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Meritocracy is often heraldedas the most fair and democratic trait of America. Everyone has a chance to bethe President or rise to the top of their profession regardless of their humblebeginnings. It is the stuff the American Dreams are made of. Countless novelsand movies chronicle real and/or fictionalized account of heroes and heroinesin this genre.  My own life experiencefor the past half century certainly made me a believer of this.

Yet meritocracy like all other virtues also has a dark side. TheSunday New York Time this morning in its op-ed pages has a very good articleabout this http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/opinion/sunday/douthat-our-reckless-meritocracy.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

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Our Reckless Meritocracy By ROSS DOUTHAT Published:November 5, 2011

One should read the entirearticle to appreciate it. However, one particular paragraph caught my eye whichI reproduce below:

In hereditary aristocracies, debacles tend toflow from stupidity and pigheadedness: think of the Charge of the Light Brigadeor the Battle of the Somme. In one-party states, they tend to flow fromideological mania: think of China’s  XXX.. .  XXX (deleted for fear beingcensored), or Stalin’s experiment with “Lysenkoist” agriculture.

Inmeritocracies, though, it’s the very intelligence of our leaders that createsthe worst disasters. Convinced that their own skills are equal to any task orchallenge, meritocrats take risks than lower-wattage elites would never evencontemplate, embark on more hubristic projects, and become infatuated withstatistical models that hold out the promise of a perfectly rational andfrictionless world. (Or as Calvin Trillin put it in these pages, quoting a tweedy WASPwaxing nostalgic for the days when Wall Street was dominated by his fellowbluebloods: “Do you think our guys could have invented, say, credit defaultswaps? Give me a break! They couldn’t have done the math.”)

This also reinforces my ownlife lessons # 3, 4, and 5 about “you arenot as smart as you think” and “lessonsof humility and adversity”  

http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1565&do=blog&id=5844.