Unrelated to this post, but I am mentioning it because of its connection to the familiar Klingian distinction between easy to fix and hard to break. The article in the link below claims that the smoke that the parts of the United States are experiencing from Canadian forest fires is so intense because Canadian forest managers don't set many small controlled fires (easy to fix), so they get less frequent but much larger and uncontrollable fires (hard to break).
The Henderson article has extended comments from both men and women on the effect of women's entrance into previous all male domains such as business management and staff. These comments from actual participants are quite consistent with Arnold's earlier comments on the topic pointing out the problems that arise from female values coming into play in formerly male dominated large systems.
People want to fit in AND to stand out. Be included yet have higher status. It is stretching these truths a bit to combine them with agency/action and feeling/care morality issues - yet also they're related because morality itself is part of wanting to fit in, yet also striving for "moral superiority" (status!).
Tracking status (hierometer) and inclusion/communion (sociometer) are clearly done a bit by most folks, but it's good to be honest about it and what it means. The most politically important point was Henderson's Wrangham quote:
"…humans domesticated themselves to be kind, loyal, and cooperative with their in-group. And absolutely vicious to outsiders, to the out-group."
This explains so much so often about "how humans are".
In market economies most folk DO trust most sellers most of the time, especially bankers. Yes, it should be verified they're not ripping you off (too smart), and also checked that they've filled out all the paper work (incompetent) - but most folk free ride w/o checking based on "the market" (=other people) doing enough checking that they don't have to.
In thinking of the 2000-2008 MBS fiasco, it was a few smart bankers correctly noting ways to make higher short term profits, while ignoring systemic risks. Then these smart pioneers' deals are copied & copied until the system's high riskiness resulted in huge, downward spiraling losses. More lazy thinking rather than smart cheating or dumb mistakes. The lazy rich should have lost, hugely, rather than getting bailed out by the gov't -- and their losses would have made the rich more careful. (The bailout also keeps the high status folk rich)
Instead ... more risky short term profits with somewhat socialized risks. At least SVB equity investors lost. More banking equity should be required of all banks, with less regulations.
The statement: "humans domesticated themselves to be kind, loyal, and cooperative with their in-group. And absolutely vicious to outsiders, to the out-group." is only partially correct as we are also much more cooperative with outside groups relative to all other primates. Most primates are nasty to outsiders by default.
The evolutionary driving force for both our cooperative nature and our big "energy using brain" may be the standard "specialization and trade" creating a huge energetic advantage. Stone tools and fire existed long before homo sapiens existed, but not all stones are not distributed equally. Having a volcanic mountain with flint or obsidian creates an option for a tribe leader (the alpha male) who meets a stranger with a hunk of a much better rock. He could take his rock, kill him and take his rock, or give him some food and something they have too much of (shells, antlers, etc.) and send him back home and bring more rock. Both are better off with either better stone tools or better shells the females like.
Stones are obviously not equally distributed but neither is salt, making the payoff for trade enough to justify our large brain that burns 20% of our energy. Homo erectus did have fire and stone tools but not as big of brain so the complexity of fire and stone tools wasn't high enough to drive the evolution of huge energy burning brains. You needed the huge complexity increase of "specialization and trade" to allow the selection of big wasteful brains.
For evolution to create a peacocks tail is only a 3% energy hit combined with a higher predator risk that is a binary risk (dead or not -- with reproduction being the fitness objective a 3% energy cost and a few % mortality cost is trivial relative to reproduction probability). Humans are talking about absolutely huge amount of energy devoted to being the smartest animal (> 20%). <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1323099111 > good data on children in the >50% range to feed that growing brain.
I am kind of scared about this psychological research and conclusions. I mean whole point of covid and this terrible teror was that someone hijacked or bypassed person reason with this status thing. They nudge people to behave this way or they would lose the status and so on. It's not only status per say, to reproduce you have to be able to have sex - so normal physical connection not only virtual, you have to have place, opportunity, also take care of the offspring and deal with your ex partners. There is planty things and it's not that simple.
Thanks for the link, I really enjoyed parts of it. My criticism is that it seemed more like ideology disguised as anthropology so as to promote the author's fixation on inequality and sustainability. The article reminds me of the evolutionary biology work of Gould. A great mind funneled to prove that everything in science should support Marxist ideology.
