Hey all,

I just finished reading The Red Queen, which seems to be an important
recent book on the evolution of human sexuality. Another book with
similarly candid conclusions is The Social Leap.

Near the end of the Red Queen, the author describes some experiments that
support the idea that human intelligence evolved largely because of the
endless treadmill of competition with other humans - that we are all
natural Psychologists, and whether we like it or not, status is important
to one's health and wellbeing.

"It's not how good at chess you are overall, but how much better you are
than your competitors that matters"

The author also mentioned a theory for the 'invention' of the subconscious
- that in order to better deceive others (and I'll add, simply to
cooperate), we must become good at deceiving ourselves in useful ways.

The reason I add that we *might* need to deceive ourselves to cooperate is
that certain existential truths set us against each other, and most of us
would rather deny them than acknowledge them. But I'm more inclined to
think we should be *publicly* conscious of our incentives and responsible
for them rather than tuck them away. The schism between the realities of
our individual incentives and the widespread cultural ontology seems to me
to be main difference between the "real world" and the matrix. (You know,
all this blue, red, black pill stuff)

The author also mentions roughly that "Human communication is less for the
honest exchange of information [and truth seeking] than for advertising
value and status."  It seems the latter comes first, in order of priority
to the individual, and the former is a consequence of competitive
cooperation.

This last part is a big deal for me personally, because it explains a lot
of my frustrations. While I'm seeking people with whom to learn, explore,
create and grow, I've constantly felt most people I come across to see the
conversation I'm trying to have as status-aggrandizing, and to retaliate by
misrepresenting or belittling the topic in order to stay above some "zone
of humility".

I could certainly be wrong, but it also seems to create a problem for the
justification hypothesis.

Personally, I absolutely love the idea that the refinement of rationality
and science is the recent pinnacle and trajectory of cultural evolution.
And pressures of competence in real-world challenges would seem to keep
this trajectory going if our future is to explore the hidden realms of
truth and technological-creative possibility. But great swaths of humanity
are busy maintaining lies (usually implicit lies, it seems to me) to
themselves and each other in the struggle to appear (and be treated) like
they matter... and to belong, for its allegiance to the group that we are
most willing to sacrifice truth. (this connects to the recent post about
the American life being unhealthy. I agree with the thesis, but I don't
think the author diagnosed the root problem nor a solution. I might write a
post on that.)

We all need to matter to important people around us, which means we need
some measure of what does and doesn't matter - scarcity of some kind, to
keep the hedonic treadmill going. Perhaps there must always be losers for
others to experience liberation, and being perfectly reasonable isn't
enough. Jordan Peterson's idea that "True Speech" is what empowers people
doesn't jive with my experience. Rather, appearing happy and self-satisfied
in a contagious way, while being just competent enough at whatever your
actual job is - that seems more like it.... Unless you make a breakthrough
that humbles everyone in your presence.

I'll stop there to keep this reasonably short.

- Jamie

P.S. An existential bummer isn't something I went looking for, nor have any
desire to propagate in itself, but is simply where my intellectual journey
has thus far landed. To be honest I rather often feel unsafe even being
conscious of such findings, because I might inadvertently trigger a
reaction that could utterly destroy my social value. It's happened before.
There are some milieu's where if even someone *thinks* you know or believe
some fact that's inconvenient for dominant norms, you could get in serious
trouble.

P.S.S. Self esteem seems connected to behavioral investment theory, in that
high self esteem activates behavior (or liberates one from chronic
behavioral inhibition). And I suspect that self esteem is literally
governed by the dominant norms that govern what memes are allowed to
spread. There is an evolving 'moral filter', part of the moral arc, that
protects previously justified memes (based on utility I presume). An
unfortunate effect is that certain truths have to be packaged extremely
precisely as to avoid alienating other memes/people. Therefore, many people
throughout history could have been perfectly reasonable and right about
whatever they care about, but didn't evolve enough politically to 'make it
through the filter' to have their memes contribute to the cultural
memesphere, and their person recognized as someone who matters.

P.S.S. I'm having a chuckle at wondering if my signals of low status might
make Gregg uncomfortable. Is that a source of connection or alienation?



-- 
-Jamie

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