Not sure how much I believe this myself, but Jacob cannell has an interesting take that social status isn’t a “base drive” either, but is basically a proxy for “empowerment”, influence over future states of the world. If that’s true it’s perhaps not so surprising that we’re still well-aligned, since “empowerment” is in some sense always being selected for by reality.
I want to briefly note my disagreement: I think the genome specifically builds what might be called an innate status drive into the brain (stronger in some people than others), in addition to within-lifetime learning. See my discussions here and here, plus this comment thread, and hopefully better discussion in future posts.
Yeah, I wrote some years ago about how status wasn’t a status wasn’t a special feature that humans attribute to each other for contingent social psychology reasons, but rather falls out very naturally as an instrumentally convergent resource.
Yeah, when I consider that, it does undercut the claim that evolution shaped us to optimize for status. It shaped us to to want things, and also to find strategies to get them.
Not sure how much I believe this myself, but Jacob cannell has an interesting take that social status isn’t a “base drive” either, but is basically a proxy for “empowerment”, influence over future states of the world. If that’s true it’s perhaps not so surprising that we’re still well-aligned, since “empowerment” is in some sense always being selected for by reality.
I want to briefly note my disagreement: I think the genome specifically builds what might be called an innate status drive into the brain (stronger in some people than others), in addition to within-lifetime learning. See my discussions here and here, plus this comment thread, and hopefully better discussion in future posts.
A great counterpoint!
Yeah, I wrote some years ago about how status wasn’t a status wasn’t a special feature that humans attribute to each other for contingent social psychology reasons, but rather falls out very naturally as an instrumentally convergent resource.
Yeah, when I consider that, it does undercut the claim that evolution shaped us to optimize for status. It shaped us to to want things, and also to find strategies to get them.