[AISWorld] [EXT] Re: [External] Hiring Professor (Female Only) in Information Systems and Technology Management, UNSW Sydney

[wombat]

On 6/12/22 05:21, John Venable wrote:
> Apologies for filling your in-tray if this doesn't interest you.

And likewise! :-)

I'd like to add a "Hear hear!" to this email. Dr. Venable has said in a 
much clearer and less inflammatory way what I have been trying to point out.

With respect to Dr. Cuellar's and Dr. Palvia's posts:

Meritocracy is a lovely fantasy. It's not real. Whenever people are 
judging other people, there are ALWAYS biases[7]. Even people like us 
who are trained to be, and try very hard to be[3], as objective as 
possible cannot possibly be completely objective. Frankly, I believe 
this is a consequence of Gödel's theorem[1], and the ideal of complete 
objectivity is unreachable. I'm far from convinced that even "good 
enough" is reachable; our brains wire themselves to group the things 
that we perceive to make classification and decision-making easier. It's 
not something that can be unlearned.

Read the research on meritocracy. Maybe it will open your eyes.

A great place to start is this article, and it's even in the business 
literature (most critical work on meritocracy is published in sociology 
journals, and tends to focus on its inherent socioeconomic biases):

Castilla, E. J., & Ranganathan, A. (2020). The Production of Merit: How
	Managers Understand and Apply Merit in the Workplace.
	Organization Science, 31(4), 909–935.
	https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2019.1335

[1] Yes, I know that Gödels thereom is about formal systems and not the 
human self[2], but what is the brain if not a formal system?

[2] And, for that matter, exactly what is the human self? How can we 
determine objectively that it is in fact capable of objectivity?

[3] Which I respect greatly, and I am sure that all concerned in this 
dispute practice as much as possible; attestations of experienced 
discrimination[4] suggest that good intentions abound.

[4] I, too, have experienced age discrimination. Sucks, but that's how 
the system currently works. And because of this, I work very hard to 
change the system for the better, and do not assume that anyone[5] can 
truly be objective, because they can't.

[5] And don't even get me started on so-called "AI".

[6] There is no footnote 6. You're just reading all the footnotes, 
aren't you?

[7] In fact, what is the "merit" in "meritocracy"? Every single one of 
us has a definition which differs at least slightly, and sometimes 
wildly, from others. Our idea of merit often involves being "someone 
like me", because we *think* we live in a meritocracy, thus we *deserve* 
our current status, and the idea that we got that status because of luck 
or socieconomic or cultural or racial or genetic or sexual advantages 
challenges our notion of self. Thus, we reject the idea that we don't 
deserve what we have; we must "merit" it, and the definition of merit 
becomes rapidly "like me". Again, see the org science paper for how this 
plays out. Look at the sociology and social psychology research that it 
cites. The scientific verdict is clear: meritocracy isn't based on any 
objective definition of the word "merit".

Christopher M. Conway Ph.D. also known on the net as wombat since 1986.
Computer scientist, software engineer, social psychologist, musician, 
statistician, amateur philosopher, polymath.