It can feel terrible to feel unwanted. Unwanted by schools, labor markets, sport teams, music bands, acting troupes, or romantic partners. We feel bad when we feel unwanted, and we often pity others to see them unwanted. Though we don’t usually pity enough to actually choose them over alternatives. And they can feel even worse to see our pity, as it affirms the visibility of their rejection.
Why the eff would be dominance illicit? Think prisons as an example of not very civilized humans. They RESPECT the local tough guy who can beat up everybody. Because they want to be like him. And because he want him to protect them from each other. Dominance is feudalism. Average prisoner pays the local tough guy and he does not allow the others to bully him. Why would that be illicit?
Combined with "yes, will sometimes lead you to make “pity” choices you might not otherwise make. Do it because it hurts." is probably going to bag you Creepiest Economist 2019 as well:
"Robin Hanson has a simple solution for women to deal with incels: offer pity sex. Do it because it hurts."
"as showing sympathy toward such folks risks being pushed to not reject them, and being seen has having poor evaluation abilities regarding prestige."
I'd add "risks being seen as low prestige because if you need help from the low prestige (why else would you be trading pity?), you're probably not high prestige"
The reformulated version of Oxycontin prevents abuse... so people switched to more dangerous illegal drugs instead and the death rate went up. Methadone is also pretty good at avoiding the rollercoaster effect of abused opoids, but unfortunately if you try to use it as a painkiller (which it's not intended for) it's much more likely to kill you. Both of these are discussed in Sam Quinones' "Dreamland" which I blogged about here.
Would this be your proposed answer to your "two types of inequality" puzzle? That is, poor people are seen as low in dominance, while sexless people are low in prestige, hence the different levels of sympathy each receives.
It isn't crazy to see social status as a partial cause of many forms of mental illness. Social status does seem to cause stress. But that doesn't mean that mental illness experts should focus on changing status or inequality of society. People should usually focus on what they are expert in. But it might mean that some other people should work harder to deal with status.
I was listen to NPR just an hour ago and they were taking messages from listeners. The listeners seem to want Pharmaceutical company executives imprisoned for the opioid crisis. They do not seem to blame users at all. That is in keeping with what you say and it seems wrong and unhelpful to me.IMO the best thing that could happen is for opioids to be freely available without prescription and someone to invent a opioid that it is difficult to kill yourself with.
Hello Hanson, this is a longer question that has an introduction and two questions
INTRODUCTION:In your book, ”elephant in the brain”, you gave little bit of criticismabout medicine. You wrote that a lot of studies in medicine are badly made and thereby providing not so good results. Also in your book ”Elephant” you wrote that one of the main things about religion is to give a community to people. People make time consuming sacrifices in order to get a place in a religious community.
A little time ago a high profile doctor, who makes world-wide treatment suggestions, called Peter Gotzsche wrote a book called deadly psychiatry. Gotsche argued that the psychiatry is not based on reality and we should have non-medical treatments more.(side note: I also have worked in the field of psychiatryand the doctors said there that it is not public sectors job to give lonely people friends but they should find them like everybody else has to. This felt a little strange since one of those saying was economically left wing and advocated big wealth redistribution. But like you wrote here: http://www.overcomingbias.c... seems to be only concern about income inequality, not other forms of inequalities.)
TWO QUESTIONS-How would you feel if somebody made a hypothesis that apart from urgent psychiatric conditions such as psychosis, many mental health problems could be a cause from zero zum competition in prestige. And if this was the case, the job for mental health care would be to address this question about non-fiscal inequalities and find ways to redistribute non-fiscal things such as human relationships etc. What if the field of mental health care ”took the place of religion” in a way that it would try to find ways to create communities for people if that is an integral part of being human and if that is the main point about religion.
-Since you have studied medical studies and studied a lot about human nature, do you feel the statements of above mentioned Gotsche impossible or conceivable?
Depends on how clear it is that their low status is known and visible. The less clear it is, the better to ignore it and help them pretend it isn't there.
As you said "they can feel even worse to see our pity, as it affirms the visibility of their rejection", I assumed you were recommending that people do something different, although I suppose "can" doesn't even imply that something has a substantial probability.
Relatedly, people who are highly dominant also likely tend to portray themselves as rather being high in prestige.
All of this seems to fit the same pattern (that you discuss above): prestige has more status than dominance; and people portray themselves accordingly.
I'm not sure how to show sympathy differently than pity. And it isn't obvious to me that a modest rate of symbolic gestures of pity is a net loss. Depends of course on how much comfort they generate in the pitied.
Do it because it hurts.That fits oddly with your recommendation to change your behavior in a way that maximizes the public benefit relative to private cost.
How would you say to demonstrate the feeling of sympathy rather than pity for someone else's plight?
