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Michael Magoon's avatar

I think a workable definition of merit is:

having demonstrated an ability or accomplishment that is related to the decision at hand, typically hiring, firing, and promotion. In other words, merit is using a person’s past results in a specific field to attempt to predict the likelihood that they will show similar results in a related field. In practice, this means using job experience, educational credentials, and test results for hiring, firing and promotion decisions.

A person can have a great deal of merit in one field and very little in most other fields. In practice, this is usually the case.

As you mentioned, the word has been somewhat conflated with the term “virtue” to imply that a person with merit is a more virtuous person than one with less merit. This meaning of merit implies a moral judgment about an individual.

I do not use merit in that sense. I would argue that merit is highly specialized to a specific domain, so that a person with a great deal of merit in one domain is very unlikely to have merit in other domains.

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tomtom50's avatar

Is meritocracy rule by the deserving? Rule by the talented seems closer. This new elite believes they are deserving, does any elite not? SAT-measurable talent really does make better engineers or doctors. The best judges or politicians are wise and know the people, these talents that do not show on the tests. I'm not sure how to achieve it, but the notion IQ has no connection to wisdom or virtue could use reviving.

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