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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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They decided on it because they noticed color-blind meritocracy wasn't getting the job done.

What job? To ensure that there are no racial or gender imbalances in the outcome?

This seems a silly ask.

Imbalances in outcomes can have two reasons:

(1) Cultural: this includes upbringing, parents financial situation, straightforward discrimination and so on. I think that I speak for the overwhelming majority (but feel free to correct me) when I say that these are bad, and that we should get rid of these barriers.

To a large extend, these barriers are bad because they lead to worse societal outcomes: if cultural factors such as plain old racism prevent Blacks from becoming doctors, then we end up with fewer or worse doctors than if it was otherwise.

(2) Inherent average ability (or -- in the case of genders -- interest): These differences exist, most obviously in gender and physical capability. They are the reason why most sport competitions are gender segregated. There are also physical capability differences between ethnicities, a few African peoples dominate long distance running, for example. The genetics of intelligence are complicated, and we get large variances, but there is a genetic component to intelligence. Should we just assume that while average height, skin color, long distance running aptitude, et cetera are all unevenly distributed over different ethnicities, intelligence is perfectly evenly distributed?

One has to be very careful attributing imbalances to (2), and has to notice the skulls of the people who came before. When the French Academy of Science did not admit women, they were certainly pleading something like (2), that women are intrinsically not suited to be scientists, not something like (1), that they were sexist pricks, while in retrospect it is clear that the latter was the case.

I am an utilitarian. In my utility function, women and men, Blacks and Caucasians, Danes and Madagascans all count the same. Being a doctor is good for the individual in question (student debts and insane work hours aside): it is a high status job which is paid fairly well. It is also good to society in proportion of how qualified the doctor is. The best solution overall is therefore for the people who will be the best doctors to become doctors. Predicting how good someone will be as a doctor is non-trivial, but certainly being good in science classes helps. Thus, I want the most qualified people to become doctors, regardless of any gender or ethnic balances.

(I would all have been for lightly putting our hands on the scales to make sure that we are not perpetuating effects caused by cultural effects, and thus permanently staying below the optimum. However, given how affirmative action is looking these days, I would argue that we are at the point where we are jumping on the scale as hard as we can, meritocracy be damned.)

If the meritocratic solution is that some ethnicities are mostly working low-paying jobs and some are well over-represented in high-paying jobs, then my utility sum tells me that I should not care (beyond making reasonably sure that (1) is not the cause). If you want to argue that the gap between low-paying jobs and high paying jobs is too high, because poor people could get out a lot more utility out of the marginal dollar than rich ones, then I am very sympathetic to that argument and open to ideas of how we can improve their lot without drawing the wrath of the Elder God called economy.

If the last part is not clear, imagine a feudal kingdom made out of nobles and serfs. Calculate its utility sum. Now imagine one of two scenarios: in the first, every noble magically takes on the physical appearance of an elf, pointy ears and all. In the other, the same total number of elves are created, but evenly distributed over both classes. How does the utility sum in either case change? Secondary considerations (perhaps elf ears are really bad at holding crowns, or perhaps most people have an elf kink and get a lot of utility from their partners being turned into elves) aside, it does not. It can not, because the utility sum does not weight your utility by the shape of your ears. (There is an argument to be made that the former scenario will lead to less meritocracy, because it limits the upwards mobility of the serfs, but I think "random people are in charge" is a closer model than "the best and brightest are in charge" for feudalism, i.e. that there is not much meritocracy going on in the first place.)