Sorry, not load-bearing; I think “steering the future” was the important part of that sentence.
Although in the case of tantrums, I think the game-theoretic logic is pretty clear: if I predictably make a fuss when I don’t get my way, then people who don’t want me to make a fuss are more likely to let me get my way (to a point). The fact that tantrums don’t benefit the actor when they happen, isn’t itself enough to show that they’re not being used to successfully extort concessions to make them happen less often. If it doesn’t work in the modern workplace, it probably worked in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.
Sorry, not load-bearing; I think “steering the future” was the important part of that sentence.
Although in the case of tantrums, I think the game-theoretic logic is pretty clear: if I predictably make a fuss when I don’t get my way, then people who don’t want me to make a fuss are more likely to let me get my way (to a point). The fact that tantrums don’t benefit the actor when they happen, isn’t itself enough to show that they’re not being used to successfully extort concessions to make them happen less often. If it doesn’t work in the modern workplace, it probably worked in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.
Sometimes also tantrums work in the training distribution of childhood and don’t work in the deployment environment of professional work.