Your model sounds right to me but I think there are benefits of oxytocin receptivity that go not just to the individual’s satisfication rating when they’re in a (not-awful) relationship, but also to their surroundings. For instance, I would guess that teams/organizations where many people value interpersonal relationships for their own sake can be stronger and more stable in a way that enables them to—ironically—be more ambitious and fight corruptive influences a lot better. (E.g., having high internal trust enables orgs to have flatter hierarchies and fewer levels of secrecy, which is good for team culture and epistemics. Also, if people value their social connections a lot, you have to worry less about important people leaving the org in an uncoordinated fashion if things get difficult in some way, which can be good or bad for impact depending on the specifics.) Relatedly, I think dialing up ambitiousness can go poorly, especially if you remove the safeguarding effects of certain prosocial drives or emotions.
I want to caveat the above by adding that cognitive diversity is almost certainly good for teams and I could well imagine that the perfect mix at any org includes several people to whom “work is everything” (even if that’s driven by “ambitiousness” rather than autistic hyperfixation on their special interest). Also, orgs fill different niches and there are different equilibria for stable org cultures where talented people like to work at, etc. So, my point is really just “I’m pretty sure there are upsides you haven’t yet listed,” rather than, “humans with oxytocin receptors are for sure the better building blocks for forming impactful teams.”
Lastly, while I agree that, directionally, oxytocin sensitivity makes people less ambitious, I want to flag that I know many relationship-oriented but still “hardcore” effective altruistics who have found partners who are similarly ambitious or at least support their ambition (rather than just supporting them as a partner without properly respecting their ambition), or EAs who had a strong desire for finding a partner but deliberately didn’t invest much into finding someone because they saw many examples of relationships going badly and they didn’t want to jeopardize their productivity. Which is to underscore that things like oxytocin sensitivity are still only one component to the overall orientation of one’s personality (even though I agree with you that it might be the biggest individual factor).
Your model sounds right to me but I think there are benefits of oxytocin receptivity that go not just to the individual’s satisfication rating when they’re in a (not-awful) relationship, but also to their surroundings. For instance, I would guess that teams/organizations where many people value interpersonal relationships for their own sake can be stronger and more stable in a way that enables them to—ironically—be more ambitious and fight corruptive influences a lot better. (E.g., having high internal trust enables orgs to have flatter hierarchies and fewer levels of secrecy, which is good for team culture and epistemics. Also, if people value their social connections a lot, you have to worry less about important people leaving the org in an uncoordinated fashion if things get difficult in some way, which can be good or bad for impact depending on the specifics.) Relatedly, I think dialing up ambitiousness can go poorly, especially if you remove the safeguarding effects of certain prosocial drives or emotions.
I want to caveat the above by adding that cognitive diversity is almost certainly good for teams and I could well imagine that the perfect mix at any org includes several people to whom “work is everything” (even if that’s driven by “ambitiousness” rather than autistic hyperfixation on their special interest). Also, orgs fill different niches and there are different equilibria for stable org cultures where talented people like to work at, etc.
So, my point is really just “I’m pretty sure there are upsides you haven’t yet listed,” rather than, “humans with oxytocin receptors are for sure the better building blocks for forming impactful teams.”
Lastly, while I agree that, directionally, oxytocin sensitivity makes people less ambitious, I want to flag that I know many relationship-oriented but still “hardcore” effective altruistics who have found partners who are similarly ambitious or at least support their ambition (rather than just supporting them as a partner without properly respecting their ambition), or EAs who had a strong desire for finding a partner but deliberately didn’t invest much into finding someone because they saw many examples of relationships going badly and they didn’t want to jeopardize their productivity. Which is to underscore that things like oxytocin sensitivity are still only one component to the overall orientation of one’s personality (even though I agree with you that it might be the biggest individual factor).