Isn’t it more cost-effective to just avoid interacting with the kind of males in the kind of situations where that matters in the first place (which are rarer than one may think), or, if you live in the kind of place where that’s hard to avoid, to carry pepper spray or something?
You can’t avoid situations where confidence matters. In most type of negotiations confidence matters.
10,000 years ago, if you made an really unreasonable request in a negotiation you risked getting in a physical fight. Your brain has not adepted in the last 10,000 years to remove the effect.
Carrying pepper spray into a salary negotiation won’t make you more confident to ask for a raise. The brain doesn’t work that way that it can integrate the infomration on that level.
That sounds like a myth.
According to that page the only US president in the 20th/21th century that’s under average US male height is Harry S. Truman. Truman also happens to have become president not because he won an election as president directly but because he was vice president.
Saying the US presidents are all really tall might exaggerate the effect but the effect is certainly there.
You can’t avoid situations where confidence matters. In most type of negotiations confidence matters.
And how would a lack of confidence due to not doing martial arts manifest itself?
As far as I can tell, about the only things in life (after high school, at least) I ever wanted that I didn’t get but would have if I had been more confident probably were hookups with drunken bimbos in night clubs (which now that I’m in a relationship is a moot point), and even there being more confident would also have increased the number of times the bouncers threw my ass out of the club.
Looking at how people more confident (IIUC what you mean) than me (controlling for age, intelligence, socio-economic status of parents, and the like) fare in life, I’m under the impression that more confidence would just make me come across as arrogant and make everybody important dislike me. I know people who got into lots of trouble because of that.
Carrying pepper spray into a salary negotiation won’t make you more confident to ask for a raise.
And knowing martial arts doesn’t change the fact that if you demand too much they’ll hire someone cheaper than you. (And in many kinds of jobs the wage is fixed beforehand and they decide whom to hire based on a competitive examination.)
10,000 years ago, if you made an really unreasonable request in a negotiation you risked getting in a physical fight. Your brain has not adepted in the last 10,000 years to remove the effect.
[citation needed]. I don’t feel anywhere near the same level of anxiety when haggling over a price or something as when (say) walking alone at night in a city I’m not familiar with with high crime rates, or driving on a heavily trafficked motorway, or taking an exam (though for some reason that doesn’t happen with all exams), or even noticing the red inbox icon on Less Wrong for that matter.
Stuff like (say) this can take much less than 10,000 years to happen. See also this.
Given that you claim to have nice guy privilege I would assume that’s because you don’t make strong demands of other people.
Indeed I don’t. I usually prefer to swerve in the game of chicken, unless I’m damn sure the other player is going to swerve—I may lose one util but I sure won’t lose ten. I have seen what happens when two people both go straight and, suffice it to say, I don’t envy them at all.
I would predict with high confidence that you would feel anxiety if you would go to your boss and ask for a 20% raise or you quit.
Of course being about to take an action with a non-trivial probability of making me unemployed would make me anxious. That’s a feature, not a bug. (And even when it isn’t, I don’t think that martial arts would help with that much more than something much cheaper such as a rehearsal, or alcohol.)
(This assuming there’s an individual who decides how much money I get—right now, I’m living on a PhD grant whose amount is fixed on a nation-wide basis.)
The same person before they went through the training.
For this instantiation I would bet that this commonly stated truism is false. I expect the other factors to dominate the comparatively small influence of increased calm. (And, incidentally, they also should so dominate. The expected payoff for engaging in unarmed combat changed excessively in the direction of “less extremely bad”.)
The proper comparison would be the same person now if counterfactually they hadn’t gone through the training. I’d expect most people to get less fighty with age after their teens no matter what.
The martial arts black belt is less likely to actually become involved in a fight because he can remain calm.
Prob’ly, but how likely is a non-black belt to become involved in a fight as a result of asking the boss for a rise? That sounds like the kind of thing that gets on the news when it happens.
