Equality. Meritocracy or Affirmative action?

I just finished a 3 week vacation around Australia so I figured this blog should be about the philosophy of equality.

For a long time I've been struggling with the issue of equality. Is affirmative action a good thing or is it discriminatory? Should we value equal outcomes or equal opportunities? How should we treat people if certain groups of people have evolved differently?

For many years I've been a die hard fan of a meritocratic society. In a meritocracy, all citizens have the opportunity to be recognized and advanced in proportion to their abilities and accomplishments. In a nutshell this means you value equal opportunities, not necessarily equal outcomes. An example is Uber: to become an Uber driver, nobody looks at your race, gender or sexual orientation, instead all they look at is your ability to do the job, and the more lifts you provide, the more money you make. It's easy to see why I was such a fan of this form of functioning; it seems to avoid any form of discrimination and maximizes efficiency.

However, I've been trying to reconcile this with my mostly positive views on affirmative action. Affirmative action is the policy of awarding groups of people that have historically faced severe prejudice with additional education or employment benefits. There's no doubt that racism and sexism has existed and that it continues to exist in subtle ways. Perhaps affirmative action is an effective way to shock the system out of these cultural quagmires. A Meritocracy, by comparison, seems painfully slow in countering this problem, because even though it would be rational to hire the best person for the job, some employers will consciously or unconsciously lean on cultural stereotypes and avoid hiring blacks or women. Minor side note: It's not entirely irrational for employers to do this by the way! There is always going to be some uncertainty behind potential candidates (after all, your uni grade and a 10 minute interview can't give an employer complete knowledge about work ethic or how social you are), and in this void of uncertainty it would be rational for an employer to predict a candidates skill set according to stereotypes assuming those stereotypes are a statistical average of the group the candidate belongs to. I'm a fan of affirmative action for these types of causes, however, I can't help the obvious contradiction between affirmative action and a meritocracy. Affirmative action, no matter how well intentioned, involves treating groups differently, whereas a meritocracy avoids looking at groups all together.

So what's the solution? Perhaps use affirmative action for a fixed time until all the cultural problems have been ironed out, and then switch to a meritocracy? It seems like a good idea, but I don't think it'll work. And I think the main reason it won't work is because right now most people on this earth believe dogmatically that 'all humans are created equal'. Don't get me wrong, I liked Martin L King's speech, and I'm gonna let him finish, but from a Darwinian perspective, it can't be true. Humans, although very similar, have evolved with slightly different traits including intelligence - a highly prized employment skill. The problem of applying affirmative action until all the cultural problems are ironed out is that 1) Prejudice and stereotypes will never fully disappear so long as different groups exhibit average differences and 2) It's impossible to know when they've been ironed out since average genetic differences imply a natural split of gender in a particular field might not be 50 50. This means a temporary application of affirmative action in theory could turn out to be a perpetual form overbalance in practice.

To add more fuel to the fire, here are a bunch of other things to consider:
1) Should disabled people still be looked after in a meritocracy even though they can't contribute as much? Presumably yes, and if so, where do you draw the line?
2) Female only scholarships in Engineering are a clear case of affirmative action. Perhaps a much more subtle form of affirmative action is government drink driving ads targeting young males. Both are government payed incentives targeting groups. If you're against one, why aren't you against the other?
3) A meritocracy rewards the best worker regardless of group he/she belongs to. This seems fair because you can't choose the group you belong to, whereas you can choose work ethic. However, at a very deep philosophical level, your intelligence, personality and work ethic are actually determined by things external to you (see my previous posts about determinism), so the act of rewarding an individual based on merit becomes as arbitrary as rewarding an individual that belongs to a group.

In the end I think I figured out the solution! The solution is that neither meritocracy or affirmative action, or any combination of the two are fundamentally good. I know this is going to sound super dissatisfying, but at a fundamental level if we define good as whatever maximizes well being, then what is good may be a form of governance that is entirely different from anything we've mentioned. Maybe it's true that a meritocracy could be highly correlated with maximizing well being, but it's entirely possible, given the primal nature of our brains, that extreme inequality could also maximize well being. 

Knox Cartoons

Behold! The artwork I created at high school to vent about my horrible time there:

WW3

I heard an interesting quote the other day from Einstein: "The futuristic weapons of WW3 are unknown, but WW4 will be fought with stones and spears."

