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Would you be OK with 80% Asian, 16% white (mostly Jewish) and 4% other if that's what meritocracy says? There are lots of people who scream meritocracy but then when it turns out they lose out to people even smarter than them they want to restrict things so that they stay on top. That's the true criteria for supporting meritocracy (assuming you're white here, I personally wouldn't mind 1% Asian, 99% white as long as those whites were some super race of 200IQ genetically modified geniuses, that's meritocracy and completely fair).
I'm sorry, but knowing your cultivated persona and giving you full credit, I'd assume that if meritocracy didn't include you, you would do all you could to subvert it.
Nah, as long as I have a passenger seat in the story of Humanity I'd be happy. Even now I realize I'll never be truly Great and have to content myself with merely being above the vast majority of people. I'm happy here and honestly would be happy working a 80th percentile pay job too if in return the low end scroungers got their just deserts (or rather, had their taxpayer funded desserts taken away). I'm not one to rebel against my superiors, that's more of a low human capital thing to do.
failed rebellions are this but successful ones are not. If the superiors are defeated in the only arena that really matters they were, evidently, not superior.
The French revolution led to the removal of the monarchy by the proles. Does this mean the proles were superior to the aristocrats?
Within twenty five years the house of Bourbon had been restored to the French throne. Does this mean the proles weren't really superior because the royal family had managed to regain power?
Since superiority/inferiority isn't something which changes at single generation level timescales we can't have the proles being superior first and then the royals, one of them were always superior, even though they both got defeated in the arena shortly after the other. So which is it?
Btw, the current Spanish Royal Family is descended from the House of Bourbon. The Spanish weren't able to permanently throw off their royals in the way the French were. So does that mean French proles were superior to the royals while Spanish proles were inferior? Even though both of the groups, being proles, have very little differentiating them?
What of it?
You do realize that the last Monarch of France (and the guy who effectively codified the current french model of government) was a Boneparte rather than a Bourbon don't you?
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The house of Bourbon coming back was a dead cat bounce. The aristocracy IE the feudal bloodline rule way of life was dealt a mortal wound when the French monarchy fell it just took a couple of decades to bleed out in the West.
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If you have a caveat for happiness that relies on a vast restructuring of society to punish people who are inferior to you then you have zero chance at happiness. Every child should learn that pinning your happiness on an external force punishing others is a fool's game anyway. You might as well say I'd be happy if all of my enemies died at my hands and their women submitted willingly to me. That's all it would take?
What's more, your obsession with race puts the lie to your belief in meritocracy. You wouldn't mind 1% 'Asian' if the 99% whites were 200 iq ubermensch? That is the same position as the one you are mocking - nobody has an issue with the idea of being ruled over by a pack of certified geniuses, they just don't believe the civilisation that is currently gooning it's way into extinction/the civilisation that couldn't figure out toilets in 2000 years is that. They think, quite rightly, that no matter how selfless and high minded anyone claims to be they will promote their in group first - and if that in group is defined ethnically meritocracy will be supplanted by racial spoils. Meritocracy by necessity requires a lack of curiosity about iq distribution, at least until it is managed by our ai overlords, because humans are not to be trusted.
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A pure meritocracy would be good, but it would be myopic to judge candidates for the American elite solely on academic performance.
I would add a judged (can be behind a curtain / audio recorded to avoid accusations of bias) debate segment - Westminster/Oxford Union style, not what passes for debate competitions in the US - to measure public speaking ability, bravado and charisma.
Then two essay questions, again judged by senior faculty. One on classical western civilization, sat in person, written in (fountain) pen, with substantial bonus points for answers in Latin or Greek. A second brief essay on philosophy (or rather ethics or logical thinking), in the mould of oxbridge philosophy entrance exam essays. This measures the ability to write, sorely lacking among many shape rotators.
I would also require a letter of approval from a sitting US senator, who (a) could have no financial relationship with anyone in the applicant’s immediate or extended family and (b) could nominate fewer than 50 students per year. This is also meritocratic in a way, since true meritocracy is familial rather than individual, and a well-connected family has enmeshed themselves in the fabric of American life well, which speaks to likely success in life.
You can add all the additional requirements that you want, provided you understand that they aren't any less subject to gamification than whatever is currently in place. So add a debate requirement and you get Oxford Union debate clubs replacing whatever other extracurricular is the hot thing to get into a good school. Give bonus points for answering in Greek and Latin and you get a bunch of kids taking Greek and Latin not because they want to but because you get bonus points. I suspect a large part of the reason that so many Asian kids did poorly in Harvard's personality evaluation is because so many of them came out of a Tiger Mom culture where their dad played by Vivek Ramaswamy gave them a list of things they needed to do to get into Harvard and made damn sure they spent every available moment of their childhood ticking off the boxes. I mean, if you had two applicants to an engineering program with identical academic credentials, which one do you choose? The one who spends his spare time tinkering with radios and other electronic devices, or the one who can do integrals in his head but can't change a tire on his car? Who do you think actually wants to be an engineer and who is just doing it because it's a good job that will make his parents proud? You can't sort this out without a non-standardized personal interview.