(And I’m not that convinced that more anxious people are more likely to get into fights—compare e.g. the stereotypical female with the stereotypical male, or the stereotypical nerd with the stereotypical jock. I mean, the more afraid you are of something the less likely you are to seek it, aren’t you?)
how likely is a non-black belt to become involved in a fight as a result of asking the boss for a rise? That sounds like the kind of thing that gets on the news when it happens.
That’s not what I’m arguing. Emotions don’t come through rational analysis of a situation.
I don’t know what’s the relevance of that. I don’t have to do a rational analysis of the situation to know that the boss is not going to beat me up.
I mean, a reasonable-looking middle-aged person whom I’ve know for a while wearing a pullover in the office during the day sounds like the least likely person to possibly come across as dangerous, don’t they? Compare with (say) an aggressive-looking twentysomething total stranger with short hair and tattoos and a tight-fitting T-shirt outside a night club during the night. I can see why martial arts training would make me less nervous near the latter (given that the smaller they are the less they scare me), but not near the former (given that I don’t even notice their size unless it’s extreme or I pay conscious attention to it).
I don’t know what’s the relevance of that. I don’t have to do a rational analysis of the situation to know that the boss is not going to beat me up.
That doesn’t change that you will feel different emotions and weaker when you face a boss that smaller than you as when you face a physically fit boss that’s taller than you.
In the US you don’t become president by beating up other people yourself with your bare hands. All the presidents are still over average height. Height matters for political fights as it has physical effects.
I have added a second paragraph to my comment after the first submission; have you read it?
That doesn’t change that you will feel different emotions and weaker when you face a boss that smaller than you as when you face a physically fit boss that’s taller than you.
I. Fucking. Don’t. Maybe I would if I had beaten up regularly when growing up, or if I witnessed people beating each other up all the time (in meatspace or on the TV), but I haven’t, and I don’t. The emotions I feel when facing superiors feel like admiration for such a smart person or incredulity that such a stupid person would get that position, not nervousness because they are bigger or smugness because they are smaller. I wouldn’t be able to tell how tall my doctoral advisor is to within better than a few inches from memory.
Please stop claiming that you know what I feel like better than myself.
In the US you don’t become president by beating up other people yourself with your bare hands. All the presidents are still over average height. Height matters for political fights as it has physical effects.
Yeah, and there are totally no possible confounds there. Also, my set of emotional responses is totally representative of that of most American voters. Yeah. (As for height, I’m 1.87 m (6′2″) and I more often wish that I was shorter than that I was taller. And the average 20-year-old man could still probably beat the crap out of me if he wanted to, though probably he doesn’t know that.)
Also, there was some comment somewhere on LW where someone had looked up the heights of all the top-class 20th century scientists they could think of, and the tallest was Tesla at 6′2″ and all but a couple were less than 6′. And I’d sure consider them much more of a role model than the POTUSes.
I don’t know if “black belts” are really that much better in an actual fight than a similarly fit/strong untrained person. You need some sort of feedback mechanism (like UFC folks get).
Depends on how they train. I’ve seen my fair share of McDojos and their students before, but I’ve also met some black belts who’re legitimately outstanding in a fight, way beyond the level of any untrained people I’ve encountered at any fitness level.
It’s like saying that you can make everyone on earth black within one generation. You just kill every nonblack person.
(Indeed, many of the attempts to use evolutionary psychology as prescriptive rather than descriptive come across to me like ‘people have dark skin, because they evolved in Africa where there was lots of sunshine, so you should spend plenty of time in the sunshine or you will get vitamin D deficiency’ when nowadays there are plenty of people who have pale skin and would get sunburns as a result of following that advice—and can digest lactose so they can get the vitamin D they need from dairy products. And then when a fair-skinned person would point out that they’ve never got vitamin D deficiency and they’ve got quite a few sunburns, they are accused of lying, or of being inferior mutants rather than Real People. See e.g. some of the comments on Yvain’s blog post about polyamory.)
