This cluster of psychological adaptations is too strong to become atrophied. It might be that you mainly apply it in atypical ways, but not that you lack or never use it. It sounds like saying that you are largely indifferent to pain or sound.
On the other hand, claiming to not be status-seeking (and honestly believing that too, of course) is a typical mode of status-seeking behavior, and this explanation of your claim seems orders of magnitude more plausible.
This cluster of psychological adaptations is too strong to become atrophied. It might be that you mainly apply it in atypical ways, but not that you lack or never use it. It sounds like saying that you are largely indifferent to pain or sound.
Plenty of people are largely indifferent to pain or sound. They’re called, respectively, CIPA patients and deaf people. It doesn’t seem like status would be harder wired than either of those, and people manage (less so in the pain case than the deafness case) without them. Sure, priors are low on any given person having either of these things missing, and so for status, but I don’t think you’d be this skeptical if someone claimed here to be deaf or have CIPA, so those are poor comparisons.
If what you mean is that there are biases that may make people who are sensitive to status liable to claim otherwise, then you could have used another item from the heuristics and biases literature to make a more effective analogy.
Plenty of people are largely indifferent to pain or sound. They’re called, respectively, CIPA patients and deaf people
I’ve considered countering the argument for “deaf people” preemptively in the original comment, but thought it’s too obviously not applicable as analogy to the status thing to be actually used in a counter-argument. Silly me.
It doesn’t seem like status would be harder wired than either of those, and people manage (less so in the pain case than the deafness case) without them.
I won’t say that it’s completely impossible (though it might be) to lack status drives, but that it’s very improbable and would be a serious neurological condition.
Sure, priors are low on any given person having either of these things missing, and so for status, but I don’t think you’d be this skeptical if someone claimed here to be deaf or have CIPA, so those are poor comparisons.
Claiming to be deaf is best explained by being deaf in most situations; claiming to not seek status is best explained by a standard pattern in status-seeking present in most people. Besides, I’m not aware of status-breakdown as a known medical condition, which would make me see it as so much less probable, even if it’s known to experts. That there is still a chance for brain-damage being the cause doesn’t allow you to priviledge this particular hypothesis.
This cluster of psychological adaptations is too strong to become atrophied. It might be that you mainly apply it in atypical ways, but not that you lack or never use it. It sounds like saying that you are largely indifferent to pain or sound.
Even deeper. You can sever a few nerves and you get rid of pain and sound sensitivity and still function. Status sensitivity is built into the brain right through to the primitive level.
It would say that it’s possible for a human brain to function successfully/efficiently/rationally without any level of status sensitivity, which undermines arguments for its universality and importance.
Also, downvoted for comparing autistic people to coma patients. I don’t believe you had bad intentions, but casually inconsiderate comments are not a positive for the community.
It would say that it’s possible for a human brain to function successfully/efficiently/rationally without any level of status sensitivity, which undermines arguments for its universality and importance.
It would? I sure as heck wouldn’t say autistic folks ‘function successfully/efficiently/rationally’ in general, and much of the therapy and education I hear about strikes me as being in part teaching about status sensitivity. (My mildly autistic cousin spent a great deal of time on working on his acting out and misbehaviour and acting ‘appropriately’ - a codeword for status sensitivity if I’ve ever seen one.)
Also, downvoted for comparing autistic people to coma patients. I don’t believe you had bad intentions, but casually inconsiderate comments are not a positive for the community.
I stand by it. Being in a coma is a bad thing. As is autism. I’ve seen arguments by the ‘neurodiversity’ folks that autism is not a bad thing; I vehemently disagree and regard most of their arguments as rubbish.
(In an analogous situation, I am contemptuous of those of us in the hard-of-hearing and deaf communities who declaim that our disabilities are not disabilities and are actually good, and the people who do things like select their embryos for carrying deafness genes are not committing a great evil. This strikes me as deeply perverse.)
I stand by it. Being in a coma is a bad thing. As is autism. I’ve seen arguments by the ‘neurodiversity’ folks that autism is not a bad thing; I vehemently disagree and regard most of their arguments as rubbish.
I saw this had been voted up to +1 and went to correct it. Then I noticed that it was me who had voted it up, I don’t know why. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Anyway, that comparison is idiotic. Why are you comparing autism to a coma? Why not compare it to, say, Triffids taking over the world. That is a bad thing too and only slightly less relevant. Your dismissal of the arguments is also unjustifiably absolute. There is a clear margin at the top of the ‘functional’ spectrum at which AS is personality trait that is far more adaptive in many ways than various other traits that we consider ‘normal’ despite being suboptimal adaptions to the current environment.
