This has given me food for thought. My kids go to school in an area that has a mix of incomes. My average day might involve working from home, or it might involving traveling internationally to visit $PROMINENT_BRAND_NAME to deliver consulting. When I talk to the other parents I want to reveal some aspects of my life so we have something to talk about. However I can easily come across as boasting (and, to some extent, I guess I am) if I name drop trips and clients. The Leveling Game is similarly tricky. Though I would happily criticize the current government, in my area the majority voted for them (sigh.) Also, grumbling isn't really my jam. I don't want to base my relationships on it.
For what it's worth - if the other parents bring up the conversation of what you do or what you did that week, that's fine in my opinion. It's hardly boasting and you're not the one who initiated the topic anyway.
If you're always the one bringing up your trips to fancy clients, that's a different story. :P
Consulting is an interesting one because there are people who would pity you for having to be away from your family dealing with corporate politics. Others may feel jealous of you high profile and high salary.
I'm agreed that talking about kids is a good way to get conversations started with strangers (or pets, if not kids). In this case we're relatively new to the area but I know most people's backgrounds now. It's more a case of someone initiating conversation with a casual "what have you been up to?" to which I can respond, say, "Oh, just got back from a week at $MEGACORP", which might taken as a status play but at least gives something to start a conversation about, or a conversation killing "Oh, not much. Just the usual work stuff."
I don't think it's a status play to namedrop a "megacorp," because for all they know you could be doing data entry. There's a spectrum of business consulting advancedness. It would be boasting to say "I delivered a report directly to the CEO," not to say "I did a one week contract for Walmart." The look on your face when you say it (snide, "I'm better than you," resigned to a life in airplane seats, pained from a life in airplane seats...) will convey most of the message.
A good move is to leave out the $CORP and just say "Got back from a week of traveling for work." It's obvious you're leaving out information; and it sorta nods to your choice not to boast (play status game), and instead lets them ask follow up questions if they are interested.
> might involving traveling internationally to visit $PROMINENT_BRAND_NAME to deliver consulting
Totally tangential and I apologize for that—but I read your profile and it made me curious what you're consulting on. Would you share [in some sense, even vauge] what kind of thing you consult on, or am I out of bounds? No names needed. I'm just very interested when software meets music, and in many facets of that meeting.
The companies I work for are https://www.inner-product.com/ (US) and https://underscore.io/ (UK). Scala is our main focus. I'm afraid it's not as exciting as software + music. Mostly web services or data engineering.
There are good ideas in the post. For me, it shows the different understandings of the current politic climate.
Some people things on creating a common ground where everybody has the same value. Other people want to have a clear hierarchy that states what is your place in society.
I am clearly biased to choose the common ground approach. I have grown suspicious with the people that look for a clear hierarchy because usually they also couple that with them being at the top. If you want to have a clear hierarchy, that may be useful, you need to be able to agree to be at the bottom.
But, to look at the different perspectives may help to understand each other better and create a way to work out solutions that are acceptable for everybody.
The downside might be that when you are aware of this, it may create a prejudice when meeting new people. Somehow I know (or think I know) that most people won't meet my interests to settle a common ground. It's not that my interests are better, it's just I am not into common things like TV shows, politics, sports, religion, etc.
This keeps me from talking to people except those who I already know (perhaps from a time when the prejudice was not so influential). I don't want to play status games because I have no interest to begin with.
Of course, the above excludes these tangential thoughts that one may share on HN :)
To be fair, I am into TV shows politics sports and religion and have a hard time finding people who are thinking about and discussing these things in a way that I appreciate.
Part of what this is getting to is that the elites are, in a sense, unmoored. I can't speak for what they individually feel but there must be some acceptance that Facebook and Google just don't measure up to Standard Oil or Toyota in terms of real world impact. The electronic companies can measure up, but they are becoming more of an Asian phenomenon. Maybe the drug companies.
I have a half-formed view that many of societies elites are trying to pretend that they are something else because they don't know how to handle the responsibility of maintaining the complex machinery of society. They don't want to actually let go of their power and status though.
It's interesting you compared to Standard Oil and Toyota, to me the founders of those two organisations couldn't be more different in terms of their status seeking.
There might be something to what you say though, my gut feeling is Google and Facebook are yet to show any longevity. They could disapear as quickly as they arrived.
I suspect that to the elites, the world today is as scary and uncertain as it is for the rest of us. I always get a kick out of watching the Davos videos - this convention of world leaders reminds me of nothing so much as my small-town elementary school, what with all the fads, cliques, and isolation from the wider world. I'd be scared too.
I suspect for example that most of the Davos set truly believes in and is worried about climate change, but also knows that anything they try to do in response will be ineffectual within one election cycle. I imagine a scene where some respected member of their inner circle admonishes them that they need a populist of their own to sell their solutions, and they quietly agree but can't get along with anyone who would actually be popular.
>> most of the Davos set truly believes in and is worried about climate change
Over a thousand private jets would indicate the opposite. Perhaps one owner could offer to fly Greta to her next destination, surely one of them must be going to the same place?
One can believe in the reality of a problem and rationalize one's own contribution.
I'm a prime example - I don't need to run a vehicle, I could take the bus to work. Of course, I'd spend two more hours every day commuting, get behind on my sleep, and my health and work performance would suffer. It might be the best thing I could do for the climate. But I'm convinced enough that I'm on the side of the better angels that I do this harm to my fellow organisms in hopes it will make me more effective where it counts.
If I was an Oligarch or world leader commuting to the biggest professional convention of the year, my considerations - and I daresay my decision - would be identical, just on a larger scale.
It's possible to be rich, yet a terrific bore; a talented golfer who is a mean drunk; a world class programmer who can't weld for beans; or a respected judge who nonetheless commits a faux pas at a society event.
We can all be switching statuses all the time and (to an extent) we get to choose which ones, if any, matter to us.
I think this makes life immensely more rich and tolerable than the self promoters of this world would have us believe.
> The scalar fallacy is the false but pervasive assumption that real-world things (hotels, sandwiches, people, mutual funds, chemo drugs, whatever) have some single-dimension ordering of "goodness".
> When you project a multi-dimensional space down to one dimension, you are involving a lot of context and preferences in the act of projecting.
Single dimension fallacy might be a good alternative name.
I'd add that often things don't have a single ordering of goodness at all. Like a tomato sauce: some people like it thick, others watery, others chunky; so it actually has at least 3 orderings.
Well, the general solution of economists is to assume that every person has their own ordering. This doesn't work for Spectrum Arguments by Larry Temkin, though. A typical argument goes like this: Suppose alternative A gives you an extremely high level of well-being for a month. B brings a little bit less well-being than A for two months. C a little bit less well-being for four months, and so forth. In pairwise comparisons you judge that B is better than A, C is better than B, and so on. Yet at some point, say, Z you will consider A better than Z if you compare A to Z, but you will continue to consider Z better than Y. Therefore, "better than" is not transitive.
