OK I’ll try to explain more. You can do good work (has merit) and get no attention. You can also do bad work and get a lot of attention, recognition, praise, money, etc.
There are a lot of opportunities to do good work (meets the bar for merit) but many of them are hard to be rewarded for. Getting attention and money is a different bar than merit. I think getting attention is more competitive and less rational.
I think part of why the merit bar is low is a lot of smart people ignore it on purpose – there are a lot of good things they don’t do because the incentives are elsewhere.
In other words, if you’re not one of the Very Cool People then it’s easily possible to contribute better work than most of them but still not become one of the Very Cool People and not get much recognition.
Topic for further analysis: the merit bar and the attention bar are different things.
That sounds interesting; please elaborate?
OK I’ll try to explain more. You can do good work (has merit) and get no attention. You can also do bad work and get a lot of attention, recognition, praise, money, etc.
There are a lot of opportunities to do good work (meets the bar for merit) but many of them are hard to be rewarded for. Getting attention and money is a different bar than merit. I think getting attention is more competitive and less rational.
I think part of why the merit bar is low is a lot of smart people ignore it on purpose – there are a lot of good things they don’t do because the incentives are elsewhere.
In other words, if you’re not one of the Very Cool People then it’s easily possible to contribute better work than most of them but still not become one of the Very Cool People and not get much recognition.