I find that attempts to reduce everything down to signalling are usually overly simplistic, and in many cases gives you an incorrect view of peoples motivations.
What is missing here is the fact that conversations are, for most people, an enjoyable activity. You get the fuzzy chemical from being around other people, learning things from them and being able to teach them things, sharing interesting stories and perspectives, and bonding over shared experiences. Now, I’m not denying that people often want to impress the other party, but to state that this is the primary motivation doesn’t really make sense. Most of my conversations are with people who I am already good friends with, for example. I listen to them because I care about them and want to help them feel better.
I could make a similar post stating that people play videogames in order to signal their ability to be skilled and focused. I’m sure that plays a part in the motivation, but the primary reason is that it’s fun. The same goes for conversations.
My personal theory is that not all talk is signalling, but almost all talk about signalling is. (It signals “I am smart, sophisticated, not easily fooled, and willing to face uncomfortable realities; I see below the carefully groomed surface of things to the ugliness beneath.”)
In the particularly prominent case of Literal Robin Hanson, it seems possibly significant that the uncomfortable realities he uncovers are generally much more uncomfortable for one of the two major political factions in the US than for the other, and that the “other” one is the one responsible for a lot of his funding over the years (though I think he may no longer be affiliated with the Mercatus Center now?).
(Only possibly significant, and I do actually mean that. Obviously things that are politically convenient for the person saying them can also be true.)
In this situation I like the model of player vs character. In Dungeons and Dragons you create a character sheet with abilities, stats, and motivations. This limits your options and creates preferences for certain actions but as a player you still have choice, and can still do things that are contrary to you “character sheet”, it’s just less likely that you will do so
I think that evolutionary psychology, specifically signaling in this case, is the reason why people enjoy conversations and it acts as our character sheet—shaping our general preferences. We as players often have different motivations for having conversations, but in aggregate the character sheet has a lot of explanatory power even if we’re not consciously aware of it.
The problem is the shift from saying why a behaviour may have evolved, to saying why people do it now.
Why do people enjoy videogames? well, our brains give off the good chemicals when we overcome challenges and succeeded in difficult tasks. This was likely a result of evolution trying to incentive’s hunting and gathering and so on, so we could do it more often and provide more food for our offspring. But does that mean that the primary motivation for playing videogames is to provide food for offspring? Obviously not.
So yes, it’s possible that people evolved to enjoy social bonding because in pre-historic times it helped to form allies. But we live in a vastly different context from hunter-gatherer days. Now we do it for the pure enjoyment, not for the original reason that the enjoyment evolved.
This is my primary concern with evopsych in general, to be honest. Looking at evolutionary pressure from the distant past will only tell us how people thought in the distant past, it doesn’t tell us how our minds have adapted to our changing context. If we want to know how people think now, we can study how they think now.
I find that attempts to reduce everything down to signalling are usually overly simplistic, and in many cases gives you an incorrect view of peoples motivations.
What is missing here is the fact that conversations are, for most people, an enjoyable activity. You get the fuzzy chemical from being around other people, learning things from them and being able to teach them things, sharing interesting stories and perspectives, and bonding over shared experiences. Now, I’m not denying that people often want to impress the other party, but to state that this is the primary motivation doesn’t really make sense. Most of my conversations are with people who I am already good friends with, for example. I listen to them because I care about them and want to help them feel better.
I could make a similar post stating that people play videogames in order to signal their ability to be skilled and focused. I’m sure that plays a part in the motivation, but the primary reason is that it’s fun. The same goes for conversations.
My personal theory is that not all talk is signalling, but almost all talk about signalling is. (It signals “I am smart, sophisticated, not easily fooled, and willing to face uncomfortable realities; I see below the carefully groomed surface of things to the ugliness beneath.”)
In the particularly prominent case of Literal Robin Hanson, it seems possibly significant that the uncomfortable realities he uncovers are generally much more uncomfortable for one of the two major political factions in the US than for the other, and that the “other” one is the one responsible for a lot of his funding over the years (though I think he may no longer be affiliated with the Mercatus Center now?).
(Only possibly significant, and I do actually mean that. Obviously things that are politically convenient for the person saying them can also be true.)
In this situation I like the model of player vs character. In Dungeons and Dragons you create a character sheet with abilities, stats, and motivations. This limits your options and creates preferences for certain actions but as a player you still have choice, and can still do things that are contrary to you “character sheet”, it’s just less likely that you will do so
I think that evolutionary psychology, specifically signaling in this case, is the reason why people enjoy conversations and it acts as our character sheet—shaping our general preferences. We as players often have different motivations for having conversations, but in aggregate the character sheet has a lot of explanatory power even if we’re not consciously aware of it.
The problem is the shift from saying why a behaviour may have evolved, to saying why people do it now.
Why do people enjoy videogames? well, our brains give off the good chemicals when we overcome challenges and succeeded in difficult tasks. This was likely a result of evolution trying to incentive’s hunting and gathering and so on, so we could do it more often and provide more food for our offspring. But does that mean that the primary motivation for playing videogames is to provide food for offspring? Obviously not.
So yes, it’s possible that people evolved to enjoy social bonding because in pre-historic times it helped to form allies. But we live in a vastly different context from hunter-gatherer days. Now we do it for the pure enjoyment, not for the original reason that the enjoyment evolved.
This is my primary concern with evopsych in general, to be honest. Looking at evolutionary pressure from the distant past will only tell us how people thought in the distant past, it doesn’t tell us how our minds have adapted to our changing context. If we want to know how people think now, we can study how they think now.