Merit is the only survivable approach for organizations that intend to survive both intense competition and change. When I was a manager I needed to know what my reports were good at and I tried to know what they liked doing so that I could try and assign them tasks that they were good at and at least liked a little. Yes, as possible I would try to get them to grow their skills and try new activities, but they had to be at least competent and preferably proficient in their assignments.
But the identification of skills and the pursuit of merit requires honesty and critical judgement, not kindness and mercy. My dauther who is now a civil engineer started college wanting to do a dual major of electrical and mechanical engineering so that she could do medical prosthetics - except she did not like circuits or non-inertial reference frames. So she switched to civil engineering - structures - where she deals with earthquake loading with dynamic body forces (another way of handling non-inertial reference frames). But she changed her career choice in response to relative weakness / aptitude. My son was going to do engineering until he hit Integral Calculus for Engineers, which he got a C in, so he switched his career path to Business and now does data security. But honesty about his relative strengths and weaknesses caused him to change his career choices. You need to make these choices intelligently and early.
I did not concern myself with DEI in any way in my guidance to them, it was irrelevant. My questions concerned strengths, weaknesses, and interests, and how they mapped to requirements of different career paths that they could choose among.
Yes, the concepts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion give one absolutely no insight into how an individual can succeed. That should tell you that it is also useless in giving insight into how a society or institution can succeed.
Diversity is a good thing. Organizations should strive to invite cognitive diversity as this should result in better decision making (less group think). The problem with DEI initiatives is that by focusing on cookie-cutter categories of people, which also tends to emphasize only outward appearances, the result is often less cognitive diversity. Long term, it will make these organization less effective as they will tend to be increasingly subject to group-think and be very error-prone. I suspect that many American Universities are already at this point.
Yes, I will write more about this in another article, but the post-modernist assumption that there is no material reality (or at least human cannot understand it enough) was a key step from Marxist materialism. It is my belief that the Post-modernists were trying to explain why Marx’s predictions of the working class achieving a revolutionary consciousness were incorrect.
Thank you for the link to this book summary. Somewhat helpful, although I still struggle to integrate idea trends into a historical time span (1960's vs. 1990's vs. 2010's, etc.) I had also understood that "critical analysis" initially referred to the efforts of some scholars to examine the sources of religious and historical ideas, starting at least in the 1880's, if not the Englightenment of the 1600's and 1700's? What was the real validity and chain of evidence for a given claim or assertion, especially when relying on manuscripts where the original(s) had been lost and we are dealing with copies of copies, etc.?
Ideas (good or flawed) can be created by several people independently, and cause confusion by using different language for the same basic concepts. Also, a new idea can still take quite a while to flow or promulgate through a society and impact its culture. Presumably those that impact the food supply, health and medical capability, transport and communication, and general economic prosperity tend to advance fastest. But these tend to be solidly objective results, while the more fuzzy and flawed abstractions can be harder to see taking hold.
When I think along these lines I keep coming back to Thomas Sowell's "conflict of visions" and the distinction he makes between the constrained and unconstrained views of humanity it entails. I vaguely recall he posited these two as the opposite ends of a dichotomy, with a spectrum of belief about how we judge people and ideas between them. In one realm someone can have a benign and hopeful view about the human capability for improvement (aka progress :-) ) and in another area be very jaundiced and skeptical that our core human nature can be changed or overcome.
I am pretty close to the constrained view in most areas, but we have also made substantial progress for well over half the human population, and have just celebrated a holiday where we can be thankful that is the case, and improving [in part through your ongoing efforts at analysis and education].
Problem is that as differences in outcome become larger,due to people/organizations with revenue and connections having resources makes it easier to acquire more,people will come up with strategies to mitigate that,and irregardless of those proposed ideas work they will gain public support.We need a better system,or better education for everyone to accept the current one.Or when dei collapses the oppresor/oppressed binary will just move to different proxies other than race or gender
I believe that the way forward is to accept that Equality of Outcome is impossible, and we should instead embrace increased economic growth with upward mobility. This will benefit far more people than attempting to create equality.
Merit is the only survivable approach for organizations that intend to survive both intense competition and change. When I was a manager I needed to know what my reports were good at and I tried to know what they liked doing so that I could try and assign them tasks that they were good at and at least liked a little. Yes, as possible I would try to get them to grow their skills and try new activities, but they had to be at least competent and preferably proficient in their assignments.
