My belief is — a key ingredient to the recipe is the charismatic person somehow promises to fulfil your deep inner need. They’ve either stumbled into knowing it, or read you like the proverbial. Which makes them a bloody disaster to your personal life, if nothing else.
Yea to translate this in to my language, I think charismatic people are good at sniffing out people's insecurities and exploiting them. And we can define insecurity more rigorously as the motivation to avoiding making one's negative traits common knowledge when people already have some private knowledge of them. I think this is related to charisma because it depends on the same kind of recursive mind reading.
Charisma is one of the most misunderstood characteristics around. And while your paradoxes make sense to me, we also need to take into account charismatic leaders who are "cringe" AF.
Gandhi was shy, spoke softly, and avoided confrontation in personal settings. He built a movement that liberated a nation through the clarity and consistency of his message about nonviolent resistance.
Hitler (yes, we need to go here) was socially awkward, described by contemporaries as “unimpressive” in person, even pathetic. His charisma came entirely from his ability to articulate a vision (however horrific) and speak to the grievances and aspirations of his audience.
And then there's Donald Trump, who most people regard as a crass buffoon. But his followers clearly think he's charismatic, because he says what they already believed and desired.
Social psychology tells us that the key characteristic of a charismatic leader is a unifying vision. Does that vision exploit the insecurities of the followers? I think so, but often the insecurity is shared by the leader.
Thanks. Vision certainly matters but I ultimately think that can be folded into the analysis of social paradoxes—e.g., sharing unpopular opinions everyone agrees with, not caring about status (but caring about higher, nobler things) to get status, virtue signaling without coming off as a virtue signaler, etc. Also knowing how to signal one’s allegiances and enmities with dog whistles and moralizations is a big part of charisma, and has to do with the logic of concealing signals. This explains why only some people are talented enough to have the “vision” that makes them charismatic—that is, they are better able to play the convoluted social games that enable them to craft an appealing vision.
Interesting food for thought, thank you for the response.
Comes down to how we define a talent, because you can definitely learn how to communicate in the way of those social paradoxes. In my mind, charisma is not some mysterious innate trait, it can be learned, developed, and refined.
The social paradoxes at the beginning is *chef's kiss*. And it also happens at scale, in business!
Consider the vast majority of the advisory industry. It's a Certainty Industrial Complex, locked with its clients in a stable signaling equilibrium whose primary currency is not truth, but legitimacy.
“Certainty Theater” is the generated artifact class (plans, forecasts, roadmaps, decks, prescriptive “strategies”) that functions as a concealed signal of competence, control, diligence, and moral seriousness. In your terms, David, it is a “social paradox” scaled up to organizations: both sides must treat the signal as if it were not a signal, because once the signaling function becomes mutually salient (“we’re doing this for optics / blame / status”), the artifact loses its power and “turns to ash.”
Oh yeah, I love that article too! But it’s more about general advice, even if delivered through 300-page business books.
What I’m getting at is that the dynamics between professional advisors and their clients is a different beast… Not completely so, but different enough that feels much more like a complex social paradox game than just social grooming & paying for it!
It’s probably more of a curiosity for you than something you care about, but if you ever do care, boy do I have stories! 😆
Interesting hypothesis. The way I've been framing charisma recently is "the skill to know which rules, if broken, will not lead to any negative consequences". If one has such a skill, as well as the skill to manage social paradoxes, I imagine they have to have a robust theory of mind of others.
I wonder why we all haven't optimized for this. Seems like if we all had this understanding/skill of borderline psychopathy (lol) but channeled in an obvious pro-social way, wouldn't it be of everyone's benefit?
And the other thing: if the charismatic person were honest about how their mind works when thinking about others, it'd probably seem very creepy. So perhaps the core paradox they've perfected is being the non-creepy creep. I suspect the ability to temper down negative emotion is a big part of the skill as well. If someone says something creepy in a seemingly calm, relaxed way, they can get away with a lot more than if their lip is quivering.