People have written a lot of articles on how to solve these types of puzzles, which can be formulated many different evaluative domains. They always involve two or more criteria.
Unfortunately time is one-dimensional, which creates a demand for ordering (I wouldn't be surprised if all demand for order actually came from that fact). I may not need ordering in 3D space, up until the moment I need to grab a few things - then I have to decide on an order, because grabbing is sequential.
I've heard Temkin give talks attacking transitivity and I never buy it. Most of his examples involve infinity which is problematic. In the example you share, I think all it points out is that our ability to compare things (psychologically) is broken: we may think A < B < C < ... X < Z in pairwise comparisons, but something goes silly when we compare A and Z and think A > Z. I strongly think this is a bias akin to scope insensitivity. By the time we get to Z we're likely talking about HUNDREDS OF YEARS of experience, and we just are not psychologically fit to make such a comparison.
So I don't think Temkin is right.
PS - Derek Parfit and the "repugnant conclusion" ... not so repugnant if you think about it right ;)
That's a common reply. However, you can simply adopt these examples to fit whatever intuitions someone has, e.g. give Z a duration of thirty years and adjust the other intervals accordingly. Or give it a duration of 10 years and start with 30 minutes. Likewise, you can change the levels, replace well being with money or health or pleasure, and so on. Bear in mind that Temkin only needs one counter-example. I personally think we're psychologically fit to make these comparisons and that his arguments go through. It's not very surprising, if you take into account that in multicriteria decision making cases similar to these have been analysed and discussed since the 60s, e.g. by Peter C. Fishburn and by the French/Belgium tradition.
You can solve these without giving up transitivity. Technically, even just incompleteness solves the issue. My own favorite solution is lexicographic, but apparently not many reviewers like it. :(
Thanks for more comments. You're right you can re-scale things to be (A) 30 minutes VS 10 years (Z) ... at which point, why would anyone prefer A > Z ???
Part of the argument relies on this very vague definition of the eventual state of things. Temkin talks about an experience "just above 'barely worth living'" (Life-Z-1) ... and that is _so_ vague, and it means something _so_ different to different people. Given that people in concentration camps chose to continue living rather than kill themselves right away might make someone think "Life-Z-1" sucks, I would take 10 minutes of pleasure over that torture. Meanwhile I'm thinking what is just above 'barely worth living' (Life-Z-2) is just great -- the kind of basic enjoyment you have day to day without too much humor or excitement.
Philosophy is hard - I don't mean to poo-poo Temkin, I just never could grasp why transitivity was what he was attacking. As he says (something akin to) "there are several balls we're juggling in the air, and we must drop at least one to make it work" and he chooses to drop transitivity. And I don't see why he chose that 'ball'.
I can certainly see a case. Let's make it about money.
A is a single payment of $10,000.
B is two monthly payments of $5250. Or, in other words, a 5% improvement over A in total payments.
C is three monthly payments of $3675. Again, 5% better than B in sum.
I could completely see someone doing a pairwise comparison between A and B, and picking B for the 5% increase, because the time difference is not that important. Same again for B and C; it's only one more month for an extra 5%.
However, I could also see that same person comparing A and Z and deciding that instantaneous vs a period of two years is not worth the wait.
If a person is wealthy and doesn't need to spend that amount during the entire duration of Z, since they have other wealth to spend, they would likely choose Z for the higher return over the same time period.
So only a relative poverty would encourage the person to choose A.
Assuming they have unlimited life span. If not and their lifespan is uncertain, then the value of Z is reduced by the chance of not surviving long enough to profit from it.
If they can invest A and get a higher return than waiting for Z, then A is a more profitable choice.
And in all 3 cases you have putrid to fresh to masterfully made in terms of composition, quality of ingredients, age, etc...valuation can't be the composite of 'goodness', or we'd all become utility monsters chasing bitcoin.
A 3d vector of 2m by 8m by .1m can be projected on to a plane in a wide range of scalars.
When someone says that someone else is smart because they got a 100 on a test they are taking a multidimensional attribute and projecting it onto a single dimension.
I still think people understand that intelligence is multifaceted. Nobody past 3rd grade thinks that intelligence is entirely and directly measured by an exam.
However, acing a tough exam does show that you have high ability in some skills which can be included in "intelligence". It is perfectly reasonable to say someone is smart after they do something to prove their cognitive ability, even if they haven't proven every single possible kind of cognitive ability.
I think the miscommunication here is what people mean when they say "he is smart" or "this hotel is better than that one". I don't think people are commiting a scalar fallacy when they say these things. People are making judgements based on the many different aspects of a thing, and then using simplified speech to express their opinion.
If you are booking a vacation, you have to choose a hotel. When comparing hotels you look at all the different aspects (the bed, room size, the restaurant/bar, etc). You have to weigh all these options and then pick which hotel you would prefer to stay at. So when you make a choice and say 'hotel A is better than hotel B', you are not asserting that hotel goodness is measured in one dimension and that hotel A is objectively better. It's rather a benign statement that you would prefer to stay at hotel A.
It's not a fallacious reduction to a scalar quantity, but at some point you do have to make choices and weigh preferences.
"we get to choose which ones, if any, matter to us."
Definitely!
It can be amusing (and awkward) when the game is played by people who have wildly different things they value. Someone (politely, of course) reveals they're a wealthy executive and you react by looking on them with pity because they have to sell their time to others to work on dumb things that don't matter while you get to be footloose and backpack around Europe. Or you dress well and have the right accent so everyone assumes you're powerful when you're not (when I first moved to Ireland I was startled how many people assumed I was the boss and just visiting for a few days because I had an American accent). Or maybe you farm - and people look down on you - but wait! You quit the rat race to start an organic farm selling high end niche-goods to upscale restaurants - and suddenly you're the shrewd individual who made the right decisions in life to be able to do that.
It can be useful to remember that everyone wakes up and goes to the toilet in the morning, no matter their status. Years ago I read a quote from someone who liked naturism (nudity) because it stripped away most of the immediate signifiers of class from people.
Right. There isn't one game, there are infinitely many, and different people will have success at different games.
But there is also the meta-game: The game of being able to win the highest variety and largest amount of different games. I think this meta-game is closest to what we think of as status.
It's kinda funny how we selectively care. Usually we only care about the things we feel we could be good at. Someone like Lebron James has a lot more status than I ever will. But I just don't care because I have never been good at basketball (or sports) and I don't really care about the skill.
But someone who is a 10x programmer or has published a lot of great results in mathematics? That pit of envy in my stomach will appear.
It gets worse when you compare yourself to someone who is better in both the things you care about AND the things you don't care about. This is because we placate ourselves with the fact that others are better at what we care about by saying, "at least I am better at them in this area, even if I don't care about it too much."
