"man is a social animal" sounds all fluffy bunnies but what it means is that there are deep structures in your brain that try to kill you if your perception of your social status is too low. in Dunbar-number-sized social groups most people could clear this bar. most now can't
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this means that rational and accurate self-perception, as matters stand with our world-sized pool of fish making everybody small. is a suicide pact. this is the source of a truth we all recognize: in modern society, to be sane is fucking nuts
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our survival drive never goes away either, though, so we're continually working out dozens of ways to cope with this. if you run into people on the lowest rungs of society in your day-to-day, you mostly run into ones who are obviously deeply crazy
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Replying to @chaosprime
Note: the causation could plausibly flow the other direction.
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Replying to @TWakalix
true, and i'm sure it sometimes does, but that's the direction it's generally presumed to flow so, as a basic bitch contrarian, my priors discount this as a primary explanation
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Replying to @chaosprime
We could solve this with Science. Make the experimental group think they’re lower status, see if they go crazy.
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Replying to @TWakalix @chaosprime
Apparently this is Unethical so I will be doing the opposite: make the experimental group think they’re high-status and see if they stop being crazy. No one could possibly complain about this, right?
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oh that's gorgeous, it's like someone reached into the trolley problem, grabbed it by its asshole and turned it inside out
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