How Long do Wealth Shocks Persist? Less than three generations in England, 1700-2025

How Long do Wealth Shocks Persist? Less than three generations in England, 1700-2025
Gregory Clarks & Neil Cummins (2025)

Abstract

What happens across generations to random wealth shocks? Do they endure and even magnify, or do they dissipate? By implication, how much of modern wealth is attributable to events before 1900? This paper uses random shocks to family size in England before 1880, that created wealth shocks for the children, to measure the persistence of random wealth shocks. Fertility for married couples in England before 1880 was not controlled, but was a biological lottery. And for richer families, family size strongly influenced child wealth. This paper finds that such biology-induced wealth shocks had no impact on descendent wealth by three generations later. Since wealth itself persisted strongly across more than five generations this implies that, in the long run, wealth mainly derives from sources other than wealth inheritance itself. The observed link between nineteenth century wealth and modern wealth does not lie in wealth transmission itself. Instead wealth persisted because of the inheritance within families of behaviors and abilities associated with wealth accumulation and wealth retention.

Undivided Attention:

via Rob Henderson:

First Interactions:

Rolf Degen

@DegenRolf

·

6 Std.

In first interactions, people reported liking the other person more than they thought they were liked in return. In fact, the other person liked them more than they anticipated. (Successful large-scale replication). Recently, a liking gap has been identified, which is the tendency for people to underestimate how much a new acquaintance likes them. The goal of this research is to examine the robustness of the liking gap(s) phenomenon, by providing data on perceived and actual liking gaps from relevant measures of liking collected. The sample for this study was very large (>1,800 young adults) and multiple variations of a getting-acquainted study were conducted. Supporting prior research, liking gaps were found with a very large sample of young adults engaged in getting-acquainted conversations. On average, the participants reported liking their conversation partner more than they believed that they were liked in return (perceived liking gap). Sample-mean comparisons likewise indicated that participants’ estimate of being liked was lower than that of their interaction partner’s reported liking for them (actual liking gap). There are many explanations for people’s miscalibrated judgments of how much they are liked in first conversations. People may be focused on their own thoughts and therefore miss cues of friendliness and affiliation from the other. As part of being too self-critical about their own competence in initial interactions, people also may underestimate how positively others react to them. Although the liking gap is typically presented as evidence of being self-critical, it could also reflect a positive view of self – viewing oneself as someone who likes others (more than do others in an initial interaction).

Guilt:

Asimov:

>Frederick II, the eighteenth-century king of Prussia, fancied himself an enlightened monarch, and in some respects he was. On one occasion he is supposed to have interested himself in conditions in the Berlin prison and was escorted through it so that he might speak to the prisoners. One after the other, the prisoners fell to their knees before him, bewailing their lot and, predictably, protesting their utter innocence of all charges that had been brought against them.

Only one prisoner remained silent, and finally Frederick’s curiosity was aroused.

“You,” he called. “You there.”

The prisoner looked up. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Why are you here?”

“Armed robbery, Your Majesty.”

“And are you guilty?”

“Entirely guilty, Your Majesty. I richly deserve my punishment.” At this Frederick rapped his cane sharply on the ground and said, “Warden, release this guilty wretch at once. I will not have him here in jail where by example he will corrupt all the splendid innocent people who occupy it.” <

Self-Esteem versus Humbleness:

https://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2018/03/creativity-implies-strong-ego-person.html

"Creativity implies a strong ego, a person who looks at a situation and comes up with something different because he believes it possible - even probable - that he knows better than other people, and is (to some extent) indifferent to the opinions of others on this matter."

Bruce Charlton

Computers:

"What are fundamental capabilities and limitations of computers?"

Michael Sipser

Psychopathology:

"CyberneticBigFiveTheory defines psychopathology as “persistent failure to move toward one’s psychological goals due to failure to generate effective new goals, interpretations, or strategies when existing ones prove unsuccessful.” "

"CB5T does not consider having autistic traits to be indicative of disorder (regardless of whether they would qualify someone for an official diagnosis of ASD) unless they are accompanied by persistent failure of characteristic adaptations to enable successful goal pursuit."

Characteristic Adaptations:

E.g. being a scientist, being a biologist, being a dentist are characteristic adaptations.
Being a boyfriend of Anna K. is a characteristic adaptation.
You are adapted to these situations.