But the identification of skills and the pursuit of merit requires honesty and critical judgement, not kindness and mercy. My dauther who is now a civil engineer started college wanting to do a dual major of electrical and mechanical engineering so that she could do medical prosthetics - except she did not like circuits or non-inertial reference frames. So she switched to civil engineering - structures - where she deals with earthquake loading with dynamic body forces (another way of handling non-inertial reference frames). But she changed her career choice in response to relative weakness / aptitude. My son was going to do engineering until he hit Integral Calculus for Engineers, which he got a C in, so he switched his career path to Business and now does data security. But honesty about his relative strengths and weaknesses caused him to change his career choices. You need to make these choices intelligently and early.
I did not concern myself with DEI in any way in my guidance to them, it was irrelevant. My questions concerned strengths, weaknesses, and interests, and how they mapped to requirements of different career paths that they could choose among.
Yes, the concepts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion give one absolutely no insight into how an individual can succeed. That should tell you that it is also useless in giving insight into how a society or institution can succeed.
DEI latches onto situations where there is no intense competition and change and where individual underperformance isn't immediately catastrophic.
1) Government
2) Natural Monopolies and Oligopolies
3) Mature Companies with a "moat"
The thing is that describes an awful large chunk of our economy (probably over 50%).
DEI is just a more in your face version of the old Affirmative Action deal with blacks. More clients making greater demands.
Diversity is a good thing. Organizations should strive to invite cognitive diversity as this should result in better decision making (less group think). The problem with DEI initiatives is that by focusing on cookie-cutter categories of people, which also tends to emphasize only outward appearances, the result is often less cognitive diversity. Long term, it will make these organization less effective as they will tend to be increasingly subject to group-think and be very error-prone. I suspect that many American Universities are already at this point.
In your view, is there a role of post modernism and a flawed view about reality as a progenitor for the DEI ideas?
Yes, I will write more about this in another article, but the post-modernist assumption that there is no material reality (or at least human cannot understand it enough) was a key step from Marxist materialism. It is my belief that the Post-modernists were trying to explain why Marx’s predictions of the working class achieving a revolutionary consciousness were incorrect.
This book summary gives a pretty good description of the relationship between Post-modernism and Critical theory.
https://techratchet.com/2021/04/27/book-summary-cynical-theories-how-activist-scholarship-made-everything-about-race-gender-and-identity-by-pluckrose-lindsay/
Thank you for the link to this book summary. Somewhat helpful, although I still struggle to integrate idea trends into a historical time span (1960's vs. 1990's vs. 2010's, etc.) I had also understood that "critical analysis" initially referred to the efforts of some scholars to examine the sources of religious and historical ideas, starting at least in the 1880's, if not the Englightenment of the 1600's and 1700's? What was the real validity and chain of evidence for a given claim or assertion, especially when relying on manuscripts where the original(s) had been lost and we are dealing with copies of copies, etc.?
Ideas (good or flawed) can be created by several people independently, and cause confusion by using different language for the same basic concepts. Also, a new idea can still take quite a while to flow or promulgate through a society and impact its culture. Presumably those that impact the food supply, health and medical capability, transport and communication, and general economic prosperity tend to advance fastest. But these tend to be solidly objective results, while the more fuzzy and flawed abstractions can be harder to see taking hold.
When I think along these lines I keep coming back to Thomas Sowell's "conflict of visions" and the distinction he makes between the constrained and unconstrained views of humanity it entails. I vaguely recall he posited these two as the opposite ends of a dichotomy, with a spectrum of belief about how we judge people and ideas between them. In one realm someone can have a benign and hopeful view about the human capability for improvement (aka progress :-) ) and in another area be very jaundiced and skeptical that our core human nature can be changed or overcome.
I am pretty close to the constrained view in most areas, but we have also made substantial progress for well over half the human population, and have just celebrated a holiday where we can be thankful that is the case, and improving [in part through your ongoing efforts at analysis and education].
Problem is that as differences in outcome become larger,due to people/organizations with revenue and connections having resources makes it easier to acquire more,people will come up with strategies to mitigate that,and irregardless of those proposed ideas work they will gain public support.We need a better system,or better education for everyone to accept the current one.Or when dei collapses the oppresor/oppressed binary will just move to different proxies other than race or gender
Thanks for the comment.
I believe that the way forward is to accept that Equality of Outcome is impossible, and we should instead embrace increased economic growth with upward mobility. This will benefit far more people than attempting to create equality.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-achieving-equality-is-an-impossible
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-progress-and-upward-mobility