Then why do the linked researchers use it as a marker of that?
Maybe, it is about status of a different kind. Maybe this reduces to that it is not a well defined word and we always get into rather unresolvable debates because of that.
Let’s try this: there are two kinds of status, one is more like being a commanding officer or a schoolteacher towards kids, it is respect and deference and maybe a bit of fear (but does not 1:1 translate to dominance, although close), the other kind is being really popular and liked. Remember school. The difference between the teacher’s status and the really likeable kid’s status is key here. The CEO vs. the Louis CK type well liked comedian. The politician vs. the best ballet dancer.
To the linked article: being good at math does not make one liked. It makes one respected. Closer to the first type.
We don’t live in a world where low testosterone people want high testosterone people to have more power.
Yes I want policemen to have a certain kind of status but policemen don’t need to be high testosterone. Empathic policemen who are actually good at reading other people have advantages in a lot of police tasks.
Schoolteachers need respect but they don’t need to be high testosterone either. A teacher does a better job if he understands the student.
You should really think that over. For the police example, we have two conflicting requirements, first is to be so scary (or more like respect-commanding) that he rarely needs to get physical, that is always messy. The opposite requirement is the smiling, nice, service-oriented, positive community vibes stuff, like the policemen who visited me and told me I forgot to lock my car. (The reading people is more of an investigator level stuff, not street level.) The question is, which one is more important? If you have one optimal and one less optimal, which one is better? Similarly we want teachers to be kind and understanding with students with genuine difficulties, but be more scary to the kind of thuggish guys half my class was.
The point is really how pessimistic or cautious is your basic view. Do you see the police as a thin blue line separating barbarism from civilization? Do you see every generation of children as “barbarians needing to be civilized” (Hannah Arendt) Or you have a more optimistic view, seeing the vast majority of people behaving well and the vast majority of kids genuinely trying to do good work?
Furthermore—and this is even more important—would you rather get more pessimistic than things are and thus slow down progress, or more optimistic and risk systemic shocks?
I think you know my answers :) I have no problem with a slow and super-safe progress. I don’t exactly want to flee from the present or the past.
For the police example, we have two conflicting requirements, first is to be so scary
No, policemen don’t need to be scary to do their jobs.
A police that can be counted on doing a proper investigation that punishes criminals can deter crime even when the individual policmen aren’t scary.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
Similarly we want teachers to be kind and understanding with students with genuine difficulties
Being empathic is not simply about being “kind and understanding” it allows the teacher to have more information about the mental state of a student and more likely see when a student gets confused and react towards it. A smart student also profits when the teacher get’s that the student already understands what the teacher wants to tell him.
The point is really how pessimistic or cautious is your basic view. Do you see the police as a thin blue line separating barbarism from civilization? Do you see every generation of children as “barbarians needing to be civilized” (Hannah Arendt) Or you have a more optimistic view, seeing the vast majority of people behaving well and the vast majority of kids genuinely trying to do good work?
Neither. I rather care about the expected empiric result of a policy than about seeing people are inherently good or inherently evil. I think you think too much in categories like that and care too little about the empirical reality that we do have less crime than we had in the past.
It’s like discussing global warming not on the scientific data about temperature changes but on whether we are for the environment or for free enterprise. The nonscientific framing leads to bad thinking.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
It’s not clear how much of that is this and how much is them being more afraid of the kingpins of their ethnic mafias than they are of the police.
Low testosterone people also want status.
Then why do the linked researchers use it as a marker of that?
Maybe, it is about status of a different kind. Maybe this reduces to that it is not a well defined word and we always get into rather unresolvable debates because of that.
Let’s try this: there are two kinds of status, one is more like being a commanding officer or a schoolteacher towards kids, it is respect and deference and maybe a bit of fear (but does not 1:1 translate to dominance, although close), the other kind is being really popular and liked. Remember school. The difference between the teacher’s status and the really likeable kid’s status is key here. The CEO vs. the Louis CK type well liked comedian. The politician vs. the best ballet dancer.
To the linked article: being good at math does not make one liked. It makes one respected. Closer to the first type.
We don’t live in a world where low testosterone people want high testosterone people to have more power.
Yes I want policemen to have a certain kind of status but policemen don’t need to be high testosterone. Empathic policemen who are actually good at reading other people have advantages in a lot of police tasks.
Schoolteachers need respect but they don’t need to be high testosterone either. A teacher does a better job if he understands the student.
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You should really think that over. For the police example, we have two conflicting requirements, first is to be so scary (or more like respect-commanding) that he rarely needs to get physical, that is always messy. The opposite requirement is the smiling, nice, service-oriented, positive community vibes stuff, like the policemen who visited me and told me I forgot to lock my car. (The reading people is more of an investigator level stuff, not street level.) The question is, which one is more important? If you have one optimal and one less optimal, which one is better? Similarly we want teachers to be kind and understanding with students with genuine difficulties, but be more scary to the kind of thuggish guys half my class was.
The point is really how pessimistic or cautious is your basic view. Do you see the police as a thin blue line separating barbarism from civilization? Do you see every generation of children as “barbarians needing to be civilized” (Hannah Arendt) Or you have a more optimistic view, seeing the vast majority of people behaving well and the vast majority of kids genuinely trying to do good work?
Furthermore—and this is even more important—would you rather get more pessimistic than things are and thus slow down progress, or more optimistic and risk systemic shocks?
I think you know my answers :) I have no problem with a slow and super-safe progress. I don’t exactly want to flee from the present or the past.
No, policemen don’t need to be scary to do their jobs. A police that can be counted on doing a proper investigation that punishes criminals can deter crime even when the individual policmen aren’t scary.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
Being empathic is not simply about being “kind and understanding” it allows the teacher to have more information about the mental state of a student and more likely see when a student gets confused and react towards it. A smart student also profits when the teacher get’s that the student already understands what the teacher wants to tell him.
Neither. I rather care about the expected empiric result of a policy than about seeing people are inherently good or inherently evil. I think you think too much in categories like that and care too little about the empirical reality that we do have less crime than we had in the past.
It’s like discussing global warming not on the scientific data about temperature changes but on whether we are for the environment or for free enterprise. The nonscientific framing leads to bad thinking.
It’s not clear how much of that is this and how much is them being more afraid of the kingpins of their ethnic mafias than they are of the police.