"CB5T claims that every aspect of personality (the persistent behavioral features of an individual) can be categorized as either a trait or a characteristic adaptation. Personality traits are defined as probabilistic tendencies toward certain patterns of behavior, motivation, emotion, and cognition in response to classes of stimuli that have been present in human environments over evolutionary time. The fact that they are probabilistic entails that they refer to distributions of states, meaning, for example, that an introvert may occasionally find themselves in a highly gregarious state, but they are statistically less likely to occupy such a state than an extravert. Personality psychologists have understood traits both interpersonally, as the dimensions by which individuals vary, and intrapersonally, as the mechanisms that produce stable patterns in an individual’s behavior and experience. CB5T bridges the gap between these two conceptions of traits, asserting that each trait as a dimension of variation among people reflects individual differences in a cybernetic mechanism or set of mechanisms that are present in every intact human brain. Characteristic adaptations are relatively stable patterns of behavior, motivation, emotion, or cognition that are specified in relation to an individual’s particular life circumstances. They are an individual’s specific set of learned habits of both thought and action; that is, they are ways that people have adapted to their ongoing experience (not evolutionary adaptations that constitute change across generations). Characteristic adaptations are the updateable memory contents of the cybernetic system. They can be comprehensively described in terms of three non-overlapping categories—goals, strategies, and interpretations—which correspond to the three necessary components of a cybernetic system: goals, operators, and representations of the current state. Though many characteristic adaptations (e.g., being a lawyer) are broad and may include many more specific characteristic adaptations bundled together, CB5T argues that they are always decomposable into these three elements." 

"Distance" as category for the classification of marriage prescriptions:

https://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/distance-as-category-for-classification.html

Figure 1 attempts to illustrate the substance of ... eight points. The abscissa is to be understood as a rank scale of increasing "distance" from Ego, the ordinate then showing increasing suitability as sexual or marriage partner.

The concept "distance" in the graph can be interpreted in various ways, chiefly the following (see Murdock, 1949, p. 314 sq.) : 

a) Kinship distance. The scale begins with first-degree relatives, i.e. members , of the nuclear family. Next come relatives of the second and third degree, followed by members of a "Lineage", i.e. those persons whose relationship to Ego is still just traceable, and finally, all such persons with whom Ego still feels himself (more or less mystically) related, without however being able to substantiate this feeling - so-called sibs or clans. The abscissa range further to the right represents all those persons not felt to be related. 

b) Cultural distance. Grouped on the left are members of Ego’s own tribe or nation, with whom he identifies, also from a cultural point of view. There follow, within his own society, varying sub-cultures (e.g. social classes) and cultures (e.g. castes), and members of an alien nation and culture. 

c) Geographical distance. The term "distance"; can also be taken literally. The scale then begins with members of Ego’s own community, "neighbours" in the strict and wider senses of the word, and extends to the right expressing increased geographical remoteness. 

d) Physiognomical distance. This factor is not distinguished by Murdock, but is blended in with the other scales. The physiognomical scale would begin, on the left, with partners phenotypically more or less similar to Ego; there follow members first of related and then of alien race, until finally the borderline of the species is reached, beyond which non-human life begins. 

The monotonously descending dash-dot curve in Figure 1 can be interpreted as a positively-shaded "we";-feeling, the amplitude of the curve over a given abscissa point indicating the strength of preference for the choice of an individual located at that point as marriage or sexual partner. 

If this "endogamy gradient" - or, as Murdock has proposed, "gradient of ethnocentrism" - were alone effective, then indeed extreme incest among members of the nuclear family would be the favourite form of marriage. In fact, however, there is a second gradient plotted over the same scales, ascending monotonously from left to right; this we call, again after Murdock, the "exogamy gradient". 

Supposing the two forces, symbolized by the two gradients, approximately multiply each other, then we obtain as product an inverted U-curve, showing the degree in which individuals are preferred as sexual or marriage partners. The left-hand descending portion of the curve is designated as endogamy taboo or incest taboo if applied primarily to marriage or to sexual intercourse, respectively. The descent of the curve towards the right represents the bestiality taboo at the latest, although here in certain cases narrower boundaries are drawn, e.g. class, caste or race barriers. 

It is shown schematically in Figure 1 that the four scales of "distance" span, as a rule, different regions of the abscissa. The scale of "kinship distance", for example, always begins at the left, ascending flank of the preference curve - denoting the permanent existence of a particularly close degree of relationship with which sexual contact is forbidden. The "cultural distance"scale, on the other hand, usually commences at the point on the abscissa directly under the peak of the preference curve: i.e. maximum cultural "proximity" will as a rule define the most favoured spouse. But here too, there are occasional exceptions, for example the status-group exogamy of certain Indians, that is, the obligation of people of rank to choose a partner from a lower class (Murdock, 1949, p. 266).

