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> The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is?

To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available. They don't all have them because libraries are locally administered and each locality gets to make its own choices, but if that's the case in your locality then you can direct your complaints to the town council rather than the federal government.

> Ah, and that means we can ignore poor kids who don't fall into this pattern, as well as poor kids who live too far away from libraries?

This is the thing where perfect is impossible. If you live in an urban area, having a library within walking distance is feasible because there are enough people there to justify it. If you live in a rural area, it isn't. What do you propose to do about it?

> You're ignoring that this is only part of the equation, as the tutoring etc. is also missing. There must be special programs for the disadvantaged to level the playing field here, but that's what anti-DEI advocates also complain about!

Rich people will pay for things that aren't scalable. If your parents make $20M/year, they can spend $1M/year on their kid. If you spent $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US, the cost would be $74 Trillion, which exceeds the US GDP. And there is a threshold past which additional spending has diminishing returns. Again, the goal is to get as close to measuring merit as feasible; "closer than now" is possible but perfection isn't.

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Timon3 a day ago | parent [-]

> To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available.

They have some materials available, but often older or less specialized ones. That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact.

> This is the thing where perfect is impossible. If you live in an urban area, having a library within walking distance is feasible because there are enough people there to justify it. If you live in a rural area, it isn't. What do you propose to do about it?

How about introducing DEI programs that help these disadvantaged people access the same materials? Again, you're basically saying that they have to suck it up and accept their position. That's not meritocracy.

> Rich people will pay for things that aren't scalable. If your parents make $20M/year, they can spend $1M/year on their kid. If you spent $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US, the cost would be $74 Trillion, which exceeds the US GDP. And there is a threshold past which additional spending has diminishing returns.

There's obviously an incredibly large gap between "spend $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US" and "poor kids should either have no access at all, or have to walk large distances to public libraries, only have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available". The latter simply isn't meritocracy, yet you keep arguing that it is, and keep arguing against DEI programs.

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AnthonyMouse a day ago | parent [-]

> That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact.

"Rich people have more money" isn't an interesting fact, it's just the definition of rich people.

> How about introducing DEI programs that help these disadvantaged people access the same materials?

The term "DEI" has been applied to disparate impact rules and other policies that amount to race quotas and correspondingly garner strong opposition. If you want to advance good policies, you should stop using the same term to apply to them as is used to apply to bad policies with strong opposition.

> There's obviously an incredibly large gap between "spend $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".

There is equally obviously a point at which the threshold of diminishing returns is met, and high-quality individualized private tutoring is plausibly beyond that threshold because it is very expensive. It's also still not clear how you expect to feasibly provide a high density of libraries in an area with a low density of people.

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Timon3 a day ago | parent [-]

> "Rich people have more money" isn't an interesting fact, it's just the definition of rich people.

That's not what I said. This is bordering on bad faith, please don't do that.

> The term "DEI" has been applied to disparate impact rules and other policies that amount to race quotas and correspondingly garner strong opposition. If you want to advance good policies, you should stop using the same term to apply to them as is used to apply to bad policies with strong opposition.

First, what term would you have me use instead? Second, I don't believe it matters what term I choose, because it will get demonized just like DEI did.

> There is equally obviously a point at which the threshold of diminishing returns is met, and high-quality individualized private tutoring is plausibly beyond that threshold because it is very expensive.

There is still a large gap between "high-quality individualized private tutoring" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".

But that's besides the point, which was: objective metrics don't mean you're measuring merit. You've shown wonderfully how those advocating for "meritocracy" often don't care about actual merit. Thank you for the discussion, but I don't think it makes sense to continue, as you seem to simply not care about the issues with your position.

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wredcoll a day ago | parent | next [-]

Personally I appreciate your merit. Starting the race 100 meters ahead of the other runners probably doesn't get you a very accurate measure of who is the fastest.

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AnthonyMouse a day ago | parent [-]

The issue is that it's not an athletic competition. If someone is better at heart surgery, it doesn't matter if it's because their parents could afford books and someone else's couldn't, that's still the person you want doing heart surgery.

If you then want to buy books for people who can't afford them, that's an entirely different proposal than giving the job to someone who isn't as qualified.

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wredcoll 21 hours ago | parent [-]

> The issue is that it's not an athletic competition. If someone is better at heart surgery, it doesn't matter if it's because their parents could afford books and someone else's couldn't, that's still the person you want doing heart surgery.

Well, an athletic competition would make more sense because that actually determines whose the best. We don't test heart surgeons to see who the best is, we test to see if they can do the job.

