I’ve been reading Robin Hanson for five years or so and while I could often notice tendencies he describes that I found in myself, the comprehensiveness of the problem just hadn’t come home to me. Just about everything I do is motivated in whole or in a large part by status seeking, and for some reason I didn’t know that until just now.
Humans are social animals. We try rationalize our motives based on what we want and how we can make it look outside. So far we even lie to ourselves to reach the middle ground.
For example how many people actually say they work hard because they are greedy? No, you wont find such people explaining their motives. Instead they say they are hard working, want to excel and are gifted what they do. Why couldn’t you be medicore person that is greedy and just works very hard to get loads of money?
It isn’t as comforting though and society many times also rewards if we explain our motives to bit better.
I’ve been reading Robin Hanson for five years or so and while I could often notice tendencies he describes that I found in myself, the comprehensiveness of the problem just hadn’t come home to me. Just about everything I do is motivated in whole or in a large part by status seeking, and for some reason I didn’t know that until just now.
Humans are social animals. We try rationalize our motives based on what we want and how we can make it look outside. So far we even lie to ourselves to reach the middle ground.
For example how many people actually say they work hard because they are greedy? No, you wont find such people explaining their motives. Instead they say they are hard working, want to excel and are gifted what they do. Why couldn’t you be medicore person that is greedy and just works very hard to get loads of money?
It isn’t as comforting though and society many times also rewards if we explain our motives to bit better.