I've been parsing this as: You were incorrect in your prior understanding of what components make up X. ... Does this match up to how you parse his statements?
Nope. I parse them in terms of incentives. When Hanson says "X isn't about what you thought. X is about status", I understand it as "People are primarily motivated to do X not because of X's intrinsic rewards, but because doing X will give them status points".
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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