Yea agreed re the tempering down of negative emotions. If you watch the clip of Ted Bundy it's astonishing how calm and collected he is for a man who has been sentenced to death. I think we all haven't optimized for charisma for the same reason we all haven't optimized for playing in the NBA. Some people are just naturally talented at social games and they invested in getting better at them. Some people are not very talented at social games so they chose not to invest in that skill and invest in other skills instead. As for why people don't harness their charisma toward prosocial ends, I would return to my heuristic metatheory of Darwinian cynicism where people don't have any basic motive to make the world a better place and only care about benefitting themselves and their families. The key is making sure that when people try to benefit themselves and their families it indirectly helps other people too.
Explains a lot of the challenge of charisma for those on the autistic spectrum. Not only are we bad at social paradox games but we also hate them and have a predilection for doing the cringey thing of blurting out elephants in rooms and getting socially punished for it.
These games have patterns that be learned consciously, but "masking" is mentally exhausting and causes distaste towards oneself and humanity at large, which then becomes a negative spiral that is opposite of the symbiotic delusion in the case of a charismatic social partner that you describe.
But at the same time social status is less of a concern, anyway, for us. So if one can just play during practically critical social contexts, like business meetings, and try to enjoy hobbies that involve minimal conversation, it becomes tolerable.
On the topic of hobbies with minimal conversation, your article also gives some nice scientific credence to Emil Cioran's insistence on the value of (instrumental) music.
"Despair sets in when the music stops playing"
"Bach's music is the only reason the human race is not a complete failure"
He is very much right that music is raw human emotional communication without the semiotics of delusion playing power tactics, and as such, is profoundly beautiful.
Of course within social contexts there are social paradoxes in music.
A guitar shredder who is just showing off and cringe versus one with tasteful virtuosity on a section of aggressive fury within a climatic peak in the arrangement of the solo.
A jazz player who tries to get away with the nastiest unholy dissonance by resolving it the right way, then telling you that you should play the Bb13 in a different inversion for some abstruse reason (perhaps he just wants your pinky finger to suffer).
One can consider there is probably some correspondence between musicality and the cadence of emotions that a charismatic person would "target" in a ritual of social paradox.
Yea definitely lots of status games and fashion trends in music. But I also tend to agree that there is something pure and beautiful about music that is independent of the social games we play. I tend to agree with Schopenhauer's worldview, namely that everything sucks except for music. (I'm oversimplifying of course).
And what causes someone not to be charismatic? Why do some people execute on it so well while others fail miserably (like that shrimp example)? Asking for a friend lol. Presumably, autism sentences you to a life of no charisma.
Yea I think autism is likely to be negatively correlated with charisma. I don't know of any research on this but I would be shocked if it wasn't true. I also wouldn't be surprised if neuroticism (or social anxiety) was negatively correlated with charisma. People who are socially anxious often have good reason to be socially anxious because they perceive that social costs (humiliation, ostracism) are likely to be inflicted on them. The trouble is, people are good at sniffing out social anxiety, and being seen as socially anxious is--I strongly suspect--negatively correlated with charisma. So if you want to increase your charisma I would recommend therapy, meditation, or psychopharmaceuticals to reduce your social anxiety. I'm not sure if there's much else that can be done beyond that. Just as some people are naturally talented at basketball and some aren't, I think some people are naturally talented at social games and some aren't.
The bit on deception being symbiotic was new to me. I feel like this does kind of explain people who are (to me) transparent phoneys or charlatans. It's not that others all have to truly believe their management speak, self-help platitudes, etc. — they just have to bet that others will, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it can all collapse if the person is publicly disgraced. These people didn't quite have the social competence to pull it off forever.
The highest-charisma individuals are those whose social competence (ability to actually handle social paradoxes) means they're not vulnerable to being exposed or debunked & so have enduring popularity. Have I go that right?
Finally (maybe this is old news in evo psych & I'm describing standard theory), this made me think that something similar goes for perception of attractiveness & status. They're also based on underlying attributes that aren't perfectly perceivable, so we supplement with predictions of others' perceptions. Like attractiveness is partly about symmetry or skin blemishes or whatever, but also if everyone in your tribe thinks an elongated skull is attractive then it becomes a little bit of a coordination game too, where it's beneficial to align your tastes with convention.
As far as electoral politics goes, there is a massive overlap between plain old good looks and what people call charisma. It doesn’t account for everything, but it accounts for a hell of a lot.