There's already a college that requires this. Actually several colleges, though congressmen are also included and nominations are limited to ten apiece. They're the service academies, and they are extremely difficult to get into. Who gets these nominations has fuck all to do with how connected an applicant or his family is because you don't get them by knowing the Senator or whoever but by applying on their website, at which point someone from their office looks through the same paperwork admissions does. And what makes you think Senators even give a shit who gets into Harvard or wherever? Out of 100, 12 went there at all, and only 4 for undergrad. Anyway, this isn't England, and Senators don't give a shit about gatekeeping access to the "American elite". Do you really think John Fetterman is going to nominate the kind of prigs who can answer philosophical essay questions in ancient Greek?
I echo @Jiro's suspicion that so many Asian kids did poorly in Harvard's personality evaluation because Harvard wanted and needed them to do poorly in the quest for racial balancing. One could make the opposite argument ex-ante, that kids from Tiger Mom cultures would be expected to have "better" personalities, as their greater likelihood in having experiences at being (multi-instrument) musicians, (multi-sport) athletes, multilingual, and exposure to different cultures gives them greater depth and worldliness than someone from a non-Tiger Mom culture who maybe plays one instrument or a sport or two, while speaking one language (maybe two if they're latino) and spends their increased spare time dicking around, browsing TikTok and Instagram.
And furthermore, alumni interviewers rated the personalities of Asian candidates similarly as they did white candidates. It was the admissions office, which often didn't meet the candidates, that would give Asians the worst personality scores among any racial group. Harvard's attempt at jiu-jitsuing their way out was to imply It Just So Happens it must be the case that Asians have worse essays and recommendations:
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I suspect that 100% of the reason is that Harvard just didn't want many Asians. Even if you're correct, that doesn't mean that Asians would have done any better if they had avoided that. It just means that Harvard would have picked something else where Asians were different. And if Asians avoided that too, Harvard would have picked yet something else. Even if Asians were identical to whites in all measures, Harvard would have just said they had bad personality anyway, because you can't measure personality, so there'd be no way to prove that Harvard was wrong.
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Yeah, and all that stuff…would be good.
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Going by PISA scores this is very doubtful how it would go under a genuine meritocracy
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Wow, thank you for that, I genuinely appreciate it.
Ooo, back during university my degree was full of people who thought like me. Fun times no doubt, but we do have our faults and 99% BC concentration is well beyond safe limits.
The burden can only be so high.
LMAO
Ahaha love this interaction. I can't count such a heavy burden.
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There's a country full of them that you can move to, if you like the idea so much.
This is news to me. Outside the most rarefied mathematics departments and associated spaces I've found that the BC density is basically negligible. I don't think there are any country sized structures with non-trivial levels of BC concentration.
So when you were using the first person plural here you were talking about mathematicians? I somehow doubt you'll be able to get enough of them together to conquer Ukraine.
Nah, over there I meant something different. That was more me and my ethnicity, but I am a very non-central member of my ethnicity and just because someone likes my style doesn't particularly mean they'll like being around people of my ethnicity and anyways you won't get the true BC experience with them. You're more likely to get (a facimile of) the experience with a mathematician but even then it won't be completely the same. For that your only option is to go with the OG...
I distinctly remember you saying we'd gave an even more enhanced BC experience from your coethnics, you're not exactly talking our ears off about math when you post here...
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You could settle in Vancouver, Canada, which is certainly 100% BC. Or you could build a Time Machine and travel 2025+ years into the past.
(Aside: if you’re in the UK, wouldn’t you be a BurdensomeEarl?)
Indeed. However I've never liked the term Earl personally, I even prefer the Geman Graf to the Scandi Jarl which is where the term Earl comes from (coincidentally my favourite stationery comes from Graf-von-Faber-Castell - their new pen of the year though is very garish, normally they are much more refined). Count though is so much better, the french Comte is so much a nicer word to my ears.
Also, the term Count was used by the Byzantines to denote a military leader in command of two centuries, so 200 people (yes yes I know the Roman century had only 80 soldiers, what they neglect to mention is that a century typically also had 20 slaves associated with it to take care of the 80 fighting men). Coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally), 1-in-200 is roughly how highly I value myself in the Great Human Hierarchy in comparison to the ordinary man...
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