The way Christianity deals with this problem is one of the most appealing things about it for me. "From dust you came to dust you will return." Instead of focusing on your selfish ambition and self-glory, focus on the beauty of what is at play, ultimately seeing it as rays of light coming from God's glory.
Which games we selectively care about are a result of our values. So our ranking of the importance of games mimics our value hierarchy. Christianity provides a value structure with a clear "Top", and the instructions to organize our ranking of games in accordance.
And while not religious, I also believe that they've got this right.
"From dust you came to dust you will return." - a valuable thing to keep in mind. Much the idea behend the memento mori I believe. It's easy for it to let it get you down but if you consider your mortality on a regular basis (daily or more often) it really changes how you see things. It certainly makes it easier to decide what matters.
> There isn't one game, there are infinitely many, and different people will have success at different games. But there is also the meta-game: The game of being able to win the highest variety and largest amount of different games.
I am less certain the meta-game is inherently about broadening the variety of status measurements, and more about setting the terms by which status is measured. A person who can win a large variety of such measurements might trend toward a broadening strategy such as you describe (since this is likely to favor their odds of winning any given contest), but ultimately the problem of of a "split decision" between multiple comparisons means we should expect any given contest to only ever use one means of status measurement.
Therefore the meta-game is about winning the selection process for that measurement (with the broad strategy being just one among many possibilities)....
IMO, the sooner you learn this, the better you can try to understand other people’s journies and the better yours becomes. That whole being rich versus being wealthy thing.
Also, after more than a year, I just lost the game.
I love how the author casually puts herself up there with Kant, Aristotle and Nietzsche. I guess she's playing the importance game too :)
"And no philosopher — not Kant, not Aristotle, not Nietzsche, not I — has yet figured out how to construct a moral theory that allows us to say both of those things."
Because these non-ideal "definers" have their own limitations which they are not aware of, otherwise they would fix themselves and already be ideal. These limitations will inevitably get into the designing process and the result.
In other words you can not prepare for something you have no idea about.
The trade in status - what this article calls “the importance game” and “the leveling game” - are a core part of what makes conversation hard. If you want to learn more - or are having trouble getting the feel for examples of why this is so important in practice and how to use it - a book recommendation:
A previous gig gave us Keith Johnstone’s book for theater actors and writers _Impro_ as part of our onboarding. Chapter 2, “Status”, is entirely on this concept, and how status exchanges are a key part of what makes scenes interesting and relatable for viewers. At the time it felt like an odd choice for an engineering role, but after reading the detailed examples of status exchanges and how they work, they became impossible to unsee.
And that was great, because I gotta tell you, HN: applying this skill has made me a much more effective technical leader.
Wishing for status exchanges not to happen isn’t helpful - they’re happening whether you see and intend them or not, so learning how to spot and use (or avoid them) effectively made it, maybe paradoxically, much easier to have difficult, important, multi-layered conversations with people - other engineers, other departments, customers - about hard problems and get them to a good resolution.
As the industry does some soul-searching about the way power is perceived and used differently by different groups, understanding this topic should be seen as core to leveling up.
Another "more advanced game" is the collaboration game. In this game, the players determine their common ground. The players evaluate each other and think, "Hey this person seems to be good at X and knows a lot about Y. I know a lot about Z. Maybe we can join forces." They then identify common goals that they can work on together.
I don't know about most people, but I'm definitely more interested in playing the collaboration game. And, I tend to overlook people who aren't into it.
Also, it's unfortunate if many people are influenced by Aristotle and "see human political organization as fundamentally hierarchical." Anthropologically, Humans tend to follow those whom they respect, not those they are told to follow.
Tangent: I wish more games were explicitly collaborative. Some competitive games can easily be adjusted, others not so much. Games like "Forbidden Island" represent, for many, a completely foreign paradigm where everyone's in it together. Shame that's not more common.
+1, I used to play random DotA pub games and got a huge kick out of the occasions when a team of strangers would click and work together. I sort of replicated that with pick-up basketball but topped out at below average. If anybody has team game recommendations like Forbidden Island I'd like to hear them.
Defense of the Ancients, originally a Warcraft custom map, now it's own game. Two teams of 5, you level up and train and try to kill the other team's base, a good game is maybe an hour. "Pub game" is short for public game, just groups of strangers matched to play online.
Kind of a smaller ones, but "Hanabi" and "Grizzled" are also nice. The good thing in these two games is they're not feeling like group solitaire (and I love a good game of Spirit Island, but point stands), you actually have to cooperate with another people, you can't win them by yourself.
WRT. hierarchy, I don't know what exactly Aristotle meant (I need to get off my butt and read about his work one day), but taking the expression "see human political organization as fundamentally hierarchical" - well, it kind of is. Bottom-up hierarchy is still a hierarchy.
The way I see it, people create a level of governance once their group crosses the Dunbar's number. Below it, it's easy for a group to self-police, enforcing coordination and resolving prisonner's-dilemma-like problems (tragedy of the commons, etc.). Above it, when people don't generally know everyone else in their group, you need some power delegated to a single authority to enforce coordination. And now if you take a lot of such groups, they'll have problem coordinating at an inter-group level, so another level of governance is needed - and now you have a two-level hierarchy. Repeat recursively as groups grow.
(There's also a point somewhere above Dunbar's number, where governance of a growing group becomes untenable, so that group gets effectively or explicitly split into many smaller ones. This feeds the creation of the second layer of governance, and thus the third, etc.)
WRT. the following who you respect and not who you're told to, I think a lot of problems with governance start in the second generation. When a governance is formed, the group may have chosen it out of respect, but the people born into that group after that had no say in the matter, and are just told to obey by everyone else.
> I don't know about most people, but I'm definitely more interested in playing the collaboration game. And, I tend to overlook people who aren't into it.
Hm, but the way you're describing it, that's just the Importance Game. All you're doing is measuring someone's importance based on their intent to play the Collaboration Game.
Don't get me wrong, I think that's one of the best forms of the Importance Game, because it sort of approximates the Collaboration Game. But I think you can do better at the Collaboration Game by acknowledging that the Importance Game is unavoidable, and that you're playing it.
First, I think you're overestimating the importance of other people's intentions. Even if someone's intent is to play the Importance Game, not the Collaboration Game, you can still collaborate with them. You just have to figure out how to get them to collaborate: either by playing the Importance Game or by playing the Leveling Game. If you only collaborate with people who are trying to play the Collaboration Game, you're missing out on most opportunities to collaborate--that's a losing strategy in the Collaboration Game.
Second, I think you have to view mastering the Importance Game and Leveling Game as necessary prerequisites to mastering the Collaboration Game. This is the only way to actually step outside the Importance and Leveling Games: if you pretend you don't have to play them, you just play them unconsciously and they control your behavior. Instead, if you learn to play these games consciously, you can chose to play them when they are appropriate tools for winning in the Collaboration Game.