You can’t avoid situations where confidence matters. In most type of negotiations confidence matters.
10,000 years ago, if you made an really unreasonable request in a negotiation you risked getting in a physical fight. Your brain has not adepted in the last 10,000 years to remove the effect.
Carrying pepper spray into a salary negotiation won’t make you more confident to ask for a raise. The brain doesn’t work that way that it can integrate the infomration on that level.
According to that page the only US president in the 20th/21th century that’s under average US male height is Harry S. Truman. Truman also happens to have become president not because he won an election as president directly but because he was vice president.
Saying the US presidents are all really tall might exaggerate the effect but the effect is certainly there.
And how would a lack of confidence due to not doing martial arts manifest itself?
As far as I can tell, about the only things in life (after high school, at least) I ever wanted that I didn’t get but would have if I had been more confident probably were hookups with drunken bimbos in night clubs (which now that I’m in a relationship is a moot point), and even there being more confident would also have increased the number of times the bouncers threw my ass out of the club.
Looking at how people more confident (IIUC what you mean) than me (controlling for age, intelligence, socio-economic status of parents, and the like) fare in life, I’m under the impression that more confidence would just make me come across as arrogant and make everybody important dislike me. I know people who got into lots of trouble because of that.
And knowing martial arts doesn’t change the fact that if you demand too much they’ll hire someone cheaper than you. (And in many kinds of jobs the wage is fixed beforehand and they decide whom to hire based on a competitive examination.)
[citation needed]. I don’t feel anywhere near the same level of anxiety when haggling over a price or something as when (say) walking alone at night in a city I’m not familiar with with high crime rates, or driving on a heavily trafficked motorway, or taking an exam (though for some reason that doesn’t happen with all exams), or even noticing the red inbox icon on Less Wrong for that matter.
Stuff like (say) this can take much less than 10,000 years to happen. See also this.
I think it’s one of the better explanations for the fact that tall people become presidents and get payed more in business.
It’s like saying that you can make everyone on earth black within one generation. You just kill every nonblack person.
Given that you claim to have nice guy privilege I would assume that’s because you don’t make strong demands of other people.
Of course you might feel no anxiety when trying to negotiate a price for a new car. You don’t lose anything when you just walk out of the dealership.
I would predict with high confidence that you would feel anxiety if you would go to your boss and ask for a 20% raise or you quit.
Indeed I don’t. I usually prefer to swerve in the game of chicken, unless I’m damn sure the other player is going to swerve—I may lose one util but I sure won’t lose ten. I have seen what happens when two people both go straight and, suffice it to say, I don’t envy them at all.
Of course being about to take an action with a non-trivial probability of making me unemployed would make me anxious. That’s a feature, not a bug. (And even when it isn’t, I don’t think that martial arts would help with that much more than something much cheaper such as a rehearsal, or alcohol.)
(This assuming there’s an individual who decides how much money I get—right now, I’m living on a PhD grant whose amount is fixed on a nation-wide basis.)
Being anxious is not a good state for rationally thinking about a situation.
Sounds like Straw Vulcanism to me.
You confuse an assessment or whether something is dangerous as equal to anxiety.
Anxiety produces near thinking when far thinking would be far more useful for a situation. Anxiety produces fight/flight/freeze responses.
The martial arts black belt is less likely to actually become involved in a fight because he can remain calm.
Surpressing emotions isn’t good and that’s not what I’m advocating.
Less likely than who? (For most instantiations of ‘less likely’ I expect this claim to be false.)
The same person before they went through the training.
For this instantiation I would bet that this commonly stated truism is false. I expect the other factors to dominate the comparatively small influence of increased calm. (And, incidentally, they also should so dominate. The expected payoff for engaging in unarmed combat changed excessively in the direction of “less extremely bad”.)
