Interestingly enough, institutionalized meritocracy always selects for mediocrity, not excellence. Actual excellence is a subversive threat to models of merit.
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Institutions need legible metrics to measure performance. Excellence works towards the metric where it’s useful, but discards it where it becomes a poor approximation. Mediocrity plays by the book and scores high on all the standardized tests.
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Mechanism: excellence climbs a better hill. Meritocracy defines how to climb the current hill.
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The Incredibles:
HELEN: This is not about you, Bob. This is about Dash.
BOB: You want to do something for Dash? Then let him actually
compete. Let him go out for sports!
HELEN: I will not be made the enemy here! You know why we can't do
that.
BOB: Because he'd be great!
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And the Peter Principle suggests meritocracies are a threat to excellence. So we have a stand-off.
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