I don't understand how anonymous donations give someone credit, other than the same tax deduction that non-anonymous donations do. There are millions of people every year who donate to wildlife and conservation charities, often far away in other states with no one they know on the board and no one knows they made the donation, ever, other than some email list at the charity and the IRS. This also does not serve one's self, family, or group, it serves animals. Hundreds of millions donated annually, mostly from small donors without much money.
Now perhaps you will say that such people who value things/animals/trees whatever so much that they use their own resources towards them at the expense of their own genes will eventually just be selected out of existence, and you might be right, but they exist now and weren't selected out yet. Same goes generally for other people who do not seem to exhibit any preference for their own family. I agree they are not that common, but they're at least a good 10% and by this view should not exist.
Credit it in the sense that we view anonymous donors as more virtuous than we view conspicuous donors. So an anonymous donation that's discovered will boost the status of the donor more than a conspicuous donation that's discovered, like in the curb your enthusiasm episode "the anonymous donor." So anonymous donations can pay off if they are offset by extra status if/when they are discovered. Or at least, that is the logic outlined in the "buried signaling" paper I link to (see also Hidden Games by Moshe Hoffman and Erez Yoeli). I suppose it's possible for a small percentage of people, like 10%, to care about animals or something independent of whatever status it might bring them. But I'm more interested in explaining 90% of humans than 10% of humans. People often defensively point to the 10% as a cope for acknowledging bitter truths about the other 90% (and to implicitly signal that they are part of the virtuous 10%).
I don't think it is that uncommon. Just googling, 23% of online donations are anonymous. These are small dollar amounts (median $50) done in a very removed manner, online. That's a quarter of people! I get it you are more interested in what most people do, but the way you write is as if this stuff is impossible or never happens, my concern is that this just becomes its own justification for people to behave in a self-interested manner if they are always reading science telling them it's literally impossible to ever behave in anything but a self-interested manner. I also think there is likely a gender discrepancy in a lot of this stuff because I don't think women are as motivated by status (and frankly there is no rational reason for them to be, given there are far fewer payoffs to be so, from an evolutionary perspective). I read this stuff about wanting to have a cult or a bunch of people to follow you and it doesn't even resonate why anyone would want such a thing, it sounds actively bad. Even if only for the selfish reason that this type of increased status is also increased risk and a target on your back.
Okay but what percentage of those anonymous donations remained truly anonymous? How many of those people ended up mentioning it to others? In how many cases did someone find about it? We don’t know, but I suspect it’s a significant percentage. Also, whether or not my ideas encourage selfish behavior is irrelevant to whether or not my ideas are correct. Besides, if you’re so confident about people being altruistic for reasons independent of status, then why should any (implicit) encouragement or discouragement from me make a difference? It seems like your worries presuppose a kind of altruism that is extremely dependent on subtle signs of others’ approval or disapproval. We may agree more than you think.
Because people's beliefs inform their behavior. People who think they could go to hell or be rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven are likely to behave differently than people who believe there will be no punishment or reward for their behavior, so long as they aren't caught. And people who believe that everyone is inherently, inescapably motivated only and in all instances by selfish behavior, are also more likely to not bother behaving in a different matter, because why bother, it just makes you a sucker, doesn't it? They are less likely to feel guilty, for example, for NOT behaving in such manner.
I mean, I actually see no reason why anyone would want to serve the interests of their genes over their own experiencing-self, so we are not even really talking about "selfish" behavior but behavior in the interests of molecules, but that is getting far afield. The point is that beliefs impact behavior. And you yourself have said in your pieces that you think it would be best if people would choose status-games that make the world a better place, than ones that don't. But is this not collapsing on itself? If you only believe that it would be better if people played status games that lead to overall good outcomes because that belief itself is a status game that brings you high status, then why have the belief? Would it not just be a silly vanity to pretend to believe?
I don't think wanting better lives and outcomes for the most people is a status game, I think it is an intrinsic motivation for most people, and something they FEEL to be true regardless of basically anything that happens in life or what happens. But I don't think it's true of all people, and more to the point, I think there are a bunch of people who could go either way. Like if you offered someone a huge amount of money and status, but the price was that a million people they don't know across the globe will get tortured to death, tons of people would not take that trade in any circumstance. Some would always take it. And another likely not insignificant portion would take it or not based on their beliefs. Therefore, their beliefs matter to me.