(In an analogous situation, I am contemptuous of those of us in the hard-of-hearing and deaf communities who declaim that our disabilities are not disabilities and are actually good, and the people who do things like select their embryos for carrying deafness genes are not committing a great evil. This strikes me as deeply perverse.)
Deafness gives no benefit. AS does, even if they are outweighed by the disadvantages.
My apologies and downvote retracted; I made the unwarranted assumption that this conversation specifically included Asperger’s Syndrome under the Autism umbrella. I may have mixed it up with another thread.
In any case, you’re right. Classical autism is not a good thing.
np. There’s potentially an interesting discussion in Aspies and status sensitivity; are these people high functioning in the ways full-blown/classical autism is not except for social things like status sensitivity?
The biggest difference between Asperger’s Syndrome/High-Functioning Autism and full-blown Autism is IQ, ultimately.
Compared to neurotypical people, Aspies tend to have various social deficits, difficulty regulating emotion, a tendency to become preoccupied with narrow subjects and, less often, motor or sensory abnormalities. Along with lower IQ, full-blown autistics tend to have all of these symptoms (except possibly narrow-subject-preoccupation), and usually to a greater degree.
Agree and add that some of the serious undeniable deficits also vary by degree. An extremely high IQ aspie can also have crippling sensory integration problems while a lower IQ aspie may also have more mild problems to compensate for, leaving him ‘higher functioning’. Even those ‘various social deficits’ can differ in degree from ‘sufficiently below norm’ to irredeemably absent.
I wonder if using the word ‘and’ in the grandparent rather than the word ‘but’ would have better conveyed ‘elaboration’ rather than ‘correction’. I think so. Edited.
It sounds like saying that you are largely indifferent to pain or sound.
Though since we do know that there are people who don’t properly process sensory information, or who are in fact indifferent to pain, it is not implausible that LW might have people who actually were indifferent to status.
That being said, I do agree that “they care about status, but don’t want to admit it / but don’t realize it” is a considerably more plausible explanation if a random poster claims that they do not care about status. A person having Asperger’s considerably increases my credence their claim, though.
Data point: I have Asperger’s Syndrome. While I haven’t seen status-immunity singled out as a consequence of the condition, I think it’s at least plausible that it could be a part of the social impairment component.
I’m as confident as I can be that my ability to recognize status is learned, in the same way that I have no instinctual ability to read facial expressions and body language. I have learned to do these things, but it’s as if those abilities are external modules that have been bolted on to the rest of my thought processes; they require conscious effort in a way that language parsing (for example) does not.
If that counts as a “serious neurological condition,” then we may not disagree at all.
Sounds like we need something like the Implicit Association Test to measure people’s actual sensitivity to status and other qualities that people often misrepresent, voluntarily or involuntarily. I don’t know enough behavioral psychology to create such tests. Anyone?
This cluster of psychological adaptations is too strong to become atrophied. It might be that you mainly apply it in atypical ways, but not that you lack or never use it. It sounds like saying that you are largely indifferent to pain or sound.
On the other hand, claiming to not be status-seeking (and honestly believing that too, of course) is a typical mode of status-seeking behavior, and this explanation of your claim seems orders of magnitude more plausible.
Plenty of people are largely indifferent to pain or sound. They’re called, respectively, CIPA patients and deaf people. It doesn’t seem like status would be harder wired than either of those, and people manage (less so in the pain case than the deafness case) without them. Sure, priors are low on any given person having either of these things missing, and so for status, but I don’t think you’d be this skeptical if someone claimed here to be deaf or have CIPA, so those are poor comparisons.
If what you mean is that there are biases that may make people who are sensitive to status liable to claim otherwise, then you could have used another item from the heuristics and biases literature to make a more effective analogy.
I’ve considered countering the argument for “deaf people” preemptively in the original comment, but thought it’s too obviously not applicable as analogy to the status thing to be actually used in a counter-argument. Silly me.
I won’t say that it’s completely impossible (though it might be) to lack status drives, but that it’s very improbable and would be a serious neurological condition.
Claiming to be deaf is best explained by being deaf in most situations; claiming to not seek status is best explained by a standard pattern in status-seeking present in most people. Besides, I’m not aware of status-breakdown as a known medical condition, which would make me see it as so much less probable, even if it’s known to experts. That there is still a chance for brain-damage being the cause doesn’t allow you to priviledge this particular hypothesis.
Schizoid personality disorder seems to be one possible way it could break down.
Even deeper. You can sever a few nerves and you get rid of pain and sound sensitivity and still function. Status sensitivity is built into the brain right through to the primitive level.
