Human Peacocking

@WSJ @JillianKayM And going... x.com/Thefactsdude/s…

@WSJ @JillianKayM It keeps going: x.com/gatorgar/statu…

Boring Autocracy Hypothesis Autocratic govts sometimes can be effective at coordinating resources & econ development. But they stifle creative expression / development of cultural industries. Won’t progress past middle income b/c skilled people move to higher status places.

This happens in St Tropez all the time where the person with the 100m yacht is dwarfed by those with 150m+ yachts. A common response is denigration ('look at that ugly yacht') -

@Wholesome_dg Only works on downward audiences, those same level hate you for it.

@HumanPeacocking Does it work on fellow high status people too or only impresses commoners?

I sometimes have PR friends ask me for advice for their ultra high status clients who just got award/recognition tons of attention - How to make the most of it? My response - Tell them to go to the cheapest, well known local eatery (McDonalds, Jollebees, Dai Pai Dong, street stall, mediocre local steak house) & eat as visibly as possible until photographers show up. This is hands down the most successful way to capitalize on the stream of fame/attention. #Mcdonaldsmaneuver

Research by Ko et al (N=14 532, 42 societies) suggests men and women have different fundamental social motives (♀→threat avoidance, long-term pair bonding, caregiving; ♂→status, mate-seeking)—more pronounced in societies with greater gender equality: buff.ly/xKUzuLE

@VP @KamalaHarris And here the Mcdonalds maneuver working for Michael B Jordan after an oscars win. x.com/MS2PZ/status/2…

@VP @KamalaHarris Here's CEO of McDonalds himself doing the same maneuver: This type of signal is a 'transcendent' brag, a self depreciating behavior that only 'works' if it seems genuine. If it appears fake it backfires entirely, as it does here x.com/shortmagsmle/s…

The 'McDonalds Maneuver' is when an ultra high status person in high status circumstances eats at a very lowly, common, base food establishment. Its commonly used by politicians, rich, and other elite who want to get further attention from masses urbandictionary.com/define.php?ter…

Sam Altman has now displaced Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates before him at the top ‘high competence low warmth’ person in business.

The second option, I tell them, is to advise their client to conspicuously reject the award It has to be a conspicuous, visible rejection, can't be hidden like declining a knighthood honor. Or go up to get the award but leave it on the stand and walk off with statute sitting on podium.

The power of the McDonald’s maneuver in action

@shannonrwatts #humanpeacocking #transcendentsignaling

Socrates in 460 BC: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Marcus Aurelius in 150 CE: “You have power over your mind—not outside events.” Augustine of Hippo in 400 CE: “Do not go outside; return into yourself. In the inward man dwells the truth.” Marc Andreessen in 2026:

Highest power/relatively high status losing to higher status / lower power.

Trivers also developed parental investment theory, explaining why females tend to be choosier in mating and why males often compete more intensely for status and mates. These ideas reshaped debates about sex differences across biology and the social sciences. quillette.com/2020/11/02/sex…

His 1971 theory of reciprocal altruism changed everything. Cooperation, he argued, isn’t a noble exception to “survival of the fittest.” It’s an evolved strategy—one that works when individuals interact repeatedly and remember who helped (or cheated) whom. quillette.com/2022/10/07/on-…

@SteveStuWill Is there a source for this? Can't find any other information on this...

RIP Robert Trivers - the Einstein of evolutionary biology and one the greatest thinkers of our age. Among other things, Trivers came up with parental investment theory, reciprocal altruism theory, and parent-offspring conflict theory.

@AnishA_Moonka #neurobullshit

Scientists put kids through 100 hours of reading, then scanned their brains. New wiring had physically grown inside the language regions. Communication between brain areas sped up by a factor of 10. Kids who didn't read showed zero change. That was a 2009 Carnegie Mellon study. It gets wilder. In 2013, Emory University scanned 19 students every morning for 19 straight days while they read one novel chapter each night. Mornings after reading, the brain areas responsible for understanding other people's emotions lit up with new connections. So did the region that processes physical sensation. Their brains were simulating what the characters felt, as if it were happening to them. Those changes stuck around for 5 days after they finished the book. Now flip to scrolling. A massive review published in Psychological Bulletin last September pulled together 71 studies covering 98,299 people. Heavy short-form video use (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) showed a clear pattern: worse attention, weaker self-control, and more anxiety. Consistent across teenagers and adults, across every platform tested. Oxford didn't name "brain rot" its 2024 Word of the Year for nothing. A 2024 brain wave study found that people hooked on short-form video had weaker activity in the front of the brain, the part that controls focus and impulse control. Separate brain scans showed the same thing: heavy scrollers had less activation in the exact regions that deep reading strengthens. UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has been studying this for decades. Humans were never born to read. There's no gene for it. Reading is something we invented, and it hijacked neurons that were originally meant for recognizing faces. Over time, it built entirely new brain circuits connecting language, vision, and emotion. But those circuits only survive if you use them. Stop reading, and they fade. Wolf's conclusion is simple: screens built for speed produce a speed-wired brain. Books built for depth produce a depth-wired brain. One honest caveat: most of these studies are snapshots, not long-term tracking. People who already struggle to focus might just prefer short videos. But the same pattern showing up across nearly 100,000 people is hard to shrug off. The tweet repeats the line seven times. The research backs it up with brain scans, EEG data, and white-matter imaging across tens of thousands of people.

Poorer people reduce spending when feeling poorer than peers, whereas the rich increase spending, esp on visible goods People responded differently to the Joneses effect depending on their income.

This reads like a throw back to all the articles on SBF’s and how he’ll be donating billions per year.