> Why did the meritorious survive? Because it's a meritocracy.
No, the meritorious survive because you can't cheat the universe.
I'm saying you can't make the world meritocratic because it already is and it's not changeable. You can only align yourself with how the world works so you don't get screwed.
For example, let's say I'm an employer and I decide to hire the least competent candidate for a new job. I, as the employer, cannot escape the consequences of this action and most likely I will pay for it in some form like the company failing or me losing my job. The world is still meritocratic despite my inane decision making. This forces me out of the equation and eventually my successor will have to do a better job hiring or else face the same fate of irrelevance as I. Eventually, all that's left is an employer who does pick candidates based on merit. But if this is true, the employer didn't really create a meritocracy, but merely aligned itself with the equilibrium state of the universe.
This is just a way of looking at what meritocracy means, and it frames it as a purely practical construct necessary for survival.
My point is that you're taking what is and then applying the label "meritocracy" to it. But the world itself has no moral content, it's humans who create and apply it.
Meritocracy is essentially a statement that people are rewarded according to their merits, whatever those might be. It carries baggage in the form of an unstated moral component riding shotgun. If you ask people whether "meritocracy" is the same as "natural selection", they will tend not to agree, because merit implies a degree of human agency that is more than merely current emergent phenomena.
The confusion of value and virtue, or natural selection and meritocracy, causes all sorts of trouble. The philosophers have had long beard-stroking discussions about all this under the heading of "teleology".
I'm confused about what we're talking about now. My definition of meritocracy has no moral content either.
I'm not saying meritocracy is the same as natural selection. Meritocracy is the system which aligns itself with natural selection. Merit is assigned by humans, and if assigned perfectly well it should align with natural selection. However, humans are error prone and therefore can never create a completely meritocratic society so meritocracy will never be on the same plane as natural selection.
I guess you can say meritocracy is natural selection emulated by humans. However the universe ultimately forces the selection by merit (perfectly, as whatever the universe chooses is fair) and the humanly chosen merit is gauged by how accurately it aligns with it.
I'm not using meritocracy to define meritocracy. I'm reframing the definition of meritocracy so that saying "creating" meritocracy is a moot concept because meritocracy is not created.
No, the meritorious survive because you can't cheat the universe.
I'm saying you can't make the world meritocratic because it already is and it's not changeable. You can only align yourself with how the world works so you don't get screwed.
For example, let's say I'm an employer and I decide to hire the least competent candidate for a new job. I, as the employer, cannot escape the consequences of this action and most likely I will pay for it in some form like the company failing or me losing my job. The world is still meritocratic despite my inane decision making. This forces me out of the equation and eventually my successor will have to do a better job hiring or else face the same fate of irrelevance as I. Eventually, all that's left is an employer who does pick candidates based on merit. But if this is true, the employer didn't really create a meritocracy, but merely aligned itself with the equilibrium state of the universe.
This is just a way of looking at what meritocracy means, and it frames it as a purely practical construct necessary for survival.