Details?
How sure are you that this is true of autistic brains?
Even if autistic folks were completely insensitive to status, that wouldn’t necessarily say much about status sensitivity not being basic/primitive.
People in a coma don’t think or even always breathe, yet I would say that thinking and breathing are built into the brain down to the primitive core.
It would say that it’s possible for a human brain to function successfully/efficiently/rationally without any level of status sensitivity, which undermines arguments for its universality and importance.
Also, downvoted for comparing autistic people to coma patients. I don’t believe you had bad intentions, but casually inconsiderate comments are not a positive for the community.
It would? I sure as heck wouldn’t say autistic folks ‘function successfully/efficiently/rationally’ in general, and much of the therapy and education I hear about strikes me as being in part teaching about status sensitivity. (My mildly autistic cousin spent a great deal of time on working on his acting out and misbehaviour and acting ‘appropriately’ - a codeword for status sensitivity if I’ve ever seen one.)
I stand by it. Being in a coma is a bad thing. As is autism. I’ve seen arguments by the ‘neurodiversity’ folks that autism is not a bad thing; I vehemently disagree and regard most of their arguments as rubbish.
(In an analogous situation, I am contemptuous of those of us in the hard-of-hearing and deaf communities who declaim that our disabilities are not disabilities and are actually good, and the people who do things like select their embryos for carrying deafness genes are not committing a great evil. This strikes me as deeply perverse.)
I saw this had been voted up to +1 and went to correct it. Then I noticed that it was me who had voted it up, I don’t know why. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Anyway, that comparison is idiotic. Why are you comparing autism to a coma? Why not compare it to, say, Triffids taking over the world. That is a bad thing too and only slightly less relevant. Your dismissal of the arguments is also unjustifiably absolute. There is a clear margin at the top of the ‘functional’ spectrum at which AS is personality trait that is far more adaptive in many ways than various other traits that we consider ‘normal’ despite being suboptimal adaptions to the current environment.
Deafness gives no benefit. AS does, even if they are outweighed by the disadvantages.
My apologies and downvote retracted; I made the unwarranted assumption that this conversation specifically included Asperger’s Syndrome under the Autism umbrella. I may have mixed it up with another thread.
In any case, you’re right. Classical autism is not a good thing.
np. There’s potentially an interesting discussion in Aspies and status sensitivity; are these people high functioning in the ways full-blown/classical autism is not except for social things like status sensitivity?
The biggest difference between Asperger’s Syndrome/High-Functioning Autism and full-blown Autism is IQ, ultimately.
Compared to neurotypical people, Aspies tend to have various social deficits, difficulty regulating emotion, a tendency to become preoccupied with narrow subjects and, less often, motor or sensory abnormalities. Along with lower IQ, full-blown autistics tend to have all of these symptoms (except possibly narrow-subject-preoccupation), and usually to a greater degree.
Agree and add that some of the serious undeniable deficits also vary by degree. An extremely high IQ aspie can also have crippling sensory integration problems while a lower IQ aspie may also have more mild problems to compensate for, leaving him ‘higher functioning’. Even those ‘various social deficits’ can differ in degree from ‘sufficiently below norm’ to irredeemably absent.
Agreed. It was not my intent to imply otherwise.
I wonder if using the word ‘and’ in the grandparent rather than the word ‘but’ would have better conveyed ‘elaboration’ rather than ‘correction’. I think so. Edited.
There is always some difficulty with executive function and attention control too.
Though since we do know that there are people who don’t properly process sensory information, or who are in fact indifferent to pain, it is not implausible that LW might have people who actually were indifferent to status.
That being said, I do agree that “they care about status, but don’t want to admit it / but don’t realize it” is a considerably more plausible explanation if a random poster claims that they do not care about status. A person having Asperger’s considerably increases my credence their claim, though.
Data point: I have Asperger’s Syndrome. While I haven’t seen status-immunity singled out as a consequence of the condition, I think it’s at least plausible that it could be a part of the social impairment component.
I’m as confident as I can be that my ability to recognize status is learned, in the same way that I have no instinctual ability to read facial expressions and body language. I have learned to do these things, but it’s as if those abilities are external modules that have been bolted on to the rest of my thought processes; they require conscious effort in a way that language parsing (for example) does not.
If that counts as a “serious neurological condition,” then we may not disagree at all.
Sounds like we need something like the Implicit Association Test to measure people’s actual sensitivity to status and other qualities that people often misrepresent, voluntarily or involuntarily. I don’t know enough behavioral psychology to create such tests. Anyone?