Similarly, for the "physiognomical distance" one should at first proceed from the supposition that the typical features of one’s own race lie at the apex of the preference curve. It is not yet clear, however, what conditions obtain if the scale is extended still further to the left into the area of individual physiognomical similarity with Ego. Upon this differing reports have been made, in which for some features (e.g. the Kretschmer constitutional types) a certain preference is shown for contrasting partners. With the majority of features, nevertheless, there seems to be a preference for similarity. Geneticists speak of homogamy or assortative pairing (cf. Lerner, 1968, p. 261; Knussmann, 1965). We shall not pursue this issue further, as in any case no social rule concerning the left-hand termination of the physiognomical scale seems to exist.

Source:

The biological foundations of the incest taboo

Norbert Bischof (1972)

Kultur / High Culture:

https://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/kultur_9.html

Ich mag die Anschauung:

"Kultur haftet manchen Dingen an."

Manchen Gedichten, manchen Liedern, manchen Theaterstücken, manchen Filmen, manchen Büchern, mancher Musik, manchen Gesprächen, manchen Begegnungen, mancher Rede, mancher Haltung, manchen Entscheidungen, manchen Handlungen ...

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I like the idea that

“High Culture clings to certain things.”

To certain poems, certain songs, certain plays, certain films, certain books, certain music, certain conversations, certain encounters, certain speeches, certain attitudes, certain decisions, certain actions …

Distant Things:

"There’s a subtle pleasure in yearning for what we can’t quite touch — a desire suspended in imagination.

The mind fills the distance with idealization.

The absence keeps the feeling alive; possession would end it.

It’s a form of emotional tension — painful, but strangely sustaining.

Think of it as standing before a horizon: you’ll never reach it, but its presence gives direction to your movement ..."

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"Philosophical dimension

Writers and philosophers have wrestled with this kind of desire for centuries:

Plato’s “Eros” — love as a striving toward beauty that can never be fully possessed.

Schopenhauer saw desire as endless pursuit, never fulfillment — the will always reaching for what remains beyond.

Proust turned it into art: his characters long for lost time, knowing it can never be recovered.

In a sense, the distance itself is the essence of the longing. Remove it, and the desire evaporates."

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"Language for this feeling

Here are a few phrases that fit the idea of desiring the distant:

“Yearning for the unreachable” – simple, direct, honest.

“Drawn to the distant” – quieter, with a sense of inevitability.

“Entranced by the unattainable” – elegant and philosophical."

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Ideals shine most brightly across the distance that divides the desiring mind from them.

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"value in the unattainable: the striving toward rather than the having."

Absorbed in a Longing:

"Several expressions capture that sense of being absorbed in a longing. Here are some with slightly different tones:

1. “Lost in longing” – the most direct parallel; poetic and introspective.

2. “Consumed by yearning” – stronger and more emotional, suggests being overwhelmed.

3. “Drowned in desire” – more intense, often used for romantic or existential longing.

4. “Caught in wistful reverie” – gentler, nostalgic tone.

5. “Enveloped in nostalgia” – emphasizes longing for the past.

6. “Entranced by what’s out of reach” – focuses on the unattainable nature of the desire."

Lost in Memories:

General meaning:

"A poetic or emotional expression describing someone deeply absorbed in past experiences, nostalgia, or regret — often used in literature, song lyrics, or film dialogue."

Der Austausch / Deep Conversations:

Man sehnt sich nach dem wirklichen Austausch.
Was wenn sich Menschen gewöhnlich gar nicht austauschen.
Wenn die meisten Gespräche recht an der Oberfläche bleiben,
kaum in die Tiefe dringen.
Weder von einem tieferen Verständnis ausgehen,
noch zu einem tieferen Verständnis führen.

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One longs for real exchange.
But what if people usually don’t truly exchange at all?
If most conversations stay rather on the surface,
barely reaching any depth —
neither arising from deeper understanding,
nor leading toward one.