This is, of course, easier said than done. I don't buy that human political organization is fundamentally hierarchical, but I think that there are deeply-ingrained evolutionary mechanisms in humans that make it very hard for us to avoid viewing others and ourselves hierarchically.
A final note: the Collaboration Game still isn't the ultimate game: collaboration is only useful toward a goal, and that begs the question: what goal? That's a deeply personal question, and the Collaboration Game becomes dissatisfying if you are collaborating toward other people's goals, and never achieving your own goals. The Collaboration Game, if you focus on it too far, is called codependency. In short: the Collaboration Game is still just a sub-game in the Self-Actualization Game.
I think I engage in a similar thing, but I think the “collaboration game” doesn’t quite describe it. When I meet someone new, I want to hear about a topic they know a lot about that I’m unfamiliar with (recently topics have included the Spanish monarchy, the difference between hot dogs and sausages, and Costa Rica) - we don’t collaborate on anything, so I think I might call it the “Interesting Difference Game.”
The collaboration game is easier to play when you've already had a crushing victory in the importance game, though. It's a lot easier to give information away when you're not worried about competition.
The fantastic part about the collaboration game is that people who are into it are people who are around to get things done. You can all share that core tenant, and it can remind you of what is important along the road. I’ve found that drama really gets cut down or eliminated in these types of groups as well.
This feels so empty, what the article thinks is the status game just sounds like normal meeting new people stuff. Obviously there are always status indicators tied to interests, but I feel like I’m playing the make a new friend game not some philosophical keeping up with the Joneses
But that's exactly what it is. When you meet people who may be in your social sphere, inherently these people may have connections to your professional sphere.
Therefore, your status indicators and signals may have an impact on both your personal and professional life.
As a concrete example: I was recently passed over for a promotion, for which I am supremely qualified. The reason being, the person selected plays the status game better. They network better. They have the connections to people who are in places of power.
And I refuse to play the status or any other social games. I believe merit, in and of itself, is the way to achieve. And I am wrong, often.
Anyway, I digress. The reason that it may just feel like the 'make a new friend game' is because you 'fit' already. You may not have to think about the keeping up with the Joneses bit, because you are the Joneses. This way of interacting with new people may just be how you were raised and a part of your culture, so ingrained that it seems just a part of natural society. Do you think that's the case?
I think that's partially true, I feel like I find the weirdos like me wherever I go and we just get on. I'm also not great at climbing the corporate ladder, but, I really don't care as long as I'm growing in what feels like a positive direction for my life as a whole.
Alternatively, opt out of the status game and try to construct and pursue your own definition of excellence, rather than simply defining it in terms of your position in the social hierarchy.
"Main deficiency of active people. Active men are usually lacking in higher activity-I mean individual activity. They are active as officials, businessmen, scholars, that is, as generic beings, but not as quite particular, single and unique men. In this respect they are lazy.
It is the misfortune of active men that their activity is almost always a bit irrational. For example, one must not inquire of the money-gathering banker what the purpose for his restless activity is: it is irrational. Active people roll like a stone, conforming to the stupidity of mechanics.
Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar."
Moneygathering is highly rational for essentially anyone but especially for the banker whose entire social sphere is structured around his skills as a moneygatherer.
Active men are active because they know and enjoy activity. The thrill of the pursuit and all that.
Nietzsche famously didn't understand one thing: women / mating strategies. The banker's purpose isn't meaningless, it's a means to an end (even if not always consciously pursued that way) and generally works very well.
people say this all the time but poor people are having kids at a much higher rate than rich people so the theory doesn't pan- if your goal was to have kids you'd stay with your high school sweetheart. and now you'll say "but the banker is trying to attract a high quality mate" to which I'll say that's circular as "quality" here is a synonynm for status.
celibate or not I wouldn't discount Nietzsche; he was pretty insightful.
Perhaps "mating" was the wrong word - the goal is not always to have a monogamous relationship with kids, but to attract higher perceived quality and quantity of sexual partners.
>people say this all the time but poor people are having kids at a much higher rate than rich people so the theory doesn't pan- if your goal was to have kids you'd stay with your high school
sweetheart.
The theory definitely pans.
You just tried to make it fail by putting the cart about 500 miles in front of the horse. Many accomplished people don't want kids at all and if they do, they usually don't want a lot of them.
If they wanted to have a bunch of kids they could.
They're not "losing" to people in third world countries by not having kids.
>I wouldn't discount Nietzsche
I wouldn't judge theories based on who made them. Judge them based on their own quality, logic and evidence.
> Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.
This, of course, can go either way depending on perspective. If you put all of yourself into your main activity, you're doing it for yourself, not for someone else. Whether you're being paid by someone else isn't relevant, IMO; what if you'd do it for free, or if you could do something else more profitably (so you're paying, in opportunity cost, to do it)?
Money is far from the only, or even main motivator for most people - even for poor people, they'll often stay geographically close to their friends and family rather than migrate to a better life; it's mostly the desperate at one end, or the cosmopolitans at the other (for whom the world is small, so the geographic switch is less material), who do move.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
This is an absolute engineer thing to say in the realm of efficiency, logic, and disliker-of-the-boredom-smalltalk-is, but I cannot wait until can meet and through a digital display see, then have matched our common interests. That way I don't have to pretend to care about a football game if I have nothing to add about it, if we can connect over something we both are passionate about.
Status only matters if the other party cares about it.
The ultimate status game is truly showing that you don’t care that the other person is X, has done X, their dad/uncle is X, wants you to think X but rather are dealing with the person in front of you right then and there and what they are able to bring to the table at that time.
The reverse is incredibly powerful too. Those that have been most impressive to me throughout life are when they seemed like a totally “normal” person and then later I found out something about their “status” that others would have gloated endlessly about.
This mindset brings such a peace of mind. You can't impress me with anything payable in money, empty statements, family credentials etc. Only your actions define your relationship with me. If you mess it up, I will act with you accordingly. If I will consider you a bad influence to my kid, you 2 will simply not meet, even if you would be his grandparent.
To make things even easier, I apply this to absolutely everybody, friends, family, colleagues, unknowns. For some reason, not many people are willing to do so, and always have double 'meter' for ie close family. Maybe I am a bit broken with this, but damn it makes life simple, honest and steady, relationships are crystal clear. My opinions on persons don't change, unless they change (which they don't because frankly nobody really does, at least not enough to change overall attitude).
I've recently adopted a similar stance on relationships and while it's irked some folks, it's made life incredibly peaceful. No drama, no manipulation, just spending time with folks who are great company and discarding the rest.
