As Benquo notes I think the detailed anecdotes are good evidence, and it matches my experiences in business and what I know of other business. But of course, no one has successfully ‘run a study’ of the question, nor would I expect such attempts at such a study to get to the heart of the question effectively.
Agreed there are traits X where people with X tend to want those around them to have less X or contrasting trait Y, the most amusing one (in many important contexts, but in far from all contexts) being chromosomes where they’re literally X and Y.
Your examples show things I’m not clear about. People do want sympathetic others around, even for ‘bad’ traits, and often view those sharing those traits as ‘their kind of people,’ and often as ‘winners.’
I’m not sure if dominant people typically want others to be more dominant or more submissive. Certainly they want specific others to be submissive so they can dominate them, but they tend to feel kinship and friendship with, and form alliances with, other dominants, and generally promote the idea of both domination whether or not they also promote submission, in my experience/observation. I believe they tend to strongly favor people who think that dominants should control submissive, whether that person is dominant or submissive themselves, over those who think everyone should be equal.
Greedy people want to succeed in their greed, so they want those they are directly competing with or asking for things to be generous and less greedy, but this gets murky fast with other relationships. Greedy people tend to speak the virtues of greed at least to their friends and allies, telling them to be more greedy when dealing with others, and see those exhibiting greed as good—see capitalists supporting greedy competition, or traders such as Gordon Gecko, who says literally “Greed is good,” but also many others. This should not be confused with wanting to experience generous acts in direct exchanges. Think of it this way. If you were greedy and your rival was generous, who would you want picking between you, a greedy person or a generous person? What if you were generous and your rival greedy?
Agreed there are traits X where people with X tend to want those around them to have less X or contrasting trait Y, the most amusing one (in many important contexts, but in far from all contexts) being chromosomes where they’re literally X and Y.
Ha! ^_^
As Benquo notes I think the detailed anecdotes are good evidence, and it matches my experiences in business and what I know of other business.
I hope that helps share my intuitions a bit more?
I have a cleared understanding of your reasoning. And your personal experience, plus the anecdotes, and enough to cross the first two bars—the phenomena you describe certainly exist, and are not extremely rare.
The problem is the next step: how frequent are these phenomena, and how severe are they? Because there are counter-examples and counter-narratives (Benquo even called them “official” narratives). Once we admit they also exist, and are not extremely rare, then we’re reaching the limit of what we can get from personal experience and anecdotes (at best we can estimate how prevalent the various behaviours are in our own subcultures).
But of course, no one has successfully ‘run a study’ of the question, nor would I expect such attempts at such a study to get to the heart of the question effectively.
We can make some predictions from your intuitions (eg people with low empathy will have friends with low empathy, narcissists will hang around with other narcissists, etc...) and measure that as best we can. This won’t be proof, but it will be an indication, and will get us partway towards measuring the prevalence of the various behaviours.
As Benquo notes I think the detailed anecdotes are good evidence, and it matches my experiences in business and what I know of other business. But of course, no one has successfully ‘run a study’ of the question, nor would I expect such attempts at such a study to get to the heart of the question effectively.
Agreed there are traits X where people with X tend to want those around them to have less X or contrasting trait Y, the most amusing one (in many important contexts, but in far from all contexts) being chromosomes where they’re literally X and Y.
Your examples show things I’m not clear about. People do want sympathetic others around, even for ‘bad’ traits, and often view those sharing those traits as ‘their kind of people,’ and often as ‘winners.’
I’m not sure if dominant people typically want others to be more dominant or more submissive. Certainly they want specific others to be submissive so they can dominate them, but they tend to feel kinship and friendship with, and form alliances with, other dominants, and generally promote the idea of both domination whether or not they also promote submission, in my experience/observation. I believe they tend to strongly favor people who think that dominants should control submissive, whether that person is dominant or submissive themselves, over those who think everyone should be equal.
Greedy people want to succeed in their greed, so they want those they are directly competing with or asking for things to be generous and less greedy, but this gets murky fast with other relationships. Greedy people tend to speak the virtues of greed at least to their friends and allies, telling them to be more greedy when dealing with others, and see those exhibiting greed as good—see capitalists supporting greedy competition, or traders such as Gordon Gecko, who says literally “Greed is good,” but also many others. This should not be confused with wanting to experience generous acts in direct exchanges. Think of it this way. If you were greedy and your rival was generous, who would you want picking between you, a greedy person or a generous person? What if you were generous and your rival greedy?
I hope that helps share my intuitions a bit more?
Ha! ^_^
I have a cleared understanding of your reasoning. And your personal experience, plus the anecdotes, and enough to cross the first two bars—the phenomena you describe certainly exist, and are not extremely rare.
The problem is the next step: how frequent are these phenomena, and how severe are they? Because there are counter-examples and counter-narratives (Benquo even called them “official” narratives). Once we admit they also exist, and are not extremely rare, then we’re reaching the limit of what we can get from personal experience and anecdotes (at best we can estimate how prevalent the various behaviours are in our own subcultures).
We can make some predictions from your intuitions (eg people with low empathy will have friends with low empathy, narcissists will hang around with other narcissists, etc...) and measure that as best we can. This won’t be proof, but it will be an indication, and will get us partway towards measuring the prevalence of the various behaviours.