Freiheit und Zeit / Freedom and Time:

Freiheit und Zeit, was will man mehr? Über das Vorliegen von Zeit können wir uns erst richtig freuen, wenn wir frei sind, d.h. wenn wir nicht diversen Süchten oder Verhaltenssüchten ausgeliefert sind. Dann bedeutet Zeit, Zeit zur freien Verfügung zu haben, geradezu das Köstlichste im Leben.

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Freedom and time — what more could one want? We can truly rejoice in having time only when we are free, that is, when we are no longer at the mercy of various addictions or compulsive behaviors. Then, time — time at our own disposal — becomes the greatest treasure in life.

Psychologie:

Was, wenn Psychologie die Wissenschaft von den Erfahrungen wäre?

Also im Sinne eines Gegenüberstellung von Erfahrung und den Dingen.

Die Realwissenschaften wenden sich den Dingen zu und vergessen
hierbei nahezu, dass uns die Dinge bloß über Erfahrungen gegeben sind.

Das realwissenschaftliche Vorgehen blendet also in der Forschung
die Erfahrung geradezu aus.

In der Psychologie ereignet sich eine Wendung im Blickwinkel:
Was wenn allen Dingen erst sekundär Bedeutung zukäme, 
erst über die Erfahrung? Die Erfahrungen aber das Wesentliche seien.
Und so wie die Realwissenschaften die Erfahrungen ausblenden,
so könnte die Psychologie geradezu die Dinge ausblenden.

Psychologisch somit:
Wozu ein Ding? Bloß zur Erfahrung.

Wobei in den Realwissenschaften:
Wozu Erfahrung? Bloß um Auskunft über Dinge
(bzw. die Kontrolle über Dinge) zu erhalten,
ansonsten braucht es die Erfahrung nicht.

Übertragen ins Philosophische:
Wie aber, wenn Erfahrung der letzte Zweck oder Sinn unseres Daseins ist,
und also nicht bloß ein Mittel zum Zweck,
also nicht bloß dazu da, um Auskunft und Kontrolle über Dinge zu erhalten?
Worum geht es letzten Endes?
Nicht um den Erwerb von oder um die Kontrolle über Sachen,
sondern um die Erfahrungen selbst!
Das Erfahrende an einem Menschen kann sich mit den Jahren
weiten und vertiefen.
Was ist Seele somit?
Ein Überbegriff für alle werthaltigen oder besseren Erfahrungen,
und also alles umfassend, was dem Leben Wert, Tiefe und Inhalt gibt.

Essential Information / Wesentliche Information:

Finding great inner fulfillment by encountering essential information.

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Große innere Erfüllung finden, indem wir auf wesentliche Information stoßen.

Redundancy:

https://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2020/10/redundanz.html

Estimating the objective order or the possible extent of uncertainty reduction.

(In other words: To what degree can ignorance about what will happen be reduced?)

Error A:
Assuming a higher degree of uncertainty reduction than is actually possible or achievable.

Error B:
Assuming a lower degree of uncertainty reduction than is actually possible or achievable.

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We can either:

Error A: Be overconfident — and thus greatly overestimate what can be known.

or:

Error B: Be excessively humble — and thus greatly underestimate what can be known.

The Third Principle of Slow Productivity:

"The third ... principle of slow productivity asks that you obsess over the quality of the core activities in your professional life."

"... you should be focused on the quality of what you produce because quality turns out to be connected in unexpected ways to our desire to escape pseudo-productivity ..."

"Your taste can guide you toward the best work you're capable of producing at the moment ..."

"Obsession requires you to get lost in your head, convinced that you can do just a little bit better given some more time."

"quality requires you to slow down."

"sharpen [your] focus on producing the best work possible."

Genius - Two Notions:

Hans Eysenck:

"Two notions, ideas, concepts - call them what you like - have always been attached to the problem of creativity. Is has been widely surmised that the creative genius generates his major ideas by way of intuition, rather than rational thinking; reason can test and prove or disprove the insights achieved by intuition, but cannot produce them. Furthermore, the process by means of which intuition works is unconscious; the Unconscious, whether with or without a capital 'U' is the cradle of creativity. I will spell out some of the data on which this commonsense view rests (mainly anecdotal), and then go on to define the concepts experimentally. ..."

"My own definition would run something like this: Intuition is a mode of cognitive functioning located at the opposite end of a contiuum from logical thinking, characterized by speed and suddenness of reactions (aha! experience), small number of relevant facts known or considered, feelings of certainty about the conclusion reached, reliance on unconscious (non-verbalizable) processes, not following the rule of Aristoletic logic, and relying on unusual associations and analogies. This definition is not right or wrong; definitions try to embody the major lines of theoretical thinking and empirical study, and they do so more or less successfully. They are judged by their usefulness in bringing together known facts, and helping the discovery of new ones. This definition will serve to link together my general argument and such experimental work as has been done in this field, notably by Westcott; no more is claimed for it."

