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Comment by metamemetics | Hacker News Reader

The underlying assumption of this article every step of the way is that one's underlying motivation for argument, debate, or discussion is to signal social standing

I would argue instead that the most intelligent people find it innately enjoyable to talk about ideas. They are motivated by a desire to decrease-uncertainty and clarify-understanding.... they realize social standing is often an illusion and not overly worth worrying about.

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There's no contradiction to your argument. I innately enjoy looking at beautiful women and eat delicious food without (always) being aware that the ultimate cause for the enjoyment is increase in genetic fitness.

Or more to the point: I innately enjoy winning games or working creatively just as the male bower bird [1] finds innate desire to build richly colored bowers to attract females.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird

There is a contradiction, because the argument in the article assumes the signalling of social standing is THE reason for the behavior.

Opinions like

  A person who is somewhat intelligent will conspicuously
  signal eir intelligence by holding difficult-to-understand
  opinions. A person who is very intelligent will 
  conspicuously signal that ey feels no need to 
  conspicuously signal eir intelligence, by deliberately not 
  holding difficult-to-understand opinions.

are incredibly annoying. It's one of those opinions that are almost impossible to defend against or disprove, because of the vague nature of 'conspicuously' and 'difficult-to-understand'. Actually, I think you can attack it as form a meta-contrarianism itself: anti-intellectuals will hold the above opinion, intellectuals will denounce that opinion and meta-contrarians will claim that 'people cannot help but be influenced by concern for their social standing, so there is some truth in the assertions of anti-intellectuals that intellectuals show behavior which seems to be intended solely to make it harder for non-intellectuals to enter their field', which polarizes into the quoted opinion.

"There is a contradiction, because the argument in the article assumes the signalling of social standing is THE reason for the behavior."

Yes, of course it is the (proximate) reason. That is the whole point of the article. It does not argue however, that it happens consciously:

"What is interesting about these triads is not that people hold the positions [..] but that people get deep personal satisfaction from arguing the positions [..]"

People gain satisfaction from arguing. They don't have to be aware of the fact that they might be doing it to signal social standing but that is the end result of their actions on average.

People usually go for status but like to convince themselves (and most often do so successfully) that they do things for a noble course.

>People usually go for status but like to believe (and most often do so successfully) that they do things for a noble course.

This was never a discussion about people and their actions in general, but a stratified examination of the differences in thought patterns between 3 groups: those of average intelligence, those of moderate intelligence, and those of high intelligence. You are ignoring the context and framework of the article, and making sweeping generalizations where you project your experiences and manner of thinking to not just those similar to you, but to "people" in general.

edit: If you're not talking specifically about the "most intelligent" subset it's a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman

>You are ignoring the context and framework of the article, and making sweeping generalizations where you project your experiences and manner of thinking to not just those similar to you, but to "people" in general.

I am neither ignoring the context of the article nor am I making "sweeping generalizations" or "projections". And I would prefer if you don't make these assumptions about me.

All I am saying is that signaling does not have to be conscious or self-aware in the sense of "Oh, I have to say this and that to rise to the top of the hipster hierarchy". It might just be the hipster enjoys dressing contrary to the mainstream just as the contrarian enjoys arguing contrary to the mainstream opinion. Hence my analogy: I enjoy sex. It's a heuristic shaped by my genes that would usually serve the purpose of reproduction. People enjoy signaling in the form of buying nice cars of putting on make-up: it's heuristic shaped by our genes that on average (not every signal leads to a better outcome) increases the chance of reproduction. It is not the you actively think "Okay: if I buy a car it might increase my social standing and ultimately increase the chance of girls liking me more.". You just enjoy the stuff. Just as you "just enjoy sex" or the bower bird has an innate desire to build colorful homes.

EDIT for clarity.

I never affirmed or attacked or recognized your "everything can be simplified to genetic fitness" hypothesis, no clarification needed. If you insist on pursuing this strawman and broadening the debate to new, unrelated philosophical heights, so be it.

I will say now that it is childish argument. You give no explanation for why a "gene" should be considered the base unit of evolution rather than an "idea". Especially when natural selection stopped applying to suburban humans with access to healthcare a long time ago. By all indicators, human evolution is now occurring through technology, not genes. Technology and debate over how to use it is the most likely cause of humans diverging into multiple species, not genetics. Genetic biological reproduction seems to be your God. It is the planner and predeterminer, and can be said to have causative power over all actions.