“ Thereupon many statesmen and philosophers came to Alexander with their congratulations, and he expected that Diogenes of Sinope also, who was tarrying in Corinth, would do likewise. But since that philosopher took not the slightest notice of Alexander, and continued to enjoy his leisure in the suburb Craneion, Alexander went in person to see him; and he found him lying in the sun. Diogenes raised himself up a little when he saw so many people coming towards him, and fixed his eyes upon Alexander. And when that monarch addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, "Yes," said Diogenes, "stand a little out of my sun."[7] It is said that Alexander was so struck by this, and admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher as they went away, "But truly, if I were not Alexander, I wish I were Diogenes." and Diogenes replied "If I wasn't Diogenes, I would be wishing to be Diogenes too.”
The article contradicts itself. It calls for an end to status games and at the same time holds up the class system as an easy out for determine status because the class takes care of it for you. That is still a status game.
The class system does not substitute individual status relations for an institutional approach, it just ignores them.
I lived and worked in London for 5 years and used to an individualistic perspective I found it very difficult when you spend years sticking your neck out for people and doing the right thing is rewarded with institution incompetence and staff that will let you down you for a broken system and marginal personal gain.
The society becomes so stratified that any reasonable increase or decrease on your hierarchical position means to completely change your social circle and living circumstances.
Hearing a coworker show off by misnaming the area she lived in so she could self correct multiple times demonstrating how close she lived to an area slightly higher up the chain than she really lived is something I could do without.
With individual status and addressing you know where you stand with people. The class hierarchy leads to slavish wonderment in the presence of the higher classes even if they spit in your face or verbally abuse you.
Please sir may I have some more? No oliver, not today.
The article explores the issue but doesn't take a strong position. Your attack on it isn't coherent. What point are you trying to make? Seems like you've got a grudge against... society?
The article devalues finite status games based on victimhood or individual merit. It goes on to suggest hierarchy as a direct counterpoint and goes on to articulates the virtues of a class based system. It claims as it's final conclusion left with the reader that there is a conflict between needing to value someone's life in terms of worth at the bottom of society and at the top. Something only a hierarchy can solve or would even attempt to order the world that way.
A hierarchy can solve this because it is a unified system of receivership centered on a common purpose. At every level it is the same purpose executed better or worse, differing on the properties of the person involved. A hierarchy supports the concept of a 'best', an 'elite' rather than merit and hides all counter-veiling evidence under a shroud of embarrassment.
The UK has implemented a hierarchical class system. I am articulating what happens when you live in a class system. A lot of things people don't talk about. Some people want to live in the shade of a great tree, and I'm okay with that. I don't.
My undergrad was a super nerdy school grinding largely solo in the CS lab. Later I did an MBA program to take me completely out of my comfort zone.
I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose. If it was the chess equivalent, I fall into Fool's Mate on move 2.
Unfortunately, there ARE times when it helps to be able to quickly convey to new acquaintances that you are legitimate and worthwhile for further collaboration. But most of the time, best to turn it off.
That's a great way of describing it. I'm a lets focus in what matters style of worker, with status bit flips only when facing clients (the degree of bit flio is so drastic that it catches colleagues off guard).
> I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose.
I think this is also a sort of power play, but also an amusing one that I too enjoy - e.g., it's quite fun, when questioned about what I do by someone who obviously cares about social status, to not mention my well-paid job working at a FANG company but instead talk about working as a dance teacher.
Reminds me of how in high school, there are kids that are smart and want to show it off (raise their hands, answer teacher's questions), and there are those that are on the "next level" -- they don't even need to prove to everyone else that they know the answers, so they never raise their hands.
In personal conversations some are eager to share that they are doing something amazing, but those on the "next level" don't try to impress the others :P
Wikipedia: "In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation."
I can tell you I grew up extremely poor, to the point of homelessness, and if you think for a second I give a shit what bob thinks of me, you're wrong. Those sorts of experiences give you a different perspective. It's one of the major reasons why I've situated my life in such a way that these same people's disapproval isn't going to affect me. In fact, I had a company inadvertently learn that lesson late last year, and it hurt them way more than it hurt me. They made the mistake of evaluating my worth by how I play that game.
We all value different things, but we all have the same core needs that make us value security. Food, water, shelter. In my head right now I cant think of one status signifier that doesn't also signify security. Gold toilets included.
Well none of us have eternal security. Money is just a buffer. Network is a part of it. Health is apart of it. Education is a part of it. Network and health and education are hide things to hide when living your life, but they are signals of security and that one can afford to invest time, effort and money into them.
If you met these millionaires next door, they signal this security in many different ways outside of material wealth.
please stop moving the goalpost. I stated that people like us value different things, and that remains true whether or not you want to argue that people who don't display the typical social status behavior do display behaviors of some sort (of course, but it's not interesting).
> there ARE times when it helps to be able to quickly convey to new acquaintances that you are legitimate
There was a thread on HN about shibboleths. It was kicked off by someone who pointed out that tech support took them seriously and skipped the basic "have you tried turning it off and on" steps when they saw XCode was installed.
> but we also need an aspirational target at the top, so as to inspire us to excellence, creativity and accomplishment.
Why do we need this? Is the author suggesting that without an externally provided target, none shall be inspired?
The status game is inherent to all socially cooperative creatures. It's not a morality thing; it's an evolutionary thing. It's nothing we can legislate or moralize or shame away; all you can do is push it underground (as in, "I'm so important that I don't even need to play" or "I disdain all who play, and am therefore superior to the rabble who do"), which doesn't solve anything.
In truth, we've already reached a pretty decent point in countering the game's worst effects. When someone demands "just who do you think you are?", I can simply respond "I am a free man." And that's that. They'll usually have no recourse to harm me for such insolence, and their bruised ego is of little concern in the majority of cases. Long gone are the days where insulting a Lord would get you run through.
Of course, if you want to enlist the work of others by means other than coercion or bribes, the status game (i.e. charisma, popularity, respect) is the only way to do it. So for some occupations, it is essential.
This is a good analysis, going to the core of the issue.but:
>> all you can do is push it underground (as in, "I'm so important that I don't even need to play" or "I disdain all who play, and am therefore superior to the rabble who do"), which doesn't solve anything.
It's possible to teach people humility.
And it's not pushing it underground - It's a good social skill to have if you want to collaborate with other people.
> if you want to enlist the work of others by means other than coercion or bribes, the status game (i.e. charisma, popularity, respect) is the only way to do it
No, it isn't. You can simply trade something valuable to them that you have, for something valuable to you that they have.
I dug the assessment of the "advanced games" while reading this (and questioning the degree of my own participation in said games), but felt a little hard pressed with the soggy take that the 'right' is the party of populism whereas leftism is for the elite. The left has hsitroically been a well for a lot of pro-public/populist ideas, like shorter work days, ending child labor, unionizing, supporting public transit, and rent control, to name a few. I guess it's kind of a modern American 'democrat' ≠ left thing.
This analysis is shallow because it fails to connect status competition among people to the larger games we play. Society processes raw materials in order to produce goods and services which generate security for people. Ultimately all status games between people relate back to some aspect of the systems that support society. Are you good at resource extraction? Are too many resources or the wrong resources being extracted? One might be a great parent but a terrible cook or the other way around. What exactly that means and is worth depends on the context and the people.
