Five Lies Our Culture Tells – The cultural roots of our political problems

Re:Five Lies Our Culture Tells – The cultural roots of our p... by thisrod on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @01:06AM (#19679901)

"At the time of the accident, van Zanten was KLM's chief flight instructor, with 11,700 flight hours, of which 1,545 hours were on the 747." - Wikipedia. Meritocratic thinking was a major cause of the worst air accident ever.

With doctors, I think it's well established that the academic hurdle is pointlessly high. I.e, instead of picking the top 10 applicants to med school, you could shortlist 50, pick 10 at random, and the doctors who graduated would be indistinguishable. I couldn't cite any of the evidence for that.

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Re:Five Lies Our Culture Tells – The cultural roots of our p... by closeparen on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @02:06AM (#19680141)

>Meritocratic thinking was a major cause of the worst air accident ever.

What's the theory here? A random person off the street would be less likely than an experienced pilot to make such a mistake?

>I.e, instead of picking the top 10 applicants to med school, you could shortlist 50, pick 10 at random, and the doctors who graduated would be indistinguishable.

Sure, test scores are an imperfect proxy for competence, especially at the extreme ends. You're still allocating the slots to people you deem competent.

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