Like I used to think that religion was always bad/irrational, but that was because I did not previously realize just how aggressive and indifferent to the welfare of others so many people were, I used to think that was like a tiny percentage of psychopaths, but that everyone else did not need supernatural beliefs to prevent them from doing cruel things. It now seems to me that actually it's a MUCH larger percentage, and actually, there are in fact a fairly large portion of people who require beliefs that tell them it's in their interest to not be cruel to others, even when no one finds out and no one is looking, otherwise they feel perfectly fine internally doing such things. So giving them a justifying belief that says actually you can do whatever you want, so long as you can deceive people adequately and not get caught, seems like a potentially dangerous thing to me.
Don't get me wrong, I have been bought in on and interested in evo psych type stuff going back to the 90s. It's just that when these concepts were less commonly known outside of academia and niche interests, I also did not used to think that people would take such things as *reasons* to behave in a more animalistic manner, and less like like rational decision-makers with an intrinsic motivation to increase net welfare and decrease net suffering.
Just one example: 15 years ago, it was not common parlance to call a man who is kind and loving to his step-children to be a cuck. He was thought of as a good guy. As someone who had a very kind and generous and loving step-father, I think that's a good thing. Nowadays it is common parlance to call step-dads or any guy who marries a woman with children a cuck and a sucker. I think that's bad for children, I think it *will* cause young men to be less likely to be willing to play a step-dad role in the future, and it is totally premised on increasing familiarity with evo psych concepts. I don't have children, so this is not about my concern for myself, but it is obviously bad for children if it becomes low status and indication of being a sucker for men to invest in children not their own. It took hundreds of years to develop the law to adequately protect orphans and "bastards", which was premised on moral concerns that can be easily tossed if one believes that serving their genes should be the new north star.
All that aside, I take your point that it doesn't matter, if it's true. I just don't think it's true that people are as motivated by status as you think. They are highly motivated by it during adolescence and certain transitions in life, and they then spend enormous portions of their lives doing things that no one will ever see and won't effect their status at all. No one in my life knows I use Substack, other than my husband, and he disapproves. Using it can only decrease my status because it keeps me from using my time to make money or spend time with actual friends to shore up social capital. Yet here I am typing, because I get an intrinsic reward of finding it interesting. :)
Sorry to bug you, I am only doing it because I am writing a piece on why I think people are extremely over-calibrated to status concerns in a way that's not unlike being poorly calibrated to want to consume sugar, and that it mostly harms them and they would be happier to stop caring so much. You have the strongest arguments against my position, so I'm just stress-testing and probing the limits. You're much more persuasive than anyone else on the topic.
Thanks, Kate. I’m afraid the disagreements go too deep into the nature of self, consciousness, free will, proximate vs ultimate explanations, evolution, feelings, etc. to be worth hashing out here. But thanks for your interest and good luck on your piece.
We don't 'try' to do any of those social paradoxes, they are effortless aspects of the primate.
What we DO do that's paradoxical is to explain them as separate causal statements. THIS is paradoxical, because obviously they are not these statements.
They are seamlessly embedded into everything and invisibly an aspect of all statements and language.
Excellent elaboration of something most leaders understand implicitly.
Fifty years ago at the AF Academy, we were teaching cadets that culture eats charisma for breakfast.
The kind of culture that can do this is values-based with a strong measure of both accountability and assessment.
Unfortunately, higher education has drifted away from these values that seem to have been more prevalent in the last century.
Porter, D., (2012). “Assessment as a subversive activity.” Journal of Academic Freedom (on-line journal of the American Association of University Professors). http://www.academicfreedomjournal.org/index.html pp 1-28.
But not all people are charismatic to all people.
My belief is — a key ingredient to the recipe is the charismatic person somehow promises to fulfil your deep inner need. They’ve either stumbled into knowing it, or read you like the proverbial. Which makes them a bloody disaster to your personal life, if nothing else.
Yea to translate this in to my language, I think charismatic people are good at sniffing out people's insecurities and exploiting them. And we can define insecurity more rigorously as the motivation to avoiding making one's negative traits common knowledge when people already have some private knowledge of them. I think this is related to charisma because it depends on the same kind of recursive mind reading.