"This is another way to characterize the intuitive ('magician') as opposed to the analytical ('ordinary genius') scientists or mathematician (and probably, ceterisparibus, artist as well); we see the intuitive worker as intrinsically more 'creative' just because the origins of his creativity are hidden in the unfamiliar cliffs and caves of the unconscious."

Dolphins escorting the USS Greeneville:

https://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/dolphins-escorting-uss-greeneville.html

I never get tired of watching videos like that.

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/KHzKEmb

The Comic:

Silvano Arieti:

"The individual who perceives wit undergoes a pleasant experience, as said, which entail a feeling of amusement and tends to make him smile or laugh."

"when Italians hear or read something Spanish for the first time in their lives, they laugh or smile - that is, they react as though they perceive comic stimulus."

"The subject perceives a comical stimulus when he is set to react to A and then finds himself reacting to B, because of a confusion between the identity and similarity of A and B."

"A principle that logicians generally call Leibnitz's law states: 'X is identical to Y if Y has every property that Y has and Y has every property that X has.' The Von Domarus law or principle followed by the person who thinks paleologically can then be reformulated in this way: "X is identical to Y if X has at least one property that Y has and Y has at least one property that X has.

My theory of the comic, as advanced for the first time in 1950 (Arieti, 1950), can be stated as follows: 'A subect is a perceiver of a comical stimulus when he realizes that he tends to identify X with Y, not in accordance with Leibnitz's law, but in accordance with Von Domarus' law.' For such a realization, the person does not need to know what Leibnitz and Von Domarus' laws are, of course, just as he does not need to know that he adopts Aristotele's laws of thought whenever he thinks logically. ... Wit is a particular form of the comic, inasmuch as the required confusion between similarity and identity necessarily occurs in the field of cognition."

Linking anger and disgust to motives and anticipations of aggression in the East:

Linking anger and disgust to motives and anticipations of aggression in the East: testing a socio-functional account of moral emotions in Japan (2025)
Lei Fan, Catherine Molho, Florian van Leeuwen, Hirotaka Imada & Joshua M. Tybur
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02699931.2025.2572709


Abstract

Anger and disgust often underlie responses to social transgressions, yet their links to aggressive punishments have been primarily studied in Western populations. Across two studies sampling from Japan, we tested a socio-functional account of these two other-condemning moral emotions, which predicts differential associations of anger and disgust with direct versus indirect aggression. Study 1 (N = 1,231) revealed that anger relates to motives to aggress both directly and indirectly, whereas disgust relates only to motives to aggress indirectly. Study 2 (N = 930) extended these findings by showing that people infer greater direct aggression from anger expressions and greater indirect aggression from disgust expressions. These results are largely the same as those previously observed in Western samples. Overall, findings suggest that across culturally distinct populations, anger and disgust play similar functional roles in regulating aggressive punishments.

The Value of Information:

https://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-value-of-information.html

"The value of information is inversely related to its availability and triviality."

Kate Murphy

The Granting of Status / "Why We Talk":

Dessalles:

"We have observed that language is closely associated with the granting of status, in that relevant speakers are granted it by hearers, unlike those who have little of interest to say. As this mode of freely given status is not material, its tangible consequences must manifest themselves in the behaviour of individuals. My idea is that this granting of status is the very process whereby the choice of coalition partners is made. In other words, individuals try to ally themselves with others to whom they grant status. In particular, they try to ally themselves with the individuals who are most relevant. And conversely, the fact that some individuals attract others for that same reason makes their status visible within the coalition. This is why there is little chance that large coalitions, unlike friendships among a small number of individuals, will be egalitarian. Members of a coalition have come together because the esteem of all is focused on a small number of them, or possibly on just one. This is an inevitable development, a product of the dynamics of status-granting. If some individuals have a quality which earns them status from their fellows and if status serves as the basis for forming coalitions, then these individuals will function as centres of attraction and a coalition will form about them. Let us simplify things by calling these central individuals ‘leaders’, though the word is reductive of the reality that we want it to refer to. The behaviour that consists of granting status to individuals and trying to ally oneself with them on that basis is bound to give rise, once alliances grow beyond a certain size, to the forming of coalitions centred on leaders. The choice of the word ‘leader’ is deliberate. In any coalition of a certain size, over five or six members, say, decisions affecting the collective membership are rarely emergent, unlike what happens in shoals of fish or flocks of starlings. Some members exert more influence than others on collective actions. The fact is that, in human groupings, the preponderant ones are those who have had status conferred upon them by the estimation of the others. In short, human beings grant status to each other in accordance with a gradual criterion, which we can call criterion C. They tend accordingly to join coalitions of individuals who show a high value for criterion C. The positions occupied by members of such coalitions are leadership positions, with influence over collective decision making. The larger the coalition, the greater the influence. This brings us to a consideration of what it was that made the ability to be relevant appropriate for playing the part of criterion C."

