@sqrtminusone@emacs.ch if there is a large-ish population that is "top" relative to the number of slots above some rung in the hierarchy, then (number-of-top-cheaters * (1 - chance-to-get-caught)) would dominate above some given height regardless. the two strategies aren't mutually exclusive. however good ones meritocratic skill is, as long as there are others of similar skill, the winners of the tournament will be unusually lucky and/or seek (and however luckily win) other advantages.
All these plagiarism scandals remind me of #KarlSmith's argument that, in a "meritocracy" (a hierarchy structured by triumphing in a series of not-remotely-independent competitive tournaments), we should expect those near the top to be disproportionately lucky cheaters, even if most cheaters get caught and most people don't cheat. https://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/06/20/the-dark-secret-of-meritocracy-reality-is-rigged/?sh=6fd35b955245
It’s gotten worse, but it could be worse.
"Once Jesus left conservatism, it ceased to have any intellectual foundation at all, and so became profoundly vulnerable to a strange kind of capture that produces Not Liberals. Call it MAGA or the new right or whatever you would like, it’s an ideology based on getting annoyed at self-righteous Democrats. The dark irony, of course, is that this is just another way to let liberals dictate your life." #FreddieDeBoer https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/what-goes-on-in-the-public-bathrooms
nothing is more corrupting of academic work than policy relevance.
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@peachfront @jannem @uastronomer @mike rebuild discoverability. there’s a bit of an RSS renaissance, web mentions, bridges to/from the Fediverse etc.
who needs planned obsolescence when you can have programmed breakdown and repair? https://www.404media.co/polish-hackers-explain-exactly-how-they-fixed-trains-that-the-manufacturer-bricked/ by @jasonkoebler ht @steve_zeke
@LouisIngenthron (i really don’t want a platform at all, just a heterogeneous lot of quirky, different things all of which are promiscuous in linking to one another.)
When I write, what I want is links. Not from Twitter, or even from here, Mastodon. I want pieces of text that link my pieces of text, that I might link back to in conversation or from a writer I might read and link in the future. I want tendrils from individual human minds, rather than graffiti on undifferentiated scrollwalls. There used to be a symphony of links, melodies playing out over time and space, each of us could jam. There might be again.
"What we can do is simple: Start writing stuff again. And recording stuff. And filming stuff. And put it out in public - not on the corporate social media, but in your own blog, in your own web page, on Mastodon, on Peertube and wherever; put it where anybody can find it and react to it and link to it." @jannem https://janneinosaka.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-web-is-broken.html ht @uastronomer @mike
@mcnees gives me the willies.
One way to understand the world as it is, why it is, is we are just so goddamned disappointed.
"[T]he Republican Party and its associated institutions of movement conservatism, at least since George and Jeb Bush stole the 2000 election in Florida, has been ratcheting remorselessly toward an understanding of the accumulation of political power, to which they believe themselves ineluctably entitled as the only truly legitimate Americans, as a question of will—up to and including the projection of will by the force of arms." #RickPerlstein https://americanprospect.bluelena.io/index.php?action=social&chash=f83630579d055dc5843ae693e7cdafe0.2515&s=ce07d2b5feef04b26a83a61bce292370
i stood athwart history and yelled "Stop!", but history went right on anyway.
(for a minute there Fukuyama thought it had listened!)
the loud and fêted are so unwise.
a pox on both houses. except we live in those houses, there are no others.
we tried to warn you.
but so many people tried to warn you, about so many inconsistent and diametrically opposite things, you couldn’t possibly have heeded even a fraction of the warnings.
still. we told you so.
“Sometimes I wonder if dying is like waking from from a dream, hopefully with friends and loved ones waiting for you, like going to a diner after seeing a movie together and you all talk about how you liked it, and if you want to see it again.” @davew http://scripting.com/2023/12/31.html#a032723