Break down almost any human effort and at the bottom of it you’ll usually find a struggle for social status, which is/was directly conductive to reproductive success (especially for males, for females it’s more about looks when it comes to attracting a partner, but social status of cause still plays a critical role for surviving and thriving in a social group).
I seriously doubt any one of us can outrun our nature without cognitive engineering, so my preferred way of dealing with this side of human nature is to look at it as a “serious game” not terribly different from competitive poker. Win some, lose some—take it serious but don’t obsess over it to the point where you make it the core and center of your very existence. It’s not “meaningful” enough, or indeed meaningful at all given a transhuman perspective.
If we could upload and re-engineer our minds tomorrow, I’d probably strongly advocate to cut this “social status” nonsense from our cognitive make-up. By now it has outstayed its purpose and as far as I’m concerned its welcome, it has only brought untold misery upon humans and there are much more worthy things to be motivated by.
Hell, social status is even a significant roadblock for discussions among rationalists. Almost any possible communication between humans has an undercurrent that carries information about social status. So arguing and disagreeing were never ways to arrive at rational conclusions to begin with, they are actually ways to impose your will and influence and dominance onto others—so when we level a criticism or disagreement even to a fellow rationalist around here, we often feel the need to first make a little linguistic dance of appeasement to ensure our fellow apes don’t take our disagreement as an assassination attempt on their social status. Especially not while everyone’s watching from their desktops and treetops .
And sometimes, if you’re really lucky it actually works.
Massively agreed.
Break down almost any human effort and at the bottom of it you’ll usually find a struggle for social status, which is/was directly conductive to reproductive success (especially for males, for females it’s more about looks when it comes to attracting a partner, but social status of cause still plays a critical role for surviving and thriving in a social group).
I seriously doubt any one of us can outrun our nature without cognitive engineering, so my preferred way of dealing with this side of human nature is to look at it as a “serious game” not terribly different from competitive poker. Win some, lose some—take it serious but don’t obsess over it to the point where you make it the core and center of your very existence. It’s not “meaningful” enough, or indeed meaningful at all given a transhuman perspective.
If we could upload and re-engineer our minds tomorrow, I’d probably strongly advocate to cut this “social status” nonsense from our cognitive make-up. By now it has outstayed its purpose and as far as I’m concerned its welcome, it has only brought untold misery upon humans and there are much more worthy things to be motivated by.
Hell, social status is even a significant roadblock for discussions among rationalists. Almost any possible communication between humans has an undercurrent that carries information about social status. So arguing and disagreeing were never ways to arrive at rational conclusions to begin with, they are actually ways to impose your will and influence and dominance onto others—so when we level a criticism or disagreement even to a fellow rationalist around here, we often feel the need to first make a little linguistic dance of appeasement to ensure our fellow apes don’t take our disagreement as an assassination attempt on their social status. Especially not while everyone’s watching from their desktops and treetops .
And sometimes, if you’re really lucky it actually works.