Charisma is one of the most misunderstood characteristics around. And while your paradoxes make sense to me, we also need to take into account charismatic leaders who are "cringe" AF.
Gandhi was shy, spoke softly, and avoided confrontation in personal settings. He built a movement that liberated a nation through the clarity and consistency of his message about nonviolent resistance.
Hitler (yes, we need to go here) was socially awkward, described by contemporaries as “unimpressive” in person, even pathetic. His charisma came entirely from his ability to articulate a vision (however horrific) and speak to the grievances and aspirations of his audience.
And then there's Donald Trump, who most people regard as a crass buffoon. But his followers clearly think he's charismatic, because he says what they already believed and desired.
Social psychology tells us that the key characteristic of a charismatic leader is a unifying vision. Does that vision exploit the insecurities of the followers? I think so, but often the insecurity is shared by the leader.
Thanks. Vision certainly matters but I ultimately think that can be folded into the analysis of social paradoxes—e.g., sharing unpopular opinions everyone agrees with, not caring about status (but caring about higher, nobler things) to get status, virtue signaling without coming off as a virtue signaler, etc. Also knowing how to signal one’s allegiances and enmities with dog whistles and moralizations is a big part of charisma, and has to do with the logic of concealing signals. This explains why only some people are talented enough to have the “vision” that makes them charismatic—that is, they are better able to play the convoluted social games that enable them to craft an appealing vision.
Interesting food for thought, thank you for the response.
Comes down to how we define a talent, because you can definitely learn how to communicate in the way of those social paradoxes. In my mind, charisma is not some mysterious innate trait, it can be learned, developed, and refined.
The social paradoxes at the beginning is *chef's kiss*. And it also happens at scale, in business!
Consider the vast majority of the advisory industry. It's a Certainty Industrial Complex, locked with its clients in a stable signaling equilibrium whose primary currency is not truth, but legitimacy.
“Certainty Theater” is the generated artifact class (plans, forecasts, roadmaps, decks, prescriptive “strategies”) that functions as a concealed signal of competence, control, diligence, and moral seriousness. In your terms, David, it is a “social paradox” scaled up to organizations: both sides must treat the signal as if it were not a signal, because once the signaling function becomes mutually salient (“we’re doing this for optics / blame / status”), the artifact loses its power and “turns to ash.”
Chris Argyris would be proud, indeed 🙂
Thanks, Felipe. Agreed re the advising industry. You might enjoy my piece “advice is bullshit” which gets at similar ideas.
Oh yeah, I love that article too! But it’s more about general advice, even if delivered through 300-page business books.
What I’m getting at is that the dynamics between professional advisors and their clients is a different beast… Not completely so, but different enough that feels much more like a complex social paradox game than just social grooming & paying for it!
It’s probably more of a curiosity for you than something you care about, but if you ever do care, boy do I have stories! 😆
Interesting hypothesis. The way I've been framing charisma recently is "the skill to know which rules, if broken, will not lead to any negative consequences". If one has such a skill, as well as the skill to manage social paradoxes, I imagine they have to have a robust theory of mind of others.
I wonder why we all haven't optimized for this. Seems like if we all had this understanding/skill of borderline psychopathy (lol) but channeled in an obvious pro-social way, wouldn't it be of everyone's benefit?
And the other thing: if the charismatic person were honest about how their mind works when thinking about others, it'd probably seem very creepy. So perhaps the core paradox they've perfected is being the non-creepy creep. I suspect the ability to temper down negative emotion is a big part of the skill as well. If someone says something creepy in a seemingly calm, relaxed way, they can get away with a lot more than if their lip is quivering.
Interesting!
Yea agreed re the tempering down of negative emotions. If you watch the clip of Ted Bundy it's astonishing how calm and collected he is for a man who has been sentenced to death. I think we all haven't optimized for charisma for the same reason we all haven't optimized for playing in the NBA. Some people are just naturally talented at social games and they invested in getting better at them. Some people are not very talented at social games so they chose not to invest in that skill and invest in other skills instead. As for why people don't harness their charisma toward prosocial ends, I would return to my heuristic metatheory of Darwinian cynicism where people don't have any basic motive to make the world a better place and only care about benefitting themselves and their families. The key is making sure that when people try to benefit themselves and their families it indirectly helps other people too.