I know very little about global politics or the military, but the small trickle of truth I get from the internet is getting me slightly worried about the gradual buildup of militaries world wide. Also, since I'm fascinated about predicting how technology will influence our world, I thought I'd make a quick pathetic guess about what WW3 would look like if it were to happen.

Let me first clarify that I don't think the war will involve super fast tanks rolling in followed by troops storming over trenches. Nor do I think the war will be fought in space like some high budget star trek movie. Instead, I think we can expect a much less heroic and deadly war of attrition.

I suspect the world just before the war will be even more heavily interconnected by trade, extremely efficient, and utterly hooked to the internet and energy generation. Because of this, I think we can expect an 'invisible war' fought on two fronts; virtually and chemically.

The virtual side of the war will be fought with strings of code. Nations will invest in malicious AI to try and desperately hack high tier computer systems, shut down factories remotely and steal data. The chemical side of the war will be less boring, but equally faceless; I suspect nations will invest in highly engineered viruses & diseases that can infect crops and civilians. Both sides, will simply try and force the other into submission by starving the opposing population and crippling their economy.

During the war, I think nations world wide will try to counter these modern attacks by becoming more self sustainable by simply downgrading the quality of life. To avoid the chance of being hacked, high tech systems will get downgraded from digital back to analog. Likewise, to avoid the chance of eating poisonous food, people will have to rely on packaged/canned food. The world will also have to adjust to a life without reliable power or internet. By the end of the war, millions will be dead and whole economies and ways of life will have been pushed back to the 20th century or further.

Side note: You may have noticed I didn't mention nuclear war. That's because I think nukes are just deterrents. I suspect even when a losing nation reaches it's breaking point, it still won't be dumb enough to launch a nuke.

Day 6 - camino de Santiago

Done!! Bloodied, bruised and broken we stumbled our way into the city. Sadly it was so foggy that we couldn't see the famous church from the hill above like you're meant to, but that didn't bother us too much.

We arrived just in time to attend the church mass. It was entirely in Spanish but I still enjoyed it. It was a huge church that was struggling to figure out how to modernize. There were donation ATMs in the corner and multiple confession booths scattered around which had time tables attached to them. At the very end they had a huge metal container that was strung up to a pulley. They put some frankensence (is that how you spell it?) Inside and got 10 priests to fling it around as fast as they could by pulling on the rope.

Just as Pablo and I ordered a taxi to drive us to the airport, my blister which had been growing throughout the trip finally popped. It was a like a celebratory firework consisting of pus and blood.

Well, that's it! 118km done in 5 days!

Day 5 - Opedraozo

Originally we had intentions of doing a 40km hike to allow us to arrive at the finish line on Thursday. However, after our  exhausting 30km hike yesterday we decided to change our plan and do two 20km hikes instead.

The weather was perfect today. Nice and sunny. We stopped off at one of the hundreds of bars along the way to enjoy some fresh home made chicken pie and a Coca-Cola - I need a break from beer.

Towards the end of our 20km hike we hobbled up to our motel like zombies and instantly gorged on the -brains- internet.

Pub crawl day 4

Today was much longer day than all the others. We needed to hike 30km to reach our hostel in Arzua. The hike was lovely, not because the views were amazing, but because the journey was rewarding

Towards the end our feet were bloodied, blistered and bruised. Only two days more to go.

Along the way we stopped at a place know for having the best octopus in all of Spain. The rumors might be true. It was amazing. It was drenched with salt and olive oil which made the dish super tasty.

As soon as we arrived we decided to enjoy several beers and some gin with a couple of Spanish friends we met along the way. They seemed super lovely, but I can't be sure because I couldn't understand a word they were saying.

Day 3 Puertomarin to Palas de Rei

This hike was beautiful! It was sunny all day. It was a 26 km slog and I decided to tie my soaked jeans to the outside of my bag to dry as I walked. Sadly my plan didn't work since this area is still very humid. God 2 - Matt 0.

Once again Pablo drank his way to the finish line and I waddled behind him quietly. It was a great hike, we talked philosophy just like we did back in Australia and got to see some beautiful views. Once we arrived at our destination we enjoyed a 12 Euro meal which comes with two main courses, a desert and a beer. Great value.