[ExI] Status as human motivator

[Keith Henson]

Years ago, back in the nineties, I got a lot of abuse and even was
lambasted from the bench by a federal judge over recognizing the
importance of status seeking as a human motivator.  I noticed a
slashdot article that pointed to something on the topic by Philip
Greenspun.  It's a good read.

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

Why do American men (boys, actually) do it?

Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why
any young American would do it. Yet we do find some young Americans
starting out in the sciences and they are mostly men. When the Larry
Summers story first broke, I wrote in my Weblog:

    A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things
such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video
games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at
the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were
male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years
banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of
landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?

Having been both a student and teacher at MIT, my personal explanation
for men going into science is the following:

   1. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group
   2. men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask
the question "is this peer group worth impressing?"

Consider Albert Q. Mathnerd, a math undergrad at MIT ("Course 18" we
call it). He works hard and beats his chest to demonstrate that he is
the best math nerd at MIT. This is important to Albert because most of
his friends are math majors and the rest of his friends are in wimpier
departments, impressed that Albert has even taken on such demanding
classes. Albert never reflects on the fact that the guy who was the
best math undergrad at MIT 20 years ago is now an entry-level public
school teacher in Nebraska, having failed to get tenure at a 2nd tier
university. When Albert goes to graduate school to get his PhD, his
choice will have the same logical foundation as John Hinckley's
attempt to impress Jodie Foster by shooting Ronald Reagan.

********

Greenspun is smart enough not to make the obvious self-referential
observation that *he* is motivated by high status, something I was
foolish enough to have written about.  (Even though I noted that at
the time I was not consciously aware of it.)  I included the next
paragraph just because it is such a vivid example, especially the last
sentence.

He also misses the *why* young men strive to achieve high status.  The
obvious reason from evolutionary psychology is that high status men
got the most nooky (and wives) for millions of years, so of course we
are selected to seek status.  It's one of the things that really are
in our genes.

Keith