Prisons are quite unusual places, and real prisoners also prefer prestige. It is movie prisoners who care more about dominance.
Why the eff would be dominance illicit? Think prisons as an example of not very civilized humans. They RESPECT the local tough guy who can beat up everybody. Because they want to be like him. And because he want him to protect them from each other. Dominance is feudalism. Average prisoner pays the local tough guy and he does not allow the others to bully him. Why would that be illicit?
Combined with "yes, will sometimes lead you to make “pity” choices you might not otherwise make. Do it because it hurts." is probably going to bag you Creepiest Economist 2019 as well:
"Robin Hanson has a simple solution for women to deal with incels: offer pity sex. Do it because it hurts."
"as showing sympathy toward such folks risks being pushed to not reject them, and being seen has having poor evaluation abilities regarding prestige."
I'd add "risks being seen as low prestige because if you need help from the low prestige (why else would you be trading pity?), you're probably not high prestige"
The reformulated version of Oxycontin prevents abuse... so people switched to more dangerous illegal drugs instead and the death rate went up. Methadone is also pretty good at avoiding the rollercoaster effect of abused opoids, but unfortunately if you try to use it as a painkiller (which it's not intended for) it's much more likely to kill you. Both of these are discussed in Sam Quinones' "Dreamland" which I blogged about here.
It seems at least a partial answer.
Would this be your proposed answer to your "two types of inequality" puzzle? That is, poor people are seen as low in dominance, while sexless people are low in prestige, hence the different levels of sympathy each receives.
ok, thanks for the answer
It isn't crazy to see social status as a partial cause of many forms of mental illness. Social status does seem to cause stress. But that doesn't mean that mental illness experts should focus on changing status or inequality of society. People should usually focus on what they are expert in. But it might mean that some other people should work harder to deal with status.
I was listen to NPR just an hour ago and they were taking messages from listeners. The listeners seem to want Pharmaceutical company executives imprisoned for the opioid crisis. They do not seem to blame users at all. That is in keeping with what you say and it seems wrong and unhelpful to me.IMO the best thing that could happen is for opioids to be freely available without prescription and someone to invent a opioid that it is difficult to kill yourself with.
Hello Hanson, this is a longer question that has an introduction and two questions
INTRODUCTION:In your book, ”elephant in the brain”, you gave little bit of criticismabout medicine. You wrote that a lot of studies in medicine are badly made and thereby providing not so good results. Also in your book ”Elephant” you wrote that one of the main things about religion is to give a community to people. People make time consuming sacrifices in order to get a place in a religious community.
A little time ago a high profile doctor, who makes world-wide treatment suggestions, called Peter Gotzsche wrote a book called deadly psychiatry. Gotsche argued that the psychiatry is not based on reality and we should have non-medical treatments more.(side note: I also have worked in the field of psychiatryand the doctors said there that it is not public sectors job to give lonely people friends but they should find them like everybody else has to. This felt a little strange since one of those saying was economically left wing and advocated big wealth redistribution. But like you wrote here: http://www.overcomingbias.c... seems to be only concern about income inequality, not other forms of inequalities.)
TWO QUESTIONS-How would you feel if somebody made a hypothesis that apart from urgent psychiatric conditions such as psychosis, many mental health problems could be a cause from zero zum competition in prestige. And if this was the case, the job for mental health care would be to address this question about non-fiscal inequalities and find ways to redistribute non-fiscal things such as human relationships etc. What if the field of mental health care ”took the place of religion” in a way that it would try to find ways to create communities for people if that is an integral part of being human and if that is the main point about religion.
-Since you have studied medical studies and studied a lot about human nature, do you feel the statements of above mentioned Gotsche impossible or conceivable?
Depends on how clear it is that their low status is known and visible. The less clear it is, the better to ignore it and help them pretend it isn't there.
As you said "they can feel even worse to see our pity, as it affirms the visibility of their rejection", I assumed you were recommending that people do something different, although I suppose "can" doesn't even imply that something has a substantial probability.
Interesting. So you're saying that those low in prestige rather want to portray themselves as low in dominance.
You've previously argued that we portray others whom we want to associate with as high in prestige, even while they're actually high in dominance.
https://www.overcomingbias....
Relatedly, people who are highly dominant also likely tend to portray themselves as rather being high in prestige.
All of this seems to fit the same pattern (that you discuss above): prestige has more status than dominance; and people portray themselves accordingly.
I'm not sure how to show sympathy differently than pity. And it isn't obvious to me that a modest rate of symbolic gestures of pity is a net loss. Depends of course on how much comfort they generate in the pitied.
Do it because it hurts.That fits oddly with your recommendation to change your behavior in a way that maximizes the public benefit relative to private cost.
How would you say to demonstrate the feeling of sympathy rather than pity for someone else's plight?