This is one of the reasons that the great divide is so brutal. One side is competing based on openness, exploration, and understanding while another is identifying authority based on measures of sanctity and staying loyal to what they find is true.
Status signaling is complicated and I have been thinking lately how inconsistently I signal. On one hand, I feel very happy with my career and hobbies like writing books and I signal this to people when I first meet them. I try to not be obnoxious, but human nature is human nature. On the other hand, I live in a small town and last spring when I shipped my car across the country as a gift to my granddaughter, I decided to not buy myself a new car. I did this for several reasons: environmental, force myself to walk and get more exercise, and it lets me joke about being poor. For some perverse reasons, I like signaling a lack of material wealth.
I think this grammatically puts the agency on the wrong people. It's not that you have to always be signaling, it's that other people are always judging you and interpreting everything you do. You can transmit no information, but everyone will catch a case of apophenia and see shapes in the TV static nonetheless.
> There is a philosophical conundrum at the root of all this: morality requires we maintain a safety net at the bottom that catches everyone—the alternative is simply inhumane—but we also need an aspirational target at the top, so as to inspire us to excellence, creativity and accomplishment.
The way the author frames this, status is a requirement for "excellence, creativity and accomplishment".
But there are other motivators for excellence, creativity and accomplishment. Some may have an intrinsic yearning to do what they perceive is the right thing. Others may be motivated by love and ready to set aside their own interests for the good of someone else, or for a higher ideal. Still others may be compelled to act by empathy, by seeing others push their own boundaries and step in to reduce their load.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 235 ms ] threadIf you're always the one bringing up your trips to fancy clients, that's a different story. :P
Totally tangential and I apologize for that—but I read your profile and it made me curious what you're consulting on. Would you share [in some sense, even vauge] what kind of thing you consult on, or am I out of bounds? No names needed. I'm just very interested when software meets music, and in many facets of that meeting.
Some people things on creating a common ground where everybody has the same value. Other people want to have a clear hierarchy that states what is your place in society.
I am clearly biased to choose the common ground approach. I have grown suspicious with the people that look for a clear hierarchy because usually they also couple that with them being at the top. If you want to have a clear hierarchy, that may be useful, you need to be able to agree to be at the bottom.
But, to look at the different perspectives may help to understand each other better and create a way to work out solutions that are acceptable for everybody.
This keeps me from talking to people except those who I already know (perhaps from a time when the prejudice was not so influential). I don't want to play status games because I have no interest to begin with.
Of course, the above excludes these tangential thoughts that one may share on HN :)
I have a half-formed view that many of societies elites are trying to pretend that they are something else because they don't know how to handle the responsibility of maintaining the complex machinery of society. They don't want to actually let go of their power and status though.
There might be something to what you say though, my gut feeling is Google and Facebook are yet to show any longevity. They could disapear as quickly as they arrived.
Let’s hope so anyway.
I suspect for example that most of the Davos set truly believes in and is worried about climate change, but also knows that anything they try to do in response will be ineffectual within one election cycle. I imagine a scene where some respected member of their inner circle admonishes them that they need a populist of their own to sell their solutions, and they quietly agree but can't get along with anyone who would actually be popular.
Over a thousand private jets would indicate the opposite. Perhaps one owner could offer to fly Greta to her next destination, surely one of them must be going to the same place?
I'm a prime example - I don't need to run a vehicle, I could take the bus to work. Of course, I'd spend two more hours every day commuting, get behind on my sleep, and my health and work performance would suffer. It might be the best thing I could do for the climate. But I'm convinced enough that I'm on the side of the better angels that I do this harm to my fellow organisms in hopes it will make me more effective where it counts.
If I was an Oligarch or world leader commuting to the biggest professional convention of the year, my considerations - and I daresay my decision - would be identical, just on a larger scale.
It's possible to be rich, yet a terrific bore; a talented golfer who is a mean drunk; a world class programmer who can't weld for beans; or a respected judge who nonetheless commits a faux pas at a society event.
We can all be switching statuses all the time and (to an extent) we get to choose which ones, if any, matter to us.
I think this makes life immensely more rich and tolerable than the self promoters of this world would have us believe.
> The scalar fallacy is the false but pervasive assumption that real-world things (hotels, sandwiches, people, mutual funds, chemo drugs, whatever) have some single-dimension ordering of "goodness".
> When you project a multi-dimensional space down to one dimension, you are involving a lot of context and preferences in the act of projecting.
I'd add that often things don't have a single ordering of goodness at all. Like a tomato sauce: some people like it thick, others watery, others chunky; so it actually has at least 3 orderings.
People have written a lot of articles on how to solve these types of puzzles, which can be formulated many different evaluative domains. They always involve two or more criteria.
This has fundamental implications, as many activities do have this cyclical parts (see also such decomposition for vector fields, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_decomposition).
Vide Reinforcement Learning for StarCraft 2: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaStar-Grandmaster-leve...
So I don't think Temkin is right.
PS - Derek Parfit and the "repugnant conclusion" ... not so repugnant if you think about it right ;)
You can solve these without giving up transitivity. Technically, even just incompleteness solves the issue. My own favorite solution is lexicographic, but apparently not many reviewers like it. :(
Thanks for more comments. You're right you can re-scale things to be (A) 30 minutes VS 10 years (Z) ... at which point, why would anyone prefer A > Z ???
Part of the argument relies on this very vague definition of the eventual state of things. Temkin talks about an experience "just above 'barely worth living'" (Life-Z-1) ... and that is _so_ vague, and it means something _so_ different to different people. Given that people in concentration camps chose to continue living rather than kill themselves right away might make someone think "Life-Z-1" sucks, I would take 10 minutes of pleasure over that torture. Meanwhile I'm thinking what is just above 'barely worth living' (Life-Z-2) is just great -- the kind of basic enjoyment you have day to day without too much humor or excitement.
Philosophy is hard - I don't mean to poo-poo Temkin, I just never could grasp why transitivity was what he was attacking. As he says (something akin to) "there are several balls we're juggling in the air, and we must drop at least one to make it work" and he chooses to drop transitivity. And I don't see why he chose that 'ball'.
A is a single payment of $10,000.
B is two monthly payments of $5250. Or, in other words, a 5% improvement over A in total payments.
C is three monthly payments of $3675. Again, 5% better than B in sum.
I could completely see someone doing a pairwise comparison between A and B, and picking B for the 5% increase, because the time difference is not that important. Same again for B and C; it's only one more month for an extra 5%.
However, I could also see that same person comparing A and Z and deciding that instantaneous vs a period of two years is not worth the wait.
So only a relative poverty would encourage the person to choose A.
Assuming they have unlimited life span. If not and their lifespan is uncertain, then the value of Z is reduced by the chance of not surviving long enough to profit from it.