The gene is arbitrary. The gene is ambiguous. The gene is defined by man. Genes and genetic reproduction is but one method for the continued existence of things through time. Humans have defeated the gene. We don't need to die and reproduce several times to store and communicate survival information to our descendent's. We have invented language and can write it in a book.

You are stuck in genetic determinism, denying any idea of free will. Not to say free will is a suitable answer either. Both are a naive treatment of the subject of causality.

I did not argue that "everything can be simplified to genetic fitness". So please, for the second time, stop putting words into my mouth.

It is my understanding, that your argument is: 1) Article assumes people discuss ideas to signal social standing. But: 2) People discuss ideas because the enjoy it, 3) and not because they want to signal social standing. Therefore the article is faulty.

All I am saying is: 1) and 2) may both be right. The contradiction between 2) and 3) does not arise if people are not aware of the underlying motivations for their behavior.

See also rdtsc's comment.

>I did not argue that

Hey, that's MY point :) Still, in the end of your FIRST line you stated: the ultimate cause for the enjoyment is increase in genetic fitness.

>my understanding, that your argument is: 1) ... 2) ... 3) ...

All wrong. At no point was a talking about the set "people". I was disagreeing with the traits specific to the "top of the pyramid" proposed by the article within the domain of intellectual debate. Which is a small subset of the set "people" in a very small subset of the domain of possible actions people can perform. I'll have to make sure to rigorously pair any hypothesis with its counter-hypothesis when I risk posting on HN in the future.

Come on guys let's go back to discussion, which from my interpretation was if the "underlying motivation for argument, debate, or discussion is to signal social standing".

I guess ckuehne opinion is that it unconciously is and I love his example.

How could we discuss that? I would love to know examples of places and people that behave the way metamemetics tells us. I can't match any subset of people, or even any subset of intelligent subset of pople that match that behavior.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_bias

What about the great thinkers of humanity whose writing only became popular post-humously? What about all of the thinkers whose beliefs got them executed? What if their writings were so unpopular as to lead to their persecution. Surely, they were just consciously or unconsciously holding those beliefs to signal social standing!

What if they had a conscious and explicit reason for why they held their beliefs? What if said explicit reason wasn't to increase their social standing? Does their explicitly stated reason for why they hold those beliefs become invalid because, hey, the REAL reason behind that must be an evolutionary function of genetic reproduction? At what point do we allow others to be conscious of their own actions? Isn't it extremely presumptuous to project unconscious social basis as the fundamental derivative of all their beliefs? Does going down this path lead to interesting discussion or zealously quash it?

My argument was NOT that on average, the population of people do NOT follow ckuehne's and the article's assumption of motive. That is trivial and not very interesting, we can even assume that is true if you wish. My argument was on the top of the pyramid, it is less likely to hold for the greatest thinkers and philosophers.

  They don't have to be aware of the fact that they might be
  doing it to signal social standing

Here you say 'might', while it once again becomes 'usually' here:

  People usually go for status

I repeat: I find this last assertion incredibly annoying. I'm a regular guy and I think that I don't argue for status or social standing, but because I'm interested in 'the truth', insofar as that means 'what works best for us', where 'us' includes everyone I care about. I'd like to see someone making a convincing argument to the contrary, that doesn't involve supposed historical and psychological facts about 'human nature' that are, without supporting argument, extended to include individuals like me that that someone are having a discussion with. It's a logical fallacy to make some vague accusations like "you are just arguing this because of concern for your social standing". I will have none of that. I can easily invert the reasoning: if you doubt my motives, then you are the one that seems to be looking for an ad hominem way out of the argument, because you are losing and don't want to lose your standing. This kind of argument leads nowhere.

   I'm a regular guy and I think that I don't argue for status 
   or social standing, but because I'm interested in 'the 
   truth', insofar as that means 'what works best for us', 
   where 'us' includes everyone I care about.

I find it fascinating that as soon as you tried to counter an argument about signaling social standing, you directly signaled social standing. Truly, we do not always know the real motivations behind our own actions and words. You may need to do more introspection.

"I'm a regular guy" -- This establishes a social status you want us to see. You are trying to create a peer relationship with other "regular" people, to connect with your audience on a friend/peer/informal level. Then you follow up this statement with an assertion that you wish to speak for others ("I'm interested in 'the truth' ... where 'us' includes everyone I care about"). You have elevated yourself to leader/spokesperson status. You make another social distinction when you say "individuals like me", and here you are trying to tell everyone -- in so many words -- that you are unique and special. Whether you realized you were doing this, you employed arguments from standpoints of status.

