Bias Is a Form of Meritocracy, Unfortunately

On this week's episode of Hang Up and Listen (Slate's sports podcast), the dorks discuss the problem of nepotism in the hiring of football coaches.

It seems like the single most important trait for a football coach is having "leadership qualities". The head coaches don't really have to be tactical geniuses, they often delegate all the playcalling to their assistants, so the main thing is to get players motivated and to have them follow your orders. People won't follow your orders unless you have credibility.

Unfortunately, most people are stupid, too stupid to evaluate others on their merits, so they assign credibility based on superficial cues. This is why "leadership qualities" is often shorthand for "tall white male with self-fulfilling excess of self-esteem".

People give a great deal of currency to bullshit traits like last names or the cut of a jib, but like currency, while having no intrinsic value, the bullshit traits can be worth a great deal to the organization, as long as the masses continue to back them with their full faith and credit.

Catering to prejudice can be meritocratic in a prejudiced world. It'll be that way as long as short ugly women keep deferring to overconfident alpha-males. click "Read more" to continue.... 

There are limits to this theory.

Things can go to shit when the charismatic leader is also a shitty decider.  This could be avoided if you had a figurehead backed by a council of experts who make the decisions using The Delphi Method.

 "The Delphi method was developed at the beginning of the Cold War to forecast the impact of technology on warfare"

The goal is to create a consensus projection among a panel of experts.  A key concept is that the experts remain anonymous to one another.  During each round of the process, the inputs from each expert are scrubbed by a facilitator to eliminate any traces of identity, personality, or particular eloquence.  These inputs are translated into a questionnaire which is distributed back to the experts; in this format, the experts can evaluate each others' ideas on the merits of the ideas alone.  They return their responses to the facilitator, and the process is repeated until the group arrives at a consensus.

The anonymity eliminates the possibility of a "leader" emerging among the group.  The "leadership qualities" that are so useful when commanding subordinates are detrimental to a thought process among a panel of equals.  The anonymity masks the superficial, biasing traits of the charismatic leader.  It also eliminates the leadership type's impulse to compete (against their own team) as well as the "stick-to-your-guns decisiveness" that they like to present.

Theoretically you could have a leader who's handsome, well-spoken, and could at least at one point dunk a basketball, yet has the humility to act as a facilitator rather than an ego-driven dictator.  A problem might arise if the facilitator allows morons and assholes onto the panel of experts just so he can seem like a good guy.

The only good system is to have a bonafied Philosopher King.