Here’s another piece of data relevant to estimating the expected laid-utility of interventions designed to increase fame, wealth or power relative to the expected laid-utility of other interventions one might design.
Actress Dana Delany told an interviewer from People magazine or similar magazine that if you want her to kiss you, owning a jet plane and a condo on Bon Air does not make up for having bad breath because of gum disease. That suggest that making a point of never getting so strapped for cash that you cannot afford to pay a good dental hygenist might increase laid-utility more than starting your own company.
Parenthetically I might write a post explaining why according to my mental models, for a male scientist who is bad at getting laid to choose to work on an extinction-risky technology has significantly lower expected utility than for a male scientist good at getting laid to choose to do so where U (the human species goes extinct) = −1 and U (nonextinction) = 0. The effect might apply to female scientists, too, but I am currently almost completely confused about that—except “confused” might be the wrong word because it might connote that I expect to gather additional evidence for or against the question. The effect stems from what has been called the crime-genius connection and from the cognitive benefits to the man of the love of a woman with strong “ego skills”, “ego skills” being the term some psychotherapists use for some practical fragment of rationality.
Actress Dana Delany told an interviewer from People magazine or similar magazine that if you want her to kiss you, owning a jet plane does not make up for having bad breath because of, e.g., gum disease.
Er… perhaps you would find different responses here from non-actresses not being interviewed in People magazine. Or not. Just sayin’, the degree to which someone cares about something may have something to do with the degree to which they are ordinarily deprived of it. If you are not deprived of men owning jet planes, then you may feel free to weight it less than bad breath.
Our civilization does indeed have quite solid evidence that rich men have more sex and have sex with a greater variety of women than less-rich men. However, that removes only a small fraction of the support for the proposition that the kind of heterosexual single man reading these words is better off hiring a pickup/seduction trainer or spending heavily on dentists, hairdressers, gym memberships, etc, than seeking to enter the top percentile of wealth or power if his goal is to increase his sexual access to the sorts of women who will most improve his life—because it is not as if getting a few million dollars is easy. All the dollars in the world are owned by persons, and these persons invariably resisting giving the dollars up. It is significantly easier to identify the women with whom sex will most improve your life and then get them to give the sexual favors up.
I suspect that while wealth is indeed correlated to sex, the causation runs from status and social skills to wealth and sex, meaning that a male at the 90th percentile of wealth and 10th percentile of status (think well-paid but socially inept geek) will have significantly less than average success with women.
I don’t find it hard to believe that such preferences would be common among non-actresses. One way or another, the jet-or-lack-thereof isn’t going to be right up in her face during the actual kissing.
Er… perhaps you would find different responses here from non-actresses not being interviewed in People magazine. Or not. Just sayin’, the degree to which someone cares about something may have something to do with the degree to which they are ordinarily deprived of it. If you are not deprived of men owning jet planes, then you may feel free to weight it less than bad breath, [writes Eliezer].
I’ll be the first to concede that my humble data point would be helpless to resist any real evidence of the sort that social psychologists specialize in obtaining. But even though I have failed to establish anything that cannot be easily knocked down by even one piece of strong evidence, I have undermined the “Roko hypothesis” entailed in Roko’s comment that interventions to improve a man’s weath or power have high expected laid-utililty—since after all there is also no real evidence for the “Roko hypothesis”. Or so it seems to me.
Also, and this is evidence that has professional social scientific experimental expertise or expertise in opinion surveys or such behind it, high status women are even less likely to form certain kinds of sexual bonds (marriage?) with a man of lower status than the woman has than middle-class or lower-class women are likely to—a result born out by my personal experience as a man of bottom-quartile financial security and bottom-quality social status according to the the metrics used by some of the women who have been willing to discuss with me the idea or possibility of their having sex with me (I refer here to the ones that do not swoon over my intelligence, good looks, tallness and mastery of science) and robust across at least American, East-Indian/Hindu and IIRC British women. In other words, you would think that an American or East-Indian woman who already has more financial security than most kings and emperors throughout history have had would care less about the financial security of her long-term mate than the average woman would, but peer-reviewed psychological or opinion research finds that they care more. In other words, owning a Lear jet is more helpful to convince Dana Delany to enter into certain kinds of sexual bonds with you than it is helpful to convince the hairdresser at the corner mall or the average co-ed at a prestigious university to enter into that kind of sexual bond.
(The reason for the need for me to use the phrase “certain kinds of sexual bonds” is that I do not recall whether the studies I have seen surveyed opinions about marriage or what and that it is a robust result believed by a strong consensus of evolutionary psychologists that if Dana Delany is married to some rich movie star but contemplating an extra-marital no-strings-attached coupling, for the cuckolder to own a Lear jet probably does him almost no good at all—signs of genetic fitness such as muscles, tallness, self-confidence and good looks being what women look for in that situation.)
Moreover, the image going through his mind when Roko wrote his words was probably that of a high-status woman.
You seem to accept that women prefer men who have more money than them. Therefore, a man with a lot of money has more potential mates. Isn’t that just the “Roko hypothesis”?
You seem to accept that women prefer men who have more money than them. Therefore, a man with a lot of money has more potential mates.
Well, yeah, but if you do not already have a lot of money, I claim that if you are very bright, there are probably ways of making yourself more attractive to women that are quicker, more reliable and easier than getting a lot of money.