I cannot find the article, but I read an account from a guy who took a few-month vow of silence for fun to see what it was like. He had a number of interesting mental state changes and experiences, all of which seemed beneficial, but one thing that stuck out in my mind was a little principle of communication that he felt he discovered: Almost all our speech is to express existence, to say, "Hey, look at me! I am here!"

In forums where people pass ideas back and forth, it is often, "I exist! I have something to share that you will find useful! You might like me if I share it! Look at me!"

And yes, the fact that I am responding is, indeed, to draw attention to myself, to establish myself as something of an authority on this issue, given my limited experiences in this lifetime... is just a pompous way of saying, "I am here". :)

  "I'm a regular guy" -- This establishes a social status
  you want us to see.

I said "I'm a regular guy" to prevent the counter-argument "Yeah, but you're special (as a HN reader, physicist, ... whatever) and do not represent the majority of te population we are talking about". Because all of us here aren't special: there are at least many thousands of people in the world like any one of us.

You are now interpreting my words based on what you expected to see, as you were primed to do by unconsciously having already accepted the premise in the article and not considering alternative interpretations.

You work in a non-profit? That's because you wish to signal social standing. You work at a hedge-fund and make lots of money? That's because you want to signal social standing. You work at a startup? That's because you want to signal social standing. You work at a MegaCorp? That's because you want to signal social standing. The analysis is meaningless. It's Freud all over again.

We are in agreement: you used status in order to counter an argument (claiming to be "I'm a regular guy" in order to avoid the "you're special" argument). "The analysis is meaningless. It's Freud all over again" -- Brushing me off, grouping me, and separating yourself.

I see your point about other actions signaling social status. You're right: they do.

By the way, I did not read the article before responding to you. I read someone's comment and then yours, and previous experiences were triggered. I responded to you, read the article, and responded to another commenter. I am only talking about words, not really analyzing YOU with the exception of my call for introspection. I am as guilty as anyone of the signaling. I could have not responded because, after all, I do not know you.

My problem is not so much whether everyone is in fact also signalling status all of the time. That may well be the case, but my point is that that assertion doesn't add anything to an analysis, unless you can convincingly argue it is a decisive factor.

> "Individual organisms are best viewed as adaptation-executers rather than fitness-maximizers."

--Cosmides and Tooby; <i>The Adapted Mind</i>

Would someone explain the whole "eir" and "ey" thing to me? Is this an attempt at hipster spelling--demonstrating they are so smart they don't need to conspicuously spell correctly?

Did I miss something?

The words are genderless, singular pronouns.

So a commenter can go hipster meta in his or her writing with standard pronouns?

Yes, although I'd argue that it's not meta-hipster but meta-geek. If you wouldn't use 'grok', you probably wouldn't use 'eir'. In the same vein, putting your punctuation outside your quote can either be a simple mistake or meta-grammarian protest. Even the choice of single versus double quotes is signalling, consciously or not.

The problem is not correctness, but whether the signal is properly received by your audience. You chose 'his or her', but was this a conscious choice? And at what level? Was it because you fear being judged poorly for the grammatically correct but non-politically correct 'his'? Because you find 'eir' pretentious? Because you find substituting 'her' to be an affectation?

To me, 'His or her' is a signals that you are aware that language can be sexist, and want to show that you are not. I think it correlates with college-educated American liberal born after 1960, or one who has learned his English from such.

I fit these characteristics, but usually consciously choose 'his', hopefully signalling that I detest linguistic contortions for the sake of signalling political correctness, but more likely just being judged an unrepentant sexist. If I don't want to take this risk, I switch to an across-the-board 'her', as I feel this is more effective at actually combatting sexism.

Have you read Hofstadter's essay on "Purity in Language"? http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

Gender-neutral pronouns.

All the cool kids are using them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun

New-style, specifically.

I think you're taking that a little too personally. It's supposed to be a generalization, not a steadfast rule that applies to absolutely everyone. I also don't think falsifiability is really a problem here. I've met people who do this - one person in particular comes to mind, someone who very obviously tries to hold difficult-to-understand opinions in order to signal his intelligence (a philosophy major at a state university, he informed me that I "don't understand philosophy" when I called him out on wordy bullshit). Most cases aren't nearly so obvious, but if you think about it you'll probably realize you know someone who does this as well; perhaps you'll even think of instances when you've done it.

Readers of Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong, or at least some of them, participate not to feel superior to those who don't read OB or LW but to, well, overcome their own biases and self-improve. Given that you seem to feel attacked by the article, I think you're taking it the wrong way.