That's what people tend to... conveniently overlook... in these conversations. No one is hiring "the best" or only accepting "the best" into their college or whatever else. They pick a good one from the pool of candidates they have available.

Trying to pretend that "using race to pick between two equally qualified candidates" is the same thing as "picking unqualified candidates" is, well, damn close to a lie.

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AnthonyMouse 21 hours ago | parent [-]

> Trying to pretend that "using race to pick between two equally qualified candidates" is the same thing as "picking unqualified candidates" is, well, damn close to a lie.

When you have a competitive major university that gets thousands of applicants and you base admission strictly on test scores, you'll end up accepting only 1% black applicants because their test scores are lower for various reasons. If you wanted to accept 14% black applicants as reflects their proportion of the US population, you would have to be turning down other applicants with significantly higher test scores. It's not just about accepting someone who got a 1520 instead of a 1530, the difference is hundreds of points.

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wredcoll 19 hours ago | parent [-]

That seems rather unlikely, you have any data to back that up?

Someone else linked this article https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart-illustrates-graphic...

> For the 2015-2016 academic year, the average GPA of all students applying to medical schools was 3.55 and the average MCAT score was 28.3 according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

> The middle set of bars in the top chart above show that for applicants to US medical schools between 2013-2016 with average GPAs (3.40 to 3.59) and average MCAT scores (27 to 29), black applicants were almost 4 times more likely to be accepted to US medical schools than Asians in that applicant pool (81.2% vs. 20.6%), and 2.8 times more likely than white applicants (81.2% vs. 29.0%).

Seems like they're in the same applicant pool.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That link shows that (presumably in order to meet diversity targets) black applicants with a GPA of 3.2-3.39 had nearly the same acceptance rate as Asian applicants with a 3.6-3.79 GPA. 0.4 points is an entire standard deviation for GPA.

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AnthonyMouse a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> That's not what I said. This is bordering on bad faith, please don't do that.

The premise of a meritocracy isn't that everyone is the same, it's that everyone is subject to the same standard. The alternatives are things like racism or nepotism where someone gets the position even if they're not expected to do a better job, because of their race or because their father owns the company.

But merit isn't a fixed property. If you spend your time studying physics, you'll make yourself qualified to do certain types of engineering when spending that time playing football wouldn't.

Money, then, can be used to improve merit. You can e.g. pay for tuition at a better school that someone else couldn't afford. If that school actually imparts higher quality skills than a less expensive school (or no school), a meritocratic hiring practice will favor the graduates of that school, because they're actually better at doing the job.

You can then argue that this isn't fair because rich people can afford better schools etc., but a) that will always be the case because the ability to use money to improve yourself will always exist, and b) if you would like to lessen its effect, the correct solution is not to abandon meritocracy in hiring decisions, it's to increase opportunities for the poor to achieve school admissions consistent with their innate ability etc.

> First, what term would you have me use instead? Second, I don't believe it matters what term I choose, because it will get demonized just like DEI did.

The demonization comes from rooting the concern in race rather than economic opportunity, because the people obsessed with race are interested in dividing the poor and pitting them against each other in tribal warfare, and then any term you use for that will be demonized because it will become infected with tribal signaling associations.

> There is still a large gap between "high-quality individualized private tutoring" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".

And then we're back to, what is even the dispute? You can't close the entire gap because part of the gap is a result of things that are infeasibly expensive at scale and no one disputes that. There are cost effective and reasonable policies that could close some of the gap, but many of those have already been implemented or could be adopted with minimal opposition if they were simply proposed in the places not already doing them, because they're cost effective and reasonable. It's literally only a matter of going to your town council meeting and convincing them that it's a good idea.

People don't strongly oppose libraries that stock study books. They oppose race quotas.

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wredcoll a day ago | parent [-]

> People don't strongly oppose libraries that stock study books. They oppose race quotas.

People absolutely do oppose libraries. They also oppose programs that pay for tutors for poor kids, programs that allocate more money to schools in poorer neighborhoods and basically anything else you can think of.

But I do admit it must make your life incredibly simple to just pretend racism doesn't exist and everyone ends up in the exact position they deserve.

	▲	AnthonyMouse a day ago \| parent [-]
		> People absolutely do oppose libraries. They also oppose programs that pay for tutors for poor kids, programs that allocate more money to schools in poorer neighborhoods and basically anything else you can think of. Opposition to spending in general is distinct from opposition to a specific policy because the policy has a deleterious effect, and is much easier to overcome if you would e.g. source the money from a constituency that supports the policy, or offer to cut something else to make room in the budget. > But I do admit it must make your life incredibly simple to just pretend racism doesn't exist and everyone ends up in the exact position they deserve. Straw man.