But here’s the kicker: in this globalist hyper-connected century, we don’t really run out of perceived opportunity anymore. What does happen, is that we’re perpetually stuck with motivations that people in the past would have perceived as morally depraved
Agreed but it’s also worth noting that this can run the other way too. This globalist hyper-connected century can also provide us with motivations that seem unusually noble. Part of the 80000 Hours schtick is the idea that we’re uniquely advantaged to do extremely good things for the world and the internet is pretty good at helping us discover bottomless pits of suffering. Because our heuristics for “being a good person” and “having the status associated with being a good person” are pretty muddied, pursuit of these noble goals can also often been driven by this Molochian sense of competition and have the same negative psychological effects as competition for any other kind of available opportunity.
This kind of thing has also had a good bit of discussion in effective altruism—the feeling of constant competition for constantly available opportunity produces psychological costs:
“Hey you! You know, all these ideas that you had about making the world a better place, like working for Doctors without Borders? They probably aren’t that great. The long-term future is what matters. And that is not funding constrained, so earning to give is kind of off the table as well. But the good news is, we really, really need people working on these things. We are so talent constraint… (20 applications later) … Yeah, when we said that we need people, we meant capable people. Not you. You suck.”
And from another comment on that article by Peter Hurford to help show how this is about status:
I really wish we (as an EA community) didn’t work so hard to accidentally make earning to give so uncool. It’s a job that is well within the reach of anyone, especially if you don’t have unrealistic expectations of how much money you need to make and donate to feel good about your contributions. It’s also a very flexible career path and can build you good career capital along the way.
As a pretty capable person who’s both seen the great things Effective Altruism has done and who has stayed on the side-lines so far (partially because thinking too hard about effective altruism has made me feel bad about myself in the past), I’m not really sure what actual solutions there are for this.
So how do we stop the status subagent? By removing our opportunity for status altogether. I have the suspicion that healthy, high-trust cultures tend to make status as predictable and as hard to change as possible
It’s kind of fun to contrast this with effective altruism/Less Wrongian culture which, for good reason, tries to maximize altruistic achievement or performance and deliberately eschews a lot of conventional social signalling to do so (i.e. Worried that you’re not credentialled enough to get a high status position? Check out these people who got cool AI research roles by saving a bit of money and self-studying really hard!).
In general, it seems like cultures with predictable and hard-to-change status roles are necessarily sacrificing something like “optimized performance” or “equality of opportunity” since they use low-noise proxies (you can be 100% certain about whether you went to college) while actual metrics of performance and capability tend to a) be noisy, b) be hard for an individual to predict about themself and c) are hard to rank-order relative to competitors (remember the chaos of extra-curriculars and SAT studying that ran up to applying to college? ’Cuz I do).
Idk what the optimal balance of “psychological benefits from well-defined status roles” and “success benefits from optimizing actual success” is but hopefully someone figures it out. Otherwise Moloch is just gonna pick for us.
Agreed but it’s also worth noting that this can run the other way too. This globalist hyper-connected century can also provide us with motivations that seem unusually noble. Part of the 80000 Hours schtick is the idea that we’re uniquely advantaged to do extremely good things for the world and the internet is pretty good at helping us discover bottomless pits of suffering. Because our heuristics for “being a good person” and “having the status associated with being a good person” are pretty muddied, pursuit of these noble goals can also often been driven by this Molochian sense of competition and have the same negative psychological effects as competition for any other kind of available opportunity.
This kind of thing has also had a good bit of discussion in effective altruism—the feeling of constant competition for constantly available opportunity produces psychological costs:
-- After one year of applying for EA jobs: It is really, really hard to get hired by an EA organisation
And from another comment on that article by Peter Hurford to help show how this is about status:
As a pretty capable person who’s both seen the great things Effective Altruism has done and who has stayed on the side-lines so far (partially because thinking too hard about effective altruism has made me feel bad about myself in the past), I’m not really sure what actual solutions there are for this.
It’s kind of fun to contrast this with effective altruism/Less Wrongian culture which, for good reason, tries to maximize altruistic achievement or performance and deliberately eschews a lot of conventional social signalling to do so (i.e. Worried that you’re not credentialled enough to get a high status position? Check out these people who got cool AI research roles by saving a bit of money and self-studying really hard!).
In general, it seems like cultures with predictable and hard-to-change status roles are necessarily sacrificing something like “optimized performance” or “equality of opportunity” since they use low-noise proxies (you can be 100% certain about whether you went to college) while actual metrics of performance and capability tend to a) be noisy, b) be hard for an individual to predict about themself and c) are hard to rank-order relative to competitors (remember the chaos of extra-curriculars and SAT studying that ran up to applying to college? ’Cuz I do).
Idk what the optimal balance of “psychological benefits from well-defined status roles” and “success benefits from optimizing actual success” is but hopefully someone figures it out. Otherwise Moloch is just gonna pick for us.