If they can invest A and get a higher return than waiting for Z, then A is a more profitable choice.
And in all 3 cases you have putrid to fresh to masterfully made in terms of composition, quality of ingredients, age, etc...valuation can't be the composite of 'goodness', or we'd all become utility monsters chasing bitcoin.
> pervasive assumption
I think whenever "rating" anything people are aware that it's a subjective and probably useless number meant for convenience than accuracy.
When someone says that someone else is smart because they got a 100 on a test they are taking a multidimensional attribute and projecting it onto a single dimension.
However, acing a tough exam does show that you have high ability in some skills which can be included in "intelligence". It is perfectly reasonable to say someone is smart after they do something to prove their cognitive ability, even if they haven't proven every single possible kind of cognitive ability.
I think the miscommunication here is what people mean when they say "he is smart" or "this hotel is better than that one". I don't think people are commiting a scalar fallacy when they say these things. People are making judgements based on the many different aspects of a thing, and then using simplified speech to express their opinion.
If you are booking a vacation, you have to choose a hotel. When comparing hotels you look at all the different aspects (the bed, room size, the restaurant/bar, etc). You have to weigh all these options and then pick which hotel you would prefer to stay at. So when you make a choice and say 'hotel A is better than hotel B', you are not asserting that hotel goodness is measured in one dimension and that hotel A is objectively better. It's rather a benign statement that you would prefer to stay at hotel A.
It's not a fallacious reduction to a scalar quantity, but at some point you do have to make choices and weigh preferences.
Definitely!
It can be amusing (and awkward) when the game is played by people who have wildly different things they value. Someone (politely, of course) reveals they're a wealthy executive and you react by looking on them with pity because they have to sell their time to others to work on dumb things that don't matter while you get to be footloose and backpack around Europe. Or you dress well and have the right accent so everyone assumes you're powerful when you're not (when I first moved to Ireland I was startled how many people assumed I was the boss and just visiting for a few days because I had an American accent). Or maybe you farm - and people look down on you - but wait! You quit the rat race to start an organic farm selling high end niche-goods to upscale restaurants - and suddenly you're the shrewd individual who made the right decisions in life to be able to do that.
It can be useful to remember that everyone wakes up and goes to the toilet in the morning, no matter their status. Years ago I read a quote from someone who liked naturism (nudity) because it stripped away most of the immediate signifiers of class from people.
But there is also the meta-game: The game of being able to win the highest variety and largest amount of different games. I think this meta-game is closest to what we think of as status.
But someone who is a 10x programmer or has published a lot of great results in mathematics? That pit of envy in my stomach will appear.
It gets worse when you compare yourself to someone who is better in both the things you care about AND the things you don't care about. This is because we placate ourselves with the fact that others are better at what we care about by saying, "at least I am better at them in this area, even if I don't care about it too much."
The way Christianity deals with this problem is one of the most appealing things about it for me. "From dust you came to dust you will return." Instead of focusing on your selfish ambition and self-glory, focus on the beauty of what is at play, ultimately seeing it as rays of light coming from God's glory.
And while not religious, I also believe that they've got this right.
I am less certain the meta-game is inherently about broadening the variety of status measurements, and more about setting the terms by which status is measured. A person who can win a large variety of such measurements might trend toward a broadening strategy such as you describe (since this is likely to favor their odds of winning any given contest), but ultimately the problem of of a "split decision" between multiple comparisons means we should expect any given contest to only ever use one means of status measurement.
Therefore the meta-game is about winning the selection process for that measurement (with the broad strategy being just one among many possibilities)....
Also, after more than a year, I just lost the game.
I hadn't thought about that since college, which is far longer ago than I care to say.
"And no philosopher — not Kant, not Aristotle, not Nietzsche, not I — has yet figured out how to construct a moral theory that allows us to say both of those things."
Also the whole Ubermensch thing is basically a solution to this, by essentially fixing the whole system with an ideal person.
How can non-ideal persons define what an ideas person is? This is just a mental game.
In other words you can not prepare for something you have no idea about.
Oh, but Nietzsche has. This is what master morality vs. slave morality is about.
A previous gig gave us Keith Johnstone’s book for theater actors and writers _Impro_ as part of our onboarding. Chapter 2, “Status”, is entirely on this concept, and how status exchanges are a key part of what makes scenes interesting and relatable for viewers. At the time it felt like an odd choice for an engineering role, but after reading the detailed examples of status exchanges and how they work, they became impossible to unsee.
And that was great, because I gotta tell you, HN: applying this skill has made me a much more effective technical leader.
Wishing for status exchanges not to happen isn’t helpful - they’re happening whether you see and intend them or not, so learning how to spot and use (or avoid them) effectively made it, maybe paradoxically, much easier to have difficult, important, multi-layered conversations with people - other engineers, other departments, customers - about hard problems and get them to a good resolution.
As the industry does some soul-searching about the way power is perceived and used differently by different groups, understanding this topic should be seen as core to leveling up.
I don't know about most people, but I'm definitely more interested in playing the collaboration game. And, I tend to overlook people who aren't into it.
Also, it's unfortunate if many people are influenced by Aristotle and "see human political organization as fundamentally hierarchical." Anthropologically, Humans tend to follow those whom they respect, not those they are told to follow.
Tangent: I wish more games were explicitly collaborative. Some competitive games can easily be adjusted, others not so much. Games like "Forbidden Island" represent, for many, a completely foreign paradigm where everyone's in it together. Shame that's not more common.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2023/cooperative...
Some interesting ones:
* Gloomhaven
* Spirit Island
* Pandemic (or any of the other games in the series)
* Codenames Duet
* Arkham Horror (or any of the other games in the series)
* Mysterium
WRT. hierarchy, I don't know what exactly Aristotle meant (I need to get off my butt and read about his work one day), but taking the expression "see human political organization as fundamentally hierarchical" - well, it kind of is. Bottom-up hierarchy is still a hierarchy.
The way I see it, people create a level of governance once their group crosses the Dunbar's number. Below it, it's easy for a group to self-police, enforcing coordination and resolving prisonner's-dilemma-like problems (tragedy of the commons, etc.). Above it, when people don't generally know everyone else in their group, you need some power delegated to a single authority to enforce coordination. And now if you take a lot of such groups, they'll have problem coordinating at an inter-group level, so another level of governance is needed - and now you have a two-level hierarchy. Repeat recursively as groups grow.
(There's also a point somewhere above Dunbar's number, where governance of a growing group becomes untenable, so that group gets effectively or explicitly split into many smaller ones. This feeds the creation of the second layer of governance, and thus the third, etc.)
WRT. the following who you respect and not who you're told to, I think a lot of problems with governance start in the second generation. When a governance is formed, the group may have chosen it out of respect, but the people born into that group after that had no say in the matter, and are just told to obey by everyone else.
