So basically, my hypothesis is, the reason intelligent people are so often socially clumsy is because it’s a facade, a self-imposed handicap they keep up because evolution has programmed us to have repulsion towards unfairly manipulating others.
When has evolution ever caused individuals to pass up personal advantages? The point of evolution isn’t to promote fairness.
Evolution programmed us to avoid doing things that others perceive as unfairly manipulating. -- Because then the other people get angry and punish the unfair manipulator.
Intelligent people are more aware of their own motives. This makes them more likely to label their hypothetical actions as “manipulation”, because they better see how the action contributes to getting what they want. -- A less reflective person would just do the action contributing to getting what they want, on impulse, and then deny any connection.
a) Intelligent people suffer from the illusion of transparency, just like everyone else. They are likely to believe that if they see the “manipulative” aspects of their hypothetical behaviour, other people would see it to. So they abstain from the behavior, to avoid making others angry. -- But in reality they are miscalibrated; most people would not notice anything unusual.
b) People are adaptation executers, not utility maximizers. Hesitating to manipulate other people unfairly is an adaptation we have, and for the average person, the advantage is beneficial; it allows them to keep good social relationship. For an introspective person, this adaptation may become harmful, because it forbids too wide range of human interaction. -- But the intelligent people follow this adaptation even when it decreases their utility, because people are not utility maximizers.
To me, this explanation seems credible.
Then, of course, I tell myself that rationalists should win, so if my sense of detecting manipulation is miscalibrated, I should calibrate it better, and stop using the “manipulation” label with all its bad connotations too widely.
But many people don’t do this. Because people are not automatically strategic.
(Meta: I use a lot of LW keywords in this comment, to make you—the reader of this comment, and a member of LW community—more likely to agree with me. At the same time, I also do sincerely believe everything I wrote here. At this moment, am I manipulating you or not? Should I modify the comment to remove all the applause lights, and make you less likely to agree, probably even less likely to understand precisely what I mean, just to get rid of the feeling of guilt for manipulating you? My decision is no, but there was a time when I would have decided otherwise.)
The entire “selfish gene” concept is that it is the genes that must be selected and therefore the genes that are selfish. If a gene for altruism results in 10X as many humans carrying that gene as humans not carrying that gene, because those humans work better together towards large scale mutual benefit goals, than that gene wins and humans find themselves willing to give up their lives before they have children.
This is true, but doesn’t have any bearing on the context the author of the post was describing. In that case, the gene is still acting in favor of the survival of other bearers of the gene, whereas in the case jonii describes, the gene is acting to sabotage the bearer’s social standing to no apparent benefit in terms of propagation.
When has evolution ever caused individuals to pass up personal advantages?
When doing so advantages your siblings/parents/children more than twice as much as it disadvantages you (or your grandparents/grandchildrens/aunts/nephews/etc. more than four times as much, etc.)?
Assuming all of your relatives have the same altruistic mutation and the non-mutated people do not derive any significant fitness benefit from your altruism.
Assuming all of your relatives have the same altruistic mutation
If this was assumed then the “twice as much”, “more than four times as much, etc” wouldn’t be required. Since until recently evolution’s playthings didn’t have the ability to directly determine the genetic makeup of relatives the probabilistic accounting that Army refers to is closer to what (this kind of) altruistic behaviour can have been based on. (ie. It is the expectation of genetic similarity not the actual genetic similarity that motivates the action.)
and the non-mutated people do not derive any significant fitness benefit from your altruism.
When has evolution ever caused individuals to pass up personal advantages? The point of evolution isn’t to promote fairness.
How about this:
Evolution programmed us to avoid doing things that others perceive as unfairly manipulating. -- Because then the other people get angry and punish the unfair manipulator.
Intelligent people are more aware of their own motives. This makes them more likely to label their hypothetical actions as “manipulation”, because they better see how the action contributes to getting what they want. -- A less reflective person would just do the action contributing to getting what they want, on impulse, and then deny any connection.
a) Intelligent people suffer from the illusion of transparency, just like everyone else. They are likely to believe that if they see the “manipulative” aspects of their hypothetical behaviour, other people would see it to. So they abstain from the behavior, to avoid making others angry. -- But in reality they are miscalibrated; most people would not notice anything unusual.
b) People are adaptation executers, not utility maximizers. Hesitating to manipulate other people unfairly is an adaptation we have, and for the average person, the advantage is beneficial; it allows them to keep good social relationship. For an introspective person, this adaptation may become harmful, because it forbids too wide range of human interaction. -- But the intelligent people follow this adaptation even when it decreases their utility, because people are not utility maximizers.
To me, this explanation seems credible.
Then, of course, I tell myself that rationalists should win, so if my sense of detecting manipulation is miscalibrated, I should calibrate it better, and stop using the “manipulation” label with all its bad connotations too widely.
But many people don’t do this. Because people are not automatically strategic.
(Meta: I use a lot of LW keywords in this comment, to make you—the reader of this comment, and a member of LW community—more likely to agree with me. At the same time, I also do sincerely believe everything I wrote here. At this moment, am I manipulating you or not? Should I modify the comment to remove all the applause lights, and make you less likely to agree, probably even less likely to understand precisely what I mean, just to get rid of the feeling of guilt for manipulating you? My decision is no, but there was a time when I would have decided otherwise.)
The entire “selfish gene” concept is that it is the genes that must be selected and therefore the genes that are selfish. If a gene for altruism results in 10X as many humans carrying that gene as humans not carrying that gene, because those humans work better together towards large scale mutual benefit goals, than that gene wins and humans find themselves willing to give up their lives before they have children.
This is true, but doesn’t have any bearing on the context the author of the post was describing. In that case, the gene is still acting in favor of the survival of other bearers of the gene, whereas in the case jonii describes, the gene is acting to sabotage the bearer’s social standing to no apparent benefit in terms of propagation.
When doing so advantages your siblings/parents/children more than twice as much as it disadvantages you (or your grandparents/grandchildrens/aunts/nephews/etc. more than four times as much, etc.)?
Assuming all of your relatives have the same altruistic mutation and the non-mutated people do not derive any significant fitness benefit from your altruism.
If this was assumed then the “twice as much”, “more than four times as much, etc” wouldn’t be required. Since until recently evolution’s playthings didn’t have the ability to directly determine the genetic makeup of relatives the probabilistic accounting that Army refers to is closer to what (this kind of) altruistic behaviour can have been based on. (ie. It is the expectation of genetic similarity not the actual genetic similarity that motivates the action.)
Yes.