Parenthetically I might write a post explaining why according to my mental models, for a male scientist who is bad at getting laid to choose to work on an extinction-risky technology has significantly lower expected utility than for a male scientist good at getting laid to choose to do so
Here’s another piece of data relevant to estimating the expected laid-utility of interventions designed to increase fame, wealth or power relative to the expected laid-utility of other interventions one might design.
Actress Dana Delany told an interviewer from People magazine or similar magazine that if you want her to kiss you, owning a jet plane and a condo on Bon Air does not make up for having bad breath because of gum disease. That suggest that making a point of never getting so strapped for cash that you cannot afford to pay a good dental hygenist might increase laid-utility more than starting your own company.
Parenthetically I might write a post explaining why according to my mental models, for a male scientist who is bad at getting laid to choose to work on an extinction-risky technology has significantly lower expected utility than for a male scientist good at getting laid to choose to do so where U (the human species goes extinct) = −1 and U (nonextinction) = 0. The effect might apply to female scientists, too, but I am currently almost completely confused about that—except “confused” might be the wrong word because it might connote that I expect to gather additional evidence for or against the question. The effect stems from what has been called the crime-genius connection and from the cognitive benefits to the man of the love of a woman with strong “ego skills”, “ego skills” being the term some psychotherapists use for some practical fragment of rationality.
Er… perhaps you would find different responses here from non-actresses not being interviewed in People magazine. Or not. Just sayin’, the degree to which someone cares about something may have something to do with the degree to which they are ordinarily deprived of it. If you are not deprived of men owning jet planes, then you may feel free to weight it less than bad breath.
Do we have any serious evidence on how much more sexually successful rich people are?
I estimate wealth to have amazingly small effect compared to what most people believe.
Our civilization does indeed have quite solid evidence that rich men have more sex and have sex with a greater variety of women than less-rich men. However, that removes only a small fraction of the support for the proposition that the kind of heterosexual single man reading these words is better off hiring a pickup/seduction trainer or spending heavily on dentists, hairdressers, gym memberships, etc, than seeking to enter the top percentile of wealth or power if his goal is to increase his sexual access to the sorts of women who will most improve his life—because it is not as if getting a few million dollars is easy. All the dollars in the world are owned by persons, and these persons invariably resisting giving the dollars up. It is significantly easier to identify the women with whom sex will most improve your life and then get them to give the sexual favors up.
Give me this evidence. I want numbers. I suspect the correlation will be ridiculously tiny, perhaps far smaller than with stuff like height etc.
I suspect that while wealth is indeed correlated to sex, the causation runs from status and social skills to wealth and sex, meaning that a male at the 90th percentile of wealth and 10th percentile of status (think well-paid but socially inept geek) will have significantly less than average success with women.
I don’t find it hard to believe that such preferences would be common among non-actresses. One way or another, the jet-or-lack-thereof isn’t going to be right up in her face during the actual kissing.
I’ll be the first to concede that my humble data point would be helpless to resist any real evidence of the sort that social psychologists specialize in obtaining. But even though I have failed to establish anything that cannot be easily knocked down by even one piece of strong evidence, I have undermined the “Roko hypothesis” entailed in Roko’s comment that interventions to improve a man’s weath or power have high expected laid-utililty—since after all there is also no real evidence for the “Roko hypothesis”. Or so it seems to me.
Also, and this is evidence that has professional social scientific experimental expertise or expertise in opinion surveys or such behind it, high status women are even less likely to form certain kinds of sexual bonds (marriage?) with a man of lower status than the woman has than middle-class or lower-class women are likely to—a result born out by my personal experience as a man of bottom-quartile financial security and bottom-quality social status according to the the metrics used by some of the women who have been willing to discuss with me the idea or possibility of their having sex with me (I refer here to the ones that do not swoon over my intelligence, good looks, tallness and mastery of science) and robust across at least American, East-Indian/Hindu and IIRC British women. In other words, you would think that an American or East-Indian woman who already has more financial security than most kings and emperors throughout history have had would care less about the financial security of her long-term mate than the average woman would, but peer-reviewed psychological or opinion research finds that they care more. In other words, owning a Lear jet is more helpful to convince Dana Delany to enter into certain kinds of sexual bonds with you than it is helpful to convince the hairdresser at the corner mall or the average co-ed at a prestigious university to enter into that kind of sexual bond.
(The reason for the need for me to use the phrase “certain kinds of sexual bonds” is that I do not recall whether the studies I have seen surveyed opinions about marriage or what and that it is a robust result believed by a strong consensus of evolutionary psychologists that if Dana Delany is married to some rich movie star but contemplating an extra-marital no-strings-attached coupling, for the cuckolder to own a Lear jet probably does him almost no good at all—signs of genetic fitness such as muscles, tallness, self-confidence and good looks being what women look for in that situation.)
Moreover, the image going through his mind when Roko wrote his words was probably that of a high-status woman.
You seem to accept that women prefer men who have more money than them. Therefore, a man with a lot of money has more potential mates. Isn’t that just the “Roko hypothesis”?
Well, yeah, but if you do not already have a lot of money, I claim that if you are very bright, there are probably ways of making yourself more attractive to women that are quicker, more reliable and easier than getting a lot of money.
What are those ways? I list some here.
Have you written such a post?