I agree that methods of signalling competence are, in principle, a fine mechanism for allowing those with resources to responsibly distribute them between projects.
In practise, I’ve seen far too many tall, attractive, well-spoken men from affluent background go up to other tall, attractive, well-spoken men from affluent backgrounds and get them to allocate ridiculous quantities of money and man-hours to projects on the basis of presentations which may as well be written in crayon for all the salient information they contain.
The amount this happens varies from place to place, and in the areas where I see it most there does seem to be an improving trend of competence signalling actually correlating to whatever it is the party in question needs to be competent at, but there is still way too much scope for such signalling being as applicable to the work in question as actually getting up in front of potential benefactors and doing a little dance.
I agree that methods of signalling competence are, in principle, a fine mechanism for allowing those with resources to responsibly distribute them between projects.
In practise, I’ve seen far too many tall, attractive, well-spoken men from affluent background go up to other tall, attractive, well-spoken men from affluent backgrounds and get them to allocate ridiculous quantities of money and man-hours to projects on the basis of presentations which may as well be written in crayon for all the salient information they contain.
The amount this happens varies from place to place, and in the areas where I see it most there does seem to be an improving trend of competence signalling actually correlating to whatever it is the party in question needs to be competent at, but there is still way too much scope for such signalling being as applicable to the work in question as actually getting up in front of potential benefactors and doing a little dance.