuations in prices moving candy from tenable to untenable as a business) and he'd burned through so much of the family fortune pursuing them that his relatives cut him off from further loans. His father before him had liquidated his own piece of the family fortune speculating on opportunities. It could easily have been the case that those speculations might have paid off, which would have made Hershey the son elite category 1 (in status); similarly, if Hershey hadn't found one last source of investment money from a former employee, his candy-making aspirations would have ended when the family cut him off and we wouldn't know his story at all.
The system of stories we tell ourselves highlights the merit and downplays the luck; we don't remember the failure cases, including, often, the failures that predated the success. A lot of people who lacked support, didn't know there was a system to be leveraged, and grinded as far as they could before something critical broke are out there; they just don't get to give TED talks on what complete failure tastes like. Nobody gets to hear the lecture from Henry Hershey on "I mortgaged my family's future on opportunities that, had they paid off, would have made my son and wife wealthy and comfortable for the rest of their days... But none of them paid off and it was all ultimately objectively wasted effort, energy that would have been better spent tending a modest homestead and making it thrive in a small but sustainable way."
This topic is important and the study interesting, but the methods exhibit the same generalizability bias as the famous Dunning-Kruger study.
The referenced MBA students -- and by extension, the elites -- only reflect 271 students across two years, all from the same university.
By analyzing biased samples, we risk misguided discourse on a sensitive subject.
@dang
"In the efficiency cost treatment, the winner was determined by a coin flip and redistribution incurs an “adjustment cost” that reduces the total earnings available to participants. For every $1.00 reduction in the winner’s earnings, the loser’s earnings increase by only $0.50"
So out of $6, the average MBA of the 271 sampled redistributed $1.30 to the loser who was not obligated to receive any of it. So 22% redistribution. Less if the redistribution has costs. Seems fair?
No.
How do you tell?
We need laws to stop people discriminating against whole swathes of people for reasons that have zero to do with merit.
davidw•1h ago
YeCKqkhM•56m ago
davidw•48m ago
The point is that 'merit' and the 'elite' in the US feel like they're an ocean apart right now in a lot of cases.