Very astute as always!
Explains a lot of the challenge of charisma for those on the autistic spectrum. Not only are we bad at social paradox games but we also hate them and have a predilection for doing the cringey thing of blurting out elephants in rooms and getting socially punished for it.
These games have patterns that be learned consciously, but "masking" is mentally exhausting and causes distaste towards oneself and humanity at large, which then becomes a negative spiral that is opposite of the symbiotic delusion in the case of a charismatic social partner that you describe.
But at the same time social status is less of a concern, anyway, for us. So if one can just play during practically critical social contexts, like business meetings, and try to enjoy hobbies that involve minimal conversation, it becomes tolerable.
On the topic of hobbies with minimal conversation, your article also gives some nice scientific credence to Emil Cioran's insistence on the value of (instrumental) music.
"Despair sets in when the music stops playing"
"Bach's music is the only reason the human race is not a complete failure"
He is very much right that music is raw human emotional communication without the semiotics of delusion playing power tactics, and as such, is profoundly beautiful.
Of course within social contexts there are social paradoxes in music.
A guitar shredder who is just showing off and cringe versus one with tasteful virtuosity on a section of aggressive fury within a climatic peak in the arrangement of the solo.
A jazz player who tries to get away with the nastiest unholy dissonance by resolving it the right way, then telling you that you should play the Bb13 in a different inversion for some abstruse reason (perhaps he just wants your pinky finger to suffer).
One can consider there is probably some correspondence between musicality and the cadence of emotions that a charismatic person would "target" in a ritual of social paradox.
Yea definitely lots of status games and fashion trends in music. But I also tend to agree that there is something pure and beautiful about music that is independent of the social games we play. I tend to agree with Schopenhauer's worldview, namely that everything sucks except for music. (I'm oversimplifying of course).
And what causes someone not to be charismatic? Why do some people execute on it so well while others fail miserably (like that shrimp example)? Asking for a friend lol. Presumably, autism sentences you to a life of no charisma.
Yea I think autism is likely to be negatively correlated with charisma. I don't know of any research on this but I would be shocked if it wasn't true. I also wouldn't be surprised if neuroticism (or social anxiety) was negatively correlated with charisma. People who are socially anxious often have good reason to be socially anxious because they perceive that social costs (humiliation, ostracism) are likely to be inflicted on them. The trouble is, people are good at sniffing out social anxiety, and being seen as socially anxious is--I strongly suspect--negatively correlated with charisma. So if you want to increase your charisma I would recommend therapy, meditation, or psychopharmaceuticals to reduce your social anxiety. I'm not sure if there's much else that can be done beyond that. Just as some people are naturally talented at basketball and some aren't, I think some people are naturally talented at social games and some aren't.
Another fantastic post.
The bit on deception being symbiotic was new to me. I feel like this does kind of explain people who are (to me) transparent phoneys or charlatans. It's not that others all have to truly believe their management speak, self-help platitudes, etc. — they just have to bet that others will, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it can all collapse if the person is publicly disgraced. These people didn't quite have the social competence to pull it off forever.
The highest-charisma individuals are those whose social competence (ability to actually handle social paradoxes) means they're not vulnerable to being exposed or debunked & so have enduring popularity. Have I go that right?
Finally (maybe this is old news in evo psych & I'm describing standard theory), this made me think that something similar goes for perception of attractiveness & status. They're also based on underlying attributes that aren't perfectly perceivable, so we supplement with predictions of others' perceptions. Like attractiveness is partly about symmetry or skin blemishes or whatever, but also if everyone in your tribe thinks an elongated skull is attractive then it becomes a little bit of a coordination game too, where it's beneficial to align your tastes with convention.
Thank you. Yes I agree with all of this and think that’s a very astute point about attractiveness judgments.
As far as electoral politics goes, there is a massive overlap between plain old good looks and what people call charisma. It doesn’t account for everything, but it accounts for a hell of a lot.
Agreed that attractiveness is an important factor.
So many great insights and lines in this piece. I look forward to reading the American Psychologist article.
"He may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot. But don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot". Groucho Marx, Duck Soup, 1933.
