On Status (cont.)

What concerns me about Cowen’s perspective on status (or at least what I perceive it to be), is that it does not allow for much dissonance between perceived status and actual ability. Nor does it provide much solace for those who don’t find themselves in the best position when others view at them from a social hierarchy. Secretaries are secretaries and executives are executives, folks rise to their Peter Principle, and that’s that.

I have a number of objections to this. Perhaps, in line with the Vonnegut analogy, my taste simply does not align with the masses, or the intellectual elite, and I happen to disagree with what they value. There are geniuses who are misunderstood in their time and there are those who are never understood. And there are very good thinkers who aren’t timely, or were slackers in high school, or college, and therefore were limited in their ability to obtain an advanced degree from the types of institutions that make it easy to be recognized.

It is a narrow world when you chose to limit the perspective on what’s valuable and what’s worth listening to based on whether someone has achieved a certain status in a hierarchy.

From the perspective of those who receive Ph.D’s in economics from Princeton, I suspect they look at themselves as if they were starting on Duke’s basketball team. Elite basketball players receive national recognition starting in junior high, and by high school, the best of the best know who each other are. Then, they attend a select number of schools. While it’s possible that the best in 2010 that the freshman best point guard in the country plays for Division III Ripon College in Wisconsin, it’s far more likely that it’s Kyrie Irving, the likely top-5 lottery pick playing for Duke. And most of the freshman point guards in the country are probably going to agree with that.

Similarly, there’s an elaborate process for weeding out the best of the best in Economics. High school grades, SATs, and college grades are only a fraction of the data points used in determining the most capable. If you didn’t excel at the highest level at the type of undergraduate institution that could prepare your for Princeton’s economics program, you likely wouldn’t have

The difference is thus: Kyrie Irving could have three mediocre games, but his overall body of work would still demonstrate to scouts that he’s someone well worth drafting early in the first round in the NBA draft. But if you get three Bs in undergrad, you’re not getting into Princeton’s Ph.D. program in Economics. Or Harvard’s. Or MIT’s. Or Berkeley’s. Or the University of Chicago’s.

What does this say about the ruler we’re using to measure the table, in Wittgenstein’s metaphor? It’s so competitive and there’s so little margin for error that any slip ups and you’re immediately removed from the elite talent pool. Thus, what’s valued appears to be constancy of intellectual production, combined with extraordinary talent. And there’s something to be said for that. But, in a field such as economics where significant breakthroughs and insight are rare, it is narrow to limit the field to those who produce very good work consistently, at the expense of those who create brilliant work, but with less consistency. Forget genius, run-of-the-mill creative types tend to be a little erratic. Harking back to my school days, the Venn diagrams of the most intelligent and the most successful students did not always overlap. Anecdotally, in my experience, the ones who fell into both categories were studious, constant, and generally risk averse. Unfortunately, risk averse is not a characteristic of someone whom I would expect to break down boundaries in any intellectual field.

This isn’t meant as an indictment of academia. Anyone in a position to accommodate only a fraction of qualified applicants must make difficult and imperfect choices. Grades and test scores allow schools to evaluate work ethic and intellectual capacity, and that’s fine by me. It’s as fair as anything else. My only plea is that the ones who are selected to join the elite remain open to the possibility that others still have something to offer. Not only that, there are many without the pedigree who have a greater capacity to produce extraordinary works than those who do. And that’s all I have to say about that.