Unrelated to this post, but I am mentioning it because of its connection to the familiar Klingian distinction between easy to fix and hard to break. The article in the link below claims that the smoke that the parts of the United States are experiencing from Canadian forest fires is so intense because Canadian forest managers don't set many small controlled fires (easy to fix), so they get less frequent but much larger and uncontrollable fires (hard to break).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12175219/DAVID-MARCUS-choking-idiocy-Mr-Trudeau-greenwashing-mask-truth.html
The Henderson article has extended comments from both men and women on the effect of women's entrance into previous all male domains such as business management and staff. These comments from actual participants are quite consistent with Arnold's earlier comments on the topic pointing out the problems that arise from female values coming into play in formerly male dominated large systems.
People want to fit in AND to stand out. Be included yet have higher status. It is stretching these truths a bit to combine them with agency/action and feeling/care morality issues - yet also they're related because morality itself is part of wanting to fit in, yet also striving for "moral superiority" (status!).
Tracking status (hierometer) and inclusion/communion (sociometer) are clearly done a bit by most folks, but it's good to be honest about it and what it means. The most politically important point was Henderson's Wrangham quote:
"…humans domesticated themselves to be kind, loyal, and cooperative with their in-group. And absolutely vicious to outsiders, to the out-group."
This explains so much so often about "how humans are".
In market economies most folk DO trust most sellers most of the time, especially bankers. Yes, it should be verified they're not ripping you off (too smart), and also checked that they've filled out all the paper work (incompetent) - but most folk free ride w/o checking based on "the market" (=other people) doing enough checking that they don't have to.
In thinking of the 2000-2008 MBS fiasco, it was a few smart bankers correctly noting ways to make higher short term profits, while ignoring systemic risks. Then these smart pioneers' deals are copied & copied until the system's high riskiness resulted in huge, downward spiraling losses. More lazy thinking rather than smart cheating or dumb mistakes. The lazy rich should have lost, hugely, rather than getting bailed out by the gov't -- and their losses would have made the rich more careful. (The bailout also keeps the high status folk rich)
Instead ... more risky short term profits with somewhat socialized risks. At least SVB equity investors lost. More banking equity should be required of all banks, with less regulations.
I misread the title and subtitle of this piece. I was like, yeah, I want to attend Rob Henderson lectures on social status. How do we get those?
The statement: "humans domesticated themselves to be kind, loyal, and cooperative with their in-group. And absolutely vicious to outsiders, to the out-group." is only partially correct as we are also much more cooperative with outside groups relative to all other primates. Most primates are nasty to outsiders by default.
The evolutionary driving force for both our cooperative nature and our big "energy using brain" may be the standard "specialization and trade" creating a huge energetic advantage. Stone tools and fire existed long before homo sapiens existed, but not all stones are not distributed equally. Having a volcanic mountain with flint or obsidian creates an option for a tribe leader (the alpha male) who meets a stranger with a hunk of a much better rock. He could take his rock, kill him and take his rock, or give him some food and something they have too much of (shells, antlers, etc.) and send him back home and bring more rock. Both are better off with either better stone tools or better shells the females like.
Stones are obviously not equally distributed but neither is salt, making the payoff for trade enough to justify our large brain that burns 20% of our energy. Homo erectus did have fire and stone tools but not as big of brain so the complexity of fire and stone tools wasn't high enough to drive the evolution of huge energy burning brains. You needed the huge complexity increase of "specialization and trade" to allow the selection of big wasteful brains.
For evolution to create a peacocks tail is only a 3% energy hit combined with a higher predator risk that is a binary risk (dead or not -- with reproduction being the fitness objective a 3% energy cost and a few % mortality cost is trivial relative to reproduction probability). Humans are talking about absolutely huge amount of energy devoted to being the smartest animal (> 20%). <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1323099111 > good data on children in the >50% range to feed that growing brain.
I am kind of scared about this psychological research and conclusions. I mean whole point of covid and this terrible teror was that someone hijacked or bypassed person reason with this status thing. They nudge people to behave this way or they would lose the status and so on. It's not only status per say, to reproduce you have to be able to have sex - so normal physical connection not only virtual, you have to have place, opportunity, also take care of the offspring and deal with your ex partners. There is planty things and it's not that simple.
Thanks for the link, I really enjoyed parts of it. My criticism is that it seemed more like ideology disguised as anthropology so as to promote the author's fixation on inequality and sustainability. The article reminds me of the evolutionary biology work of Gould. A great mind funneled to prove that everything in science should support Marxist ideology.