I don't understand how anonymous donations give someone credit, other than the same tax deduction that non-anonymous donations do. There are millions of people every year who donate to wildlife and conservation charities, often far away in other states with no one they know on the board and no one knows they made the donation, ever, other than some email list at the charity and the IRS. This also does not serve one's self, family, or group, it serves animals. Hundreds of millions donated annually, mostly from small donors without much money.
Now perhaps you will say that such people who value things/animals/trees whatever so much that they use their own resources towards them at the expense of their own genes will eventually just be selected out of existence, and you might be right, but they exist now and weren't selected out yet. Same goes generally for other people who do not seem to exhibit any preference for their own family. I agree they are not that common, but they're at least a good 10% and by this view should not exist.
Credit it in the sense that we view anonymous donors as more virtuous than we view conspicuous donors. So an anonymous donation that's discovered will boost the status of the donor more than a conspicuous donation that's discovered, like in the curb your enthusiasm episode "the anonymous donor." So anonymous donations can pay off if they are offset by extra status if/when they are discovered. Or at least, that is the logic outlined in the "buried signaling" paper I link to (see also Hidden Games by Moshe Hoffman and Erez Yoeli). I suppose it's possible for a small percentage of people, like 10%, to care about animals or something independent of whatever status it might bring them. But I'm more interested in explaining 90% of humans than 10% of humans. People often defensively point to the 10% as a cope for acknowledging bitter truths about the other 90% (and to implicitly signal that they are part of the virtuous 10%).
I don't think it is that uncommon. Just googling, 23% of online donations are anonymous. These are small dollar amounts (median $50) done in a very removed manner, online. That's a quarter of people! I get it you are more interested in what most people do, but the way you write is as if this stuff is impossible or never happens, my concern is that this just becomes its own justification for people to behave in a self-interested manner if they are always reading science telling them it's literally impossible to ever behave in anything but a self-interested manner. I also think there is likely a gender discrepancy in a lot of this stuff because I don't think women are as motivated by status (and frankly there is no rational reason for them to be, given there are far fewer payoffs to be so, from an evolutionary perspective). I read this stuff about wanting to have a cult or a bunch of people to follow you and it doesn't even resonate why anyone would want such a thing, it sounds actively bad. Even if only for the selfish reason that this type of increased status is also increased risk and a target on your back.
Okay but what percentage of those anonymous donations remained truly anonymous? How many of those people ended up mentioning it to others? In how many cases did someone find about it? We don’t know, but I suspect it’s a significant percentage. Also, whether or not my ideas encourage selfish behavior is irrelevant to whether or not my ideas are correct. Besides, if you’re so confident about people being altruistic for reasons independent of status, then why should any (implicit) encouragement or discouragement from me make a difference? It seems like your worries presuppose a kind of altruism that is extremely dependent on subtle signs of others’ approval or disapproval. We may agree more than you think.
Because people's beliefs inform their behavior. People who think they could go to hell or be rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven are likely to behave differently than people who believe there will be no punishment or reward for their behavior, so long as they aren't caught. And people who believe that everyone is inherently, inescapably motivated only and in all instances by selfish behavior, are also more likely to not bother behaving in a different matter, because why bother, it just makes you a sucker, doesn't it? They are less likely to feel guilty, for example, for NOT behaving in such manner.
I mean, I actually see no reason why anyone would want to serve the interests of their genes over their own experiencing-self, so we are not even really talking about "selfish" behavior but behavior in the interests of molecules, but that is getting far afield. The point is that beliefs impact behavior. And you yourself have said in your pieces that you think it would be best if people would choose status-games that make the world a better place, than ones that don't. But is this not collapsing on itself? If you only believe that it would be better if people played status games that lead to overall good outcomes because that belief itself is a status game that brings you high status, then why have the belief? Would it not just be a silly vanity to pretend to believe?
I don't think wanting better lives and outcomes for the most people is a status game, I think it is an intrinsic motivation for most people, and something they FEEL to be true regardless of basically anything that happens in life or what happens. But I don't think it's true of all people, and more to the point, I think there are a bunch of people who could go either way. Like if you offered someone a huge amount of money and status, but the price was that a million people they don't know across the globe will get tortured to death, tons of people would not take that trade in any circumstance. Some would always take it. And another likely not insignificant portion would take it or not based on their beliefs. Therefore, their beliefs matter to me.