Prob’ly, but how likely is a non-black belt to become involved in a fight as a result of asking the boss for a rise? That sounds like the kind of thing that gets on the news when it happens.
(And I’m not that convinced that more anxious people are more likely to get into fights—compare e.g. the stereotypical female with the stereotypical male, or the stereotypical nerd with the stereotypical jock. I mean, the more afraid you are of something the less likely you are to seek it, aren’t you?)
That’s not what I’m arguing. Emotions don’t come through rational analysis of a situation.
I don’t know what’s the relevance of that. I don’t have to do a rational analysis of the situation to know that the boss is not going to beat me up.
I mean, a reasonable-looking middle-aged person whom I’ve know for a while wearing a pullover in the office during the day sounds like the least likely person to possibly come across as dangerous, don’t they? Compare with (say) an aggressive-looking twentysomething total stranger with short hair and tattoos and a tight-fitting T-shirt outside a night club during the night. I can see why martial arts training would make me less nervous near the latter (given that the smaller they are the less they scare me), but not near the former (given that I don’t even notice their size unless it’s extreme or I pay conscious attention to it).
That doesn’t change that you will feel different emotions and weaker when you face a boss that smaller than you as when you face a physically fit boss that’s taller than you.
In the US you don’t become president by beating up other people yourself with your bare hands. All the presidents are still over average height. Height matters for political fights as it has physical effects.
I have added a second paragraph to my comment after the first submission; have you read it?
I. Fucking. Don’t. Maybe I would if I had beaten up regularly when growing up, or if I witnessed people beating each other up all the time (in meatspace or on the TV), but I haven’t, and I don’t. The emotions I feel when facing superiors feel like admiration for such a smart person or incredulity that such a stupid person would get that position, not nervousness because they are bigger or smugness because they are smaller. I wouldn’t be able to tell how tall my doctoral advisor is to within better than a few inches from memory.
Please stop claiming that you know what I feel like better than myself.
Yeah, and there are totally no possible confounds there. Also, my set of emotional responses is totally representative of that of most American voters. Yeah. (As for height, I’m 1.87 m (6′2″) and I more often wish that I was shorter than that I was taller. And the average 20-year-old man could still probably beat the crap out of me if he wanted to, though probably he doesn’t know that.)
Also, there was some comment somewhere on LW where someone had looked up the heights of all the top-class 20th century scientists they could think of, and the tallest was Tesla at 6′2″ and all but a couple were less than 6′. And I’d sure consider them much more of a role model than the POTUSes.
I don’t know if “black belts” are really that much better in an actual fight than a similarly fit/strong untrained person. You need some sort of feedback mechanism (like UFC folks get).
My post made no assertion that black belts are better in an actual fight.
I happen to believe that’s true but it’s a separate issue.
Depends on how they train. I’ve seen my fair share of McDojos and their students before, but I’ve also met some black belts who’re legitimately outstanding in a fight, way beyond the level of any untrained people I’ve encountered at any fitness level.
(Indeed, many of the attempts to use evolutionary psychology as prescriptive rather than descriptive come across to me like ‘people have dark skin, because they evolved in Africa where there was lots of sunshine, so you should spend plenty of time in the sunshine or you will get vitamin D deficiency’ when nowadays there are plenty of people who have pale skin and would get sunburns as a result of following that advice—and can digest lactose so they can get the vitamin D they need from dairy products. And then when a fair-skinned person would point out that they’ve never got vitamin D deficiency and they’ve got quite a few sunburns, they are accused of lying, or of being inferior mutants rather than Real People. See e.g. some of the comments on Yvain’s blog post about polyamory.)
Are you claiming vitamin D deficiency is not common?
No.
EDIT: Do you mean literal vitamin D deficiency, or what vitamin D deficiency is a metaphor for in my comment?
I mean literal vitamin D deficiency, because I had thought vitamin D deficiency was one of the best examples of the evolutionary heuristic.