"Can a criterion which decides whether people will become allies and grant esteem to each other be indifferent? It might seem that any criterion, as long as it is a shared one, could lead to an integrated system of coalitions that are more or less manipulated by individuals who emerge as pre-eminent. This, however, overlooks the fact that a coalition has a purpose, the most typical of which, for primates, is to provide its members with protection against other coalitions and a measure of success in dealing with them. So the choice of one criterion rather than another is hardly a matter of no consequence. If members choose and grant status to each other according to criterion C, then the leaders of the coalition are among the best according to C. What becomes of the coalition is determined by the behaviour of these leading members. If members choose and grant status to each other according to the pigmentation of their hair, the future well-being of the coalition lies in the hands of the ones with the darkest hair. If members choose and grant status to each other according to their ability to speak relevantly, then it will be the ones who appear to be the most relevant who will have the greatest say in the coalition’s destiny."

"[My] is that the ability to be relevant in conversation is ... a ‘good’ criterion of selection among members of coalitions."

"What relevant speakers contrive to show is that they are able to get information, or to find out where it is, sooner than others. In the hypothesis expounded ... this property was present as early as the prelanguage and protolanguage used by hominids. By drawing the attention of their fellows to salient situations, our ancestors were able to show that they were better than others at observing their environment, including their social environment, and getting from it what might be biologically relevant. It makes sense to assume that these individuals had more chance than others to influence the well-being of the coalitions they belonged to. If this was the case, a profitable strategy for all individuals was to join up with those who were able to show through language their ability to get relevant information from their physical and social environment."


"(H1) Individuals who form coalitions use criteria to choose their allies; a ‘good’ criterion C, compatible with natural selection, is one whose effects are positively correlated with the success of the coalition.

(H2) In most coalitions, especially when they reach a significant size, some individuals have more influence than others on collective decisions, being those who are the best for C and who have the highest status inside the coalition.

(H3) Performance in conversation is a ‘good’ alliance criterion, for it demonstrates the ability of a speaker to get biologically relevant information from the environment; it is assumed that this ability is correlated with the ability to influence the coalition in the right ways."

"If language relevance is one of the ways in which we expose ourselves to the judgements of our fellow human beings, it may appear surprising that so many conversations are so unremarkable. People should only ever speak when sure of being able to make the best possible impression, instead of holding forth about this, that, and the other, as most people do. But in fact both behaviours may be profitable. Compared with other alliance strategies, language relevance occupies a special place. The cost of language is relatively low, as Zahavi points out, unlike heroism. As a consequence, most people have no hesitation in being relevant at every opportunity, the result of which is everyday language activity and its subjects of conversation which can sometimes seem, from the outside, dreadfully ordinary. There are many situations in which it is possible to be more relevant than silence. When conversation flags, a comment on the disagreeable weather may enable somebody to evince a little relevance. It may earn speakers no status, but it costs almost nothing. While it lasts, at least they have a social existence. In conversation that is less ordinary, relevant individuals gain the esteem of their fellows. What they say plays a large part in the construction of their personality in the minds of their interlocutors. All that said, whether conversations turn on trivial or vital subjects, what participants say is always governed by the strict laws of conversational relevance and it is this that can earn status for speakers."

