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gjm comments on Open thread, Apr. 18 - Apr. 24, 2016 - Less Wrong
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I've been reading a lot of Robin Hanson lately and I'm curious at how other people parse his statements about status. Hanson often says something along the lines of: "X isn't about what you thought. X is about status."
I've been parsing this as: "You were incorrect in your prior understanding of what components make up X. Somewhere between 20% and 99% of X is actually made up of status. This has important consequences."
Does this match up to how you parse his statements?
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To clarify: I don't usually think anything is just about one thing. I think there are a list of motivations towards taking an action for the first person who does it and that one motivation is often stronger than the others. Additionally, new motivations are created or disappear as an action continues over time for the original person. For people who come later, I suspect factors of copying successful patterns (also for a variety of reasons including status matching) as well as the original possible reasons for the first person. This all makes a more complicated pattern and generational system than just pointing and yelling "Status!" (which I hope isn't the singular message people get from Hanson).
Personally, I tend to parse them as "Look how cynical and worldly-wise I am, how able I am to see through people's pretences to their ugly true motivations. Aren't I clever and edgy?".
I am aware that this is not very charitable of me.
In more charitable mood, I interpret these statements roughly as Lumifer does: Hanson is making claims about why (deep enough down) people do what they do.
I don't think that's the best non charitable version.
More accurate: "Hanson profits from memes that are associated with him spreading. That's his job as a public intellectual. Therefore he does everything to make them spread and win. He optimizes for winning."
That's exactly how Hanson sounds to me, and why I tend to read his blog less often now.
Overcoming Bias is not about overcoming bias.
Both of those could be true: if "deep down" people have motivations like that, it may be that deep down Hanson has that kind of motivation for making such observations.
This is an example of why I'm curious about everyone else's parsing. I bet Robin Hanson does talk about status in the pursuit of status, however I bet he also enjoys going around examining social phenomenon in terms of status and that he is quite often on to something. These aren't mutually exclusive. People may have an original reason for doing something, but they may have multiple reasons that develop over time and their most strongly motivating reason can change.