That's a pretty big non-sequitur, I think you're forgetting the context of the original article when interpreting my comment. I think confusion's clarification is very well-put.

"I think confusion's clarification is very well-put."

Wow! That's so Zen!

>the ultimate cause for the enjoyment is increase in genetic fitness

Falsifiable claims, please.

I think Hacker News is strong supporting evidence of your point. There is some ability to display/leverage social standing here, but by and large, it is a platform of anonymous commenters commenting simply for the pleasure of discussion.

That, and anonymously validating our own intelligence through the karma system - but it seems the prior benefit is a larger pull.

The karma system has got to be a huge magnet for this kind of discussion.

There's even a High Score List: http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

I don't think the High Score List really matters - it helps the 1% (estimation) percent of the community that's there, but for the rest of us, it's like trying to achieve the Home Run Record - it's largely a pointless metric.

If there was something like "who received the most karma in the last week", then there would be cause for concern/thought that the community would be hurt by such a list.

Sure, we like to talk about ideas, but some ideas are more enjoyable to talk about than others.

I would absolutely disagree that intelligent people “realize social standing is often an illusion and not overly worth worrying about”. Humans are social animals, even if some of us recognize the existence of important things other than social standing.

I just wanted to follow up my reply to someone else below with a comment for you -- and bear in mind that I just want to dissect, to point out things, not to attack or offend you. Please do not take my response personally. You can easily apply my arguments to my own posts, and I will agree with you. :)

Your argument is an interesting proof of the notion that your speech signals social status. You mention "the most intelligent people". You then tell us what you believe they think. The implication is that you number amongst them or would like to be a member of that group.

In addition, you have not cited any proof of this argument; it is mere speculation. Yet you "would argue" this random opinion, expecting that others on this forum would care about that opinion. Your speech translates to a simple statement: "I have an opinion, too." or more simply "I am here. Look at me."

Your comment is a nice example of signaling social standing (whatever it really is, whatever you want us to believe it is).

Sometimes, yes, but this does not explain many debates about (American) politics - where there's often a lot of heat and very little light, and no real attempt to convince the other side.

Or the set of people embroiled in the schema of partisanship and the set of people who are highly intelligent are disjoint.

What about the Academia? Wasn't it supposed to be brightest subset of people?

> What about the Academia? Wasn't it supposed to be brightest subset of people?

Giggle.

Perhaps this is because the other side is not well defined. In particular, you cannot expect them to follow the whole debate, merely excerpts and the general lines of it. So to keep the debate going, you have to debate most of the whole point every time, and you have a length restriction to boot. So what results is summaries and anecdotes, with memetic evolution making sure the summaries are resilient to amendment.

I wonder how they really do it. I've seen a lot of paper near politicians; perhaps they have the time and focus the audiences don't.

> you cannot expect [the other side] to follow the whole debate

Perhaps you can explain this to me. E.g. the whole healthcare discussion seems to be "interesting" to both sides, but I've seen very few civil and sensible discussions. Is the debate so divorced from reality that either side has its own facts? (I know the Republican fanatics believe really stupid things, and I presume the Democrat fanatics are no better; but these are not the majority, right? Just loud.)

> Sometimes, yes, but this does not explain many debates about (American) politics - where there's often a lot of heat and very little light, and no real attempt to convince the other side.

Trying to convince the other side is often a dumb idea.

The goal is to get to 50%+1 (or whatever the threshold is). It's easier to get there by adding "the middle" to your base than it is to add "the other side" to your base.

This is why pols ignore the wishes of reliable supporters or opponents as much as they can.

I understand that 50%+1 is enough to rule, but is there no value in building consensus? Or at least having a civil debate among sensible people?

Obama's presidency suggests that consensus is not as valuable as one might hope, but I've had quite constructive arguments with people from different political backgrounds here in the Netherlands - which did not end with either side being convinced, but did end up with both sides (or at least me) smarter than before.

> but is there no value in building consensus?

There might be "value", but at what cost?

> I've had quite constructive arguments with people from different political backgrounds here in the Netherlands - which did not end with either side being convinced, but did end up with both sides (or at least me) smarter than before.

That's nice, but what political power did you gain as a result?

Remember, we're talking about what effective politicians do.

In other news, pundits are evaluated on how many newspapers they sell, not on their accuracy. Readers are free to decide to buy, or not, for any reason, such as hair color. (Readers could use accuracy as part of their buying decision, but don't seem to.)

I don't think the article makes that assumption at all. I think it is just talking about how we act when we do signal.

It seems obvious that both motivations are often present.

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