Like I used to think that religion was always bad/irrational, but that was because I did not previously realize just how aggressive and indifferent to the welfare of others so many people were, I used to think that was like a tiny percentage of psychopaths, but that everyone else did not need supernatural beliefs to prevent them from doing cruel things. It now seems to me that actually it's a MUCH larger percentage, and actually, there are in fact a fairly large portion of people who require beliefs that tell them it's in their interest to not be cruel to others, even when no one finds out and no one is looking, otherwise they feel perfectly fine internally doing such things. So giving them a justifying belief that says actually you can do whatever you want, so long as you can deceive people adequately and not get caught, seems like a potentially dangerous thing to me.
Don't get me wrong, I have been bought in on and interested in evo psych type stuff going back to the 90s. It's just that when these concepts were less commonly known outside of academia and niche interests, I also did not used to think that people would take such things as *reasons* to behave in a more animalistic manner, and less like like rational decision-makers with an intrinsic motivation to increase net welfare and decrease net suffering.
Just one example: 15 years ago, it was not common parlance to call a man who is kind and loving to his step-children to be a cuck. He was thought of as a good guy. As someone who had a very kind and generous and loving step-father, I think that's a good thing. Nowadays it is common parlance to call step-dads or any guy who marries a woman with children a cuck and a sucker. I think that's bad for children, I think it *will* cause young men to be less likely to be willing to play a step-dad role in the future, and it is totally premised on increasing familiarity with evo psych concepts. I don't have children, so this is not about my concern for myself, but it is obviously bad for children if it becomes low status and indication of being a sucker for men to invest in children not their own. It took hundreds of years to develop the law to adequately protect orphans and "bastards", which was premised on moral concerns that can be easily tossed if one believes that serving their genes should be the new north star.
All that aside, I take your point that it doesn't matter, if it's true. I just don't think it's true that people are as motivated by status as you think. They are highly motivated by it during adolescence and certain transitions in life, and they then spend enormous portions of their lives doing things that no one will ever see and won't effect their status at all. No one in my life knows I use Substack, other than my husband, and he disapproves. Using it can only decrease my status because it keeps me from using my time to make money or spend time with actual friends to shore up social capital. Yet here I am typing, because I get an intrinsic reward of finding it interesting. :)
Sorry to bug you, I am only doing it because I am writing a piece on why I think people are extremely over-calibrated to status concerns in a way that's not unlike being poorly calibrated to want to consume sugar, and that it mostly harms them and they would be happier to stop caring so much. You have the strongest arguments against my position, so I'm just stress-testing and probing the limits. You're much more persuasive than anyone else on the topic.
Thanks, Kate. I’m afraid the disagreements go too deep into the nature of self, consciousness, free will, proximate vs ultimate explanations, evolution, feelings, etc. to be worth hashing out here. But thanks for your interest and good luck on your piece.
I don’t believe that, no.
Reminds me of Epstein’s email correspondence.
We don't 'try' to do any of those social paradoxes, they are effortless aspects of the primate.
What we DO do that's paradoxical is to explain them as separate causal statements. THIS is paradoxical, because obviously they are not these statements.
They are seamlessly embedded into everything and invisibly an aspect of all statements and language.
Crack that nut!
Excellent elaboration of something most leaders understand implicitly.
Fifty years ago at the AF Academy, we were teaching cadets that culture eats charisma for breakfast.
The kind of culture that can do this is values-based with a strong measure of both accountability and assessment.
Unfortunately, higher education has drifted away from these values that seem to have been more prevalent in the last century.
Porter, D., (2012). “Assessment as a subversive activity.” Journal of Academic Freedom (on-line journal of the American Association of University Professors). http://www.academicfreedomjournal.org/index.html pp 1-28.
Porter, David B. (2024). “The Value of Values.” Minding the Campus; Reforming Our Universities. (Nov 11). https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2024/11/11/a-veterans-journey-from-the-air-force-to-academia/
Porter, David B. (2024). “The Baffling Bull Behind Title IX.” Minding the Campus; Reforming Our Universities. (April 16). The Baffling 'Bull' Behind Title IX — Minding The Campus https://mindingthecampus.org/2024/04/16/the-baffling-bull-behind-title-ix/