#AcademicRunPlaylist - 9/21/24

Author

Ben Waber
September 21, 2024

A pond on a cloudy day seen from beneath trees on the near shore. There are large rocks peaking out of the water on near the center left of the pond, with a black cormorant perched on the edge. The forest on the far side is showing slight shades of yellow, red, and orange

We finally had a rainy day in Boston, and while trying to stay dry I was also able to listen to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a great symposium on the book "Human Revolution" and how modern anthropology provides a much more complicated, long view of our evolutionary path at UCL Anthropology with Camilla Power and Ian Watts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK9HN69rYZs

Next was a fantastic pair of talks by Berhan Taye (the plight of AI production pipeline workers) and Trudie Coetzee (higher education and generative AI) at the Design Justice Network AI Institute. Taye's deep investigation of the working conditions and platform structure of data workers is illuminating, and should lead to serious introspection from those in AI. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBA_PZb2gdM

Next was a fascinating session on the sex-strike theory of human origins at UCL's Radical Anthropology with Chris Knight and Camilla Power https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e5YrawHcXw

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Last was "The Tyranny of Merit" by Michael Sandel. The kernel of this book is a compelling idea - that "meritocracy" is an unattainable ideal and the belief that we've attained it leads to horrible outcomes. Unfortunately Sandel stretches this book beyond that, claiming with at best circumstantial and often purely imagined justifications that the idea of merit itself is responsible for white America's current ills.

I say white America because Sandel doesn't address the radically different patterns that exist outside of the US and western Europe, and within the US anyone other than white people. The fact that non-college educated Black people, for example, voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election? Or that when included with white voters the fact that non-college educated people only preferred Trump by 7%? Not mentioned, and directly contradicts most of the points he makes.

Beyond these cherry-picked stylized facts, Sandel conflates the current meaning of "merit" with its philosophical ideal, continuing to lump in issues with the current merit dogma with issues of income inequality. That's not to say there's not some relationship, but Sandel's assertion that this is the direct cause of massive income inequality in the US is made without any evidence beyond armchair reasoning and strains credulity given the voluminous research on the problem that he could have read/referenced.

There's a lot more I could complain about, but suffice to say that once you've digested the core point of the book you can probably stop reading. Sandel has given a recorded talk of the book which conveys the point better than the book itself and spends far less time on the more problematic claims.