David Pinsof writes: We’re a judgy species. We’re constantly judging each other for every little thing we do. And we deny that we’re doing this, because one of the things we get judged for, ironically, is being judgy.
And we deny that we’re trying to impress our judgy peers, because trying to impress them makes us look insecure and performative.
So we judge each other for being judgy, and we desperately try to make each other think that we don’t care what they think. It’s all very confusing.
This raises the question: how do we judge people? What do we judge them on? The answer is: preferences. We mostly judge people on what they like and dislike….
We all know, deep down, that when people give us their opinion, they’re trying to be better than us. We can feel it. But we cannot call them out on this, because then they’ll get offended, and we’ll look mean—like we’re trying to look better than them. So we’re stuck nodding our heads and pretending not to be annoyed.
How do we do it? How do we win the opinion game and transform our preferences into social norms? Well, one way is just by having lots of status. People sycophantically agree with whatever high-status people say, so our social norms—our shared opinions—will bend toward the interests of high-status people.
Another way is to have cultural power—to have a big platform where people listen to you. If you get to shout your opinions on a megaphone to a massive audience, then you’re going to have a big advantage in the opinion game. So norms bend toward the interests of the culturally powerful.
Another way to win the opinion game is, to be a bit more optimistic, by having genuinely good arguments about why your preferences are better than other people’s preferences. Those arguments will involve externalizing your preferences—that is, framing them as reactions to objective features of the world. The reason you like the stuff you do is because it is objectively good for you, or good for everyone. The reason you see things from your perspective is because it is objectively accurate or insightful. These are the sorts of arguments we make when we play the opinion game.
Of course, these arguments are mostly bullshit, because we mostly don’t care about useful truth or what’s good for the world. We just pretend to care about these things to win the opinion game. “I like the things I do because they’re good for everyone. I see the world the way I do because it’s useful and true.”
