After months of reading Robin Hanson, status-based and trying-to-appear-a-certain-way-based explanations of human behavior come naturally to me, so much so that I’m often surprised when people hesitate at all to embrace them. In a post criticizing the TSA’s response to the recent failed terror attack, Ed Brayton said “If you’re really cynical, you could make a good argument that they’re really only interested in the appearance of safety”–to which my response was of course that’s a major motive, why should such explanations be only for the cynical? But I guess that makes me more cynical than Ed, and when you’re more cynical than Ed Brayton, you know you’re seeing the world through different glasses.

But apparently, I need to keep reading Hanson, because I still miss what should be obvious points: i.e. Docs are as motivated by money as MBAs, and our inclination to believe otherwise suggests we assume high-status people are virtuous.