Hm, but the way you're describing it, that's just the Importance Game. All you're doing is measuring someone's importance based on their intent to play the Collaboration Game.
Don't get me wrong, I think that's one of the best forms of the Importance Game, because it sort of approximates the Collaboration Game. But I think you can do better at the Collaboration Game by acknowledging that the Importance Game is unavoidable, and that you're playing it.
First, I think you're overestimating the importance of other people's intentions. Even if someone's intent is to play the Importance Game, not the Collaboration Game, you can still collaborate with them. You just have to figure out how to get them to collaborate: either by playing the Importance Game or by playing the Leveling Game. If you only collaborate with people who are trying to play the Collaboration Game, you're missing out on most opportunities to collaborate--that's a losing strategy in the Collaboration Game.
Second, I think you have to view mastering the Importance Game and Leveling Game as necessary prerequisites to mastering the Collaboration Game. This is the only way to actually step outside the Importance and Leveling Games: if you pretend you don't have to play them, you just play them unconsciously and they control your behavior. Instead, if you learn to play these games consciously, you can chose to play them when they are appropriate tools for winning in the Collaboration Game.
This is, of course, easier said than done. I don't buy that human political organization is fundamentally hierarchical, but I think that there are deeply-ingrained evolutionary mechanisms in humans that make it very hard for us to avoid viewing others and ourselves hierarchically.
A final note: the Collaboration Game still isn't the ultimate game: collaboration is only useful toward a goal, and that begs the question: what goal? That's a deeply personal question, and the Collaboration Game becomes dissatisfying if you are collaborating toward other people's goals, and never achieving your own goals. The Collaboration Game, if you focus on it too far, is called codependency. In short: the Collaboration Game is still just a sub-game in the Self-Actualization Game.
If you meet a stranger, you have to figure out if they are crazy/dangerous before proceeding to collaboration.
The more I think about this single sentence, the more I feel like it's holding so much more than it first appears to be.
Therefore, your status indicators and signals may have an impact on both your personal and professional life.
As a concrete example: I was recently passed over for a promotion, for which I am supremely qualified. The reason being, the person selected plays the status game better. They network better. They have the connections to people who are in places of power.
And I refuse to play the status or any other social games. I believe merit, in and of itself, is the way to achieve. And I am wrong, often.
Anyway, I digress. The reason that it may just feel like the 'make a new friend game' is because you 'fit' already. You may not have to think about the keeping up with the Joneses bit, because you are the Joneses. This way of interacting with new people may just be how you were raised and a part of your culture, so ingrained that it seems just a part of natural society. Do you think that's the case?
"Main deficiency of active people. Active men are usually lacking in higher activity-I mean individual activity. They are active as officials, businessmen, scholars, that is, as generic beings, but not as quite particular, single and unique men. In this respect they are lazy.
It is the misfortune of active men that their activity is almost always a bit irrational. For example, one must not inquire of the money-gathering banker what the purpose for his restless activity is: it is irrational. Active people roll like a stone, conforming to the stupidity of mechanics.
Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar."
- Nietzsche
Active men are active because they know and enjoy activity. The thrill of the pursuit and all that.
celibate or not I wouldn't discount Nietzsche; he was pretty insightful.
The theory definitely pans.
You just tried to make it fail by putting the cart about 500 miles in front of the horse. Many accomplished people don't want kids at all and if they do, they usually don't want a lot of them.
If they wanted to have a bunch of kids they could.
They're not "losing" to people in third world countries by not having kids.
>I wouldn't discount Nietzsche
I wouldn't judge theories based on who made them. Judge them based on their own quality, logic and evidence.
This, of course, can go either way depending on perspective. If you put all of yourself into your main activity, you're doing it for yourself, not for someone else. Whether you're being paid by someone else isn't relevant, IMO; what if you'd do it for free, or if you could do something else more profitably (so you're paying, in opportunity cost, to do it)?
Money is far from the only, or even main motivator for most people - even for poor people, they'll often stay geographically close to their friends and family rather than migrate to a better life; it's mostly the desperate at one end, or the cosmopolitans at the other (for whom the world is small, so the geographic switch is less material), who do move.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
-- Ecclesiastes 9:10
The ultimate status game is truly showing that you don’t care that the other person is X, has done X, their dad/uncle is X, wants you to think X but rather are dealing with the person in front of you right then and there and what they are able to bring to the table at that time.
The reverse is incredibly powerful too. Those that have been most impressive to me throughout life are when they seemed like a totally “normal” person and then later I found out something about their “status” that others would have gloated endlessly about.
To make things even easier, I apply this to absolutely everybody, friends, family, colleagues, unknowns. For some reason, not many people are willing to do so, and always have double 'meter' for ie close family. Maybe I am a bit broken with this, but damn it makes life simple, honest and steady, relationships are crystal clear. My opinions on persons don't change, unless they change (which they don't because frankly nobody really does, at least not enough to change overall attitude).
I've recently adopted a similar stance on relationships and while it's irked some folks, it's made life incredibly peaceful. No drama, no manipulation, just spending time with folks who are great company and discarding the rest.
They probably also experienced reading my dumb comments. :)
Do I get extra status for this?
The class system does not substitute individual status relations for an institutional approach, it just ignores them.
I lived and worked in London for 5 years and used to an individualistic perspective I found it very difficult when you spend years sticking your neck out for people and doing the right thing is rewarded with institution incompetence and staff that will let you down you for a broken system and marginal personal gain.
The society becomes so stratified that any reasonable increase or decrease on your hierarchical position means to completely change your social circle and living circumstances.
Hearing a coworker show off by misnaming the area she lived in so she could self correct multiple times demonstrating how close she lived to an area slightly higher up the chain than she really lived is something I could do without.
With individual status and addressing you know where you stand with people. The class hierarchy leads to slavish wonderment in the presence of the higher classes even if they spit in your face or verbally abuse you.
Please sir may I have some more? No oliver, not today.
The article devalues finite status games based on victimhood or individual merit. It goes on to suggest hierarchy as a direct counterpoint and goes on to articulates the virtues of a class based system. It claims as it's final conclusion left with the reader that there is a conflict between needing to value someone's life in terms of worth at the bottom of society and at the top. Something only a hierarchy can solve or would even attempt to order the world that way.
A hierarchy can solve this because it is a unified system of receivership centered on a common purpose. At every level it is the same purpose executed better or worse, differing on the properties of the person involved. A hierarchy supports the concept of a 'best', an 'elite' rather than merit and hides all counter-veiling evidence under a shroud of embarrassment.
The UK has implemented a hierarchical class system. I am articulating what happens when you live in a class system. A lot of things people don't talk about. Some people want to live in the shade of a great tree, and I'm okay with that. I don't.
I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose. If it was the chess equivalent, I fall into Fool's Mate on move 2.
Unfortunately, there ARE times when it helps to be able to quickly convey to new acquaintances that you are legitimate and worthwