Based on the Paul Graham essay, I think wedrifid's talking about the prestige assignment and character formation processes that are typically found within social contexts (like the laity of the church) where there is no coherent or "objective" measure of virtue.

The theory claims that in such circumstances you get something more like high school or new york socialite circles (where the optimization pressure is supposed to center around attention to incredibly subtle human social nuances and gaming gossip networks and such) and less like the scientific or business communities (where the optimization pressures are suppose to focus on processes somewhat "external" to human factors and substantial development of "practical" skills and knowledge are necessary to thrive).