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Ben Finn's avatar

1. A possible counterexample to your idea: there’s a hypothesis in evolutionary psychology that the reason people in rich countries are more likely to be obese if they’re lower class is that self-perception as relatively low status flips a switch from ‘eat when hungry’ to ‘eat when see food’. Which evolved because relatively low status people were at higher risk of starvation in prehistory.

If so, this would be an example of a drive determined by relative rather than absolute status/wealth. But unlike many other such drives, not a signalling game.

2. Re:

low status humans are consistently more violent than are high status ones. Thus this theory predicts what we have seen: declining rates of violence and conflict, less war, and widening moral circles.

Isn’t this better explained by low absolute wealth humans being at greater absolute risk of death (from eg starvation) if they lose property/land etc, so having to take stronger measures to protect them? I.e. modern middle class people don’t kill each other because they’re not at risk of being fatally killed or impoverished themselves. (Misestimation of relative status needn’t come into it.)

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Dwarkesh Patel's avatar

Your logic on increasing lifespans since industrial revolution also explains the falling lifespan of poor American whites recently as their status has decreased.

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