I wouldn’t be surprised either way. That it was, or that it wasn’t around before. Still, this status-signaling view may be wrong sometimes. Or useless.
Status is far older than Hanson’s take on it, or than Hanson himself. But the idea of seeing status signalling everywhere, as an explanation for everything—that is characteristically Hanson. (Obviously, don’t take my simplification seriously.)
The idea of talking about seeing status signaling everywhere is characteristically Hanson. I would not be surprised in the least if many smart politicians and socialites throughout history had also observed this but had the good sense not to talk about it in public.
Haven’t pickup artists been explicitly discussing status signalling in the context of day-to-day, person-to-person interactions since the late nineties? And biologists have noted its pervasiveness all through the mid-to-late 20th centuries, at least. I’m sure cultural anthropologists too, but I’m not as familiar with that literature. Nor am I, however, with any of Hanson’s posts on the subject, but a quick glance at the links on the LW wiki’s page puts them all in the mid 2000s, with nothing popping out as unusual. But I also couldn’t find anything of his that suggested status to be “an explanation for everything” (I’m guessing everything here means all human behavior? Though that too seems really unlikely), so maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places.
I’m pretty sure the idea has been around since long before Robin Hanson started writing about it.
I wouldn’t be surprised either way. That it was, or that it wasn’t around before. Still, this status-signaling view may be wrong sometimes. Or useless.
Status is far older than Hanson’s take on it, or than Hanson himself. But the idea of seeing status signalling everywhere, as an explanation for everything—that is characteristically Hanson. (Obviously, don’t take my simplification seriously.)
The idea of talking about seeing status signaling everywhere is characteristically Hanson. I would not be surprised in the least if many smart politicians and socialites throughout history had also observed this but had the good sense not to talk about it in public.
Haven’t pickup artists been explicitly discussing status signalling in the context of day-to-day, person-to-person interactions since the late nineties? And biologists have noted its pervasiveness all through the mid-to-late 20th centuries, at least. I’m sure cultural anthropologists too, but I’m not as familiar with that literature. Nor am I, however, with any of Hanson’s posts on the subject, but a quick glance at the links on the LW wiki’s page puts them all in the mid 2000s, with nothing popping out as unusual. But I also couldn’t find anything of his that suggested status to be “an explanation for everything” (I’m guessing everything here means all human behavior? Though that too seems really unlikely), so maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places.