"Human beings like to be spoken about; if need be, they will even do it themselves. Speaking offers thus the possibility not just of being noticed for our ability to be relevant but also, when possible, of showing by the content of what we say that we are a rather extraordinary person in some way or other. The fact that language is used like that by many people, perhaps even by everybody, cannot serve as a justification for its biological existence. If the esteem of others could be won merely by boasting, then the best strategy for hearers would be to turn deaf and the best for speakers would be to produce exaggerated and repetitive messages so as to overcome the deafness. That would be the type of communication to be expected from a system functioning along the lines defined by Krebs and Dawkins, of which advertising is a fine example. Human language does undoubtedly contain features akin to advertising, as seen in the efforts every person will make, when circumstances are favourable, to appear in the best light. None the less, it is not the speaker but the hearer who is in control of language exchanges, as they have developed out of our biological constitution. Hearers, to grant status, judge especially the relevance of what is said. Admittedly, clever speakers can take advantage of their own scope for manoeuvre to choose the content of what they say so as to show themselves off. But they must still function within the tight constraints of relevance. People whose talk about themselves too obviously trangresses accepted boundaries of pertinence in informationgiving or argumentation run the risk of displaying their self-infatuation. Whatever status we may enjoy from our closest associates is not of our own professing; it must be earned. And it can only be earned if we play by the rules laid down by the biological organization of our species. The getting of status and existing within the different coalitions to which we may wish to belong can only be achieved, not by showing off, but by showing that we possess one very particular faculty: the ability to be relevant. Whenever the occasion arises, in other words dozens of times a day, we go through the ritual of displaying for other people’s judgement our ability to give them a relevant message made of ordered thoughts."

"The behaviours underlying conversation obey unconscious mechanisms. Speakers drawing attention to salient situations, hearers trying to trivialize them, others expressing doubts about the internal consistency of what they are hearing are all behaving instinctively. Reflex is what governs these actions. We exercise a degree of conscious control over the content of our utterances; but we find it difficult to resist the urge to speak. We cannot help trivializing what is presented as unlikely or questioning what appears strange. Human beings start to speak as soon as they meet someone. The cocktail-party effect, everybody trying to out-talk the noise of neighbouring conversations, and the din this creates, show how systematic language behaviour is and how deeply rooted it is in our biology. At stake in these conversations is something of vital importance to each of the speakers: who is going to have a close relationship with whom, who will rise in the estimation of others, who will gain the benefits and the influence that come with status. What we are unconsciously exercising in our conversations is a part of our biological programming. Behind the immediate stimulus of exchanging relevant information, what we are doing is assessing others’ ability to decide what is good for the set of people who will choose to ally with them. Language can thus be seen more as a means than as an end. Just as phonology makes for the construction of an extended lexicon, so our use of language makes for the construction of coalitions."

"The hypothesis argued in this chapter sees the function of language as lying outside language. When we spend our time exchanging information, it is not for the intrinsic value of the information. The information may of course be useful, even of vital importance to a hearer. But whatever usefulness there may be in the information exchanged, it is never systematic; nor can it be the biological reason for the emergence of language. Speakers are eager to bring gifts of information because they have something to gain from them. Human beings turn into interlocutors for a fifth of their waking lives because they are in a game which, when played under nature’s conditions, is essential to their survival and procreation. The aim of the game is to discover whom to choose as allies and to determine who will influence collective decisions. It is a game which differs from the other one, the game of natural selection, because the winners are not the only ones who get to propagate their difference. In the coalition game, any players who try to keep all the status for themselves, rather than grant it to others, may end up paying dearly for it. It is better to stand second in a coalition that wins than first in one that loses."

Biggest reasons people today are wrong about morality:

Robin Hanson: 

... which of 4 options from following list is biggest reasons people today are wrong about morality.

Desire - Overwhelmed by desire/pleasure Envy - Overwhelmed by envy Selfish - Selfishly prioritize own interests Groupish - Selfishly prioritize own groups Lying Leaders - Deceived by selfish leaders Trust Power - Naive trust in power/prestige Trust Words - Naive take people at their word Neglect Variety - Underestimate human variety Trust Intention - Overestimate influence of intention Own reason - Overconfident in own ability to reason Own motives - Overestimate own high motives High Ignorance - Ignorance of higher virtues Over Simple - Seduced by overly simple theory Times Change - What worked in past not work now Ugly Truths - Repressing/denying ugly truths Supernatural - False beliefs about the supernatural

Computer Science Grads:

@reiver ⊼ (Charles) hat repostet

Randall Parker #VaccinesForMoreViruses

@futurepundit

·

13 Std.

Among recent college grads, computer science grads are one of the 5 majors with the lowest underemployment rate. This fact is counter-narrative at this point in time. 

https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/aug/jobs-degrees-underemployed-college-graduates-have