I would say status is something that people’s hind brains recognize, which trains their forebrains to seek it. The original value served is inclusive evolutionary fitness, but that is neither served in the present nor important to those seeking status.
Status is clearly instrumentally valuable for many reasons, which is why it is important to evolutionary fitness, but I would say most humans do not have a utility function—this is just something that their algorithms have been trained to optimize, and they don’t worry about whether that makes it a real value or whether it is instrumental.
This in turn is likely why we have many stories about people who find themselves in high status positions but still unsatisfied with life.
I would say status is something that people’s hind brains recognize, which trains their forebrains to seek it. The original value served is inclusive evolutionary fitness, but that is neither served in the present nor important to those seeking status.
Status is clearly instrumentally valuable for many reasons, which is why it is important to evolutionary fitness, but I would say most humans do not have a utility function—this is just something that their algorithms have been trained to optimize, and they don’t worry about whether that makes it a real value or whether it is instrumental.
This in turn is likely why we have many stories about people who find themselves in high status positions but still unsatisfied with life.