Mimetic Desire
topic on 3 shows · 9 statements across 4 episodes
the Knowledge Project 
BigDeal 
My First Million
9 statements about Mimetic Desire, every show
Codie Sanchez: Mimetic desire leads people to build unfulfilling lives
“I think most of us fall into mimetic desire, right? And so we just, we become an amalgamation of all the things around us, like a mirror and a hall of mirrors. And so then you end up having this life that you didn't architect, you don't actually want, turns ou…”
Mimetic desire drives wealthy people to envy instead of appreciation
“And I think that's mimetic desire at its worst. It's envy, and it's driving people to not appreciate what they have, no matter how much they have.”
Luke Burgis: Desires are driven by third-party models, not objects themselves
“Mimetic desire means that a person's choice of an object is not determined by the object itself, But is fundamentally, or at least mostly determined by a third person or a third party, which is a mediator or model of desire. So there's always sort of a hidden …”
Burgis: Followers change their desires whenever their mimetic model shifts interests
“When somebody has taken another person as a model, when the model changes their interest in, or desire for something, our The objects that we're interested in change along with them, because it was never the object that was the important thing in the first pla…”
Burgis: People omit mimetic influences from life decisions to preserve perceived rationality
“There's the hindsight bias where the stories we tell ourselves about why we made the decisions that we did very, very often. Leave out a model of desire or a model of that behavior, because I don't know, because maybe it's an affront to our independence, to ou…”
Burgis: Positive role modeling beats top-down reorgs for fixing misaligned behavior
“The most important thing I think we can do is rather than try to solve the problem through some kind of a top-down system or reorg or something like that, or, you know, implementing new rules and policies. Is simply finding a model and putting a positive model…”
Burgis: Mimetic desire inevitably transforms role models into rivals
“Because the models that we choose, de facto, they just naturally lead us into some form of rivalry, if you think about it. You know, if I take another person as a model and begin to want what he wants I'm looking to him constantly as my model of desire to kind…”
Wilkinson: Spending time with misaligned peers forces you to copy their desires
“If you spend too much time around people who want things that you don't actually want, you will still desire and achieve those things.”
Wilkinson: Mimetic competition happens with immediate peers, not celebrities
“Are you jealous of Jeff Bezos? No, Jeff Bezos is not someone that you compete with, right? Jeff Bezos is often this celebrity world. Right? Jay-Z. That's not someone you compete with, right? The people you compete with are people within your bubble.”