she thinks other females constantly judge each other based upon their wardrobe
In doing so, they evaluate others' taste (mental abilities / fitness) and ability to afford many new dresses (resources).
Why is this an example of special cruelty to others? As long as you have status at all, you must have constant appraisal of others' status. This isn't even an attempt to deliberately lower someone else's status, this is just straightforward competition at raising your own.
As long as you have status at all, you must have constant appraisal of others' status.
I don't do this. I may value others based upon their potential impact on the world, though, on a very subconscious level; I more consciously value others relative to me. Status only matters in so much as it can achieve or accomplish something, and thus is just one tool through which one pursues a goal hierarchically higher on one's objective tree.
...In doing so, they evaluate others' taste (mental abilities / fitness) and ability to afford many new dresses (resources)
The other day, someone did something I didn't expect. It was something many people have done before; something that I thought of as very normal, but that I in no way understood and had not predicted.
As I said, this had happened many time before, so I wrote it off as "me not understanding people" or "people are weird" for a second, like I usually do, before realizing that "bad at" really means "lacking basic knowledge", which I had never realized before.
And then I thought "I should ask someone who is different from me why people do that, and eventually someone will have an answer."
But many people will have many more questions like this. So, what have you observed people doing time and time again, but never understood? Or something that you only understood after a long time or asking someone about it?
And can Less Wrong tell us, not necessarily why (I for one can make up evolutionary psychology fairy tales all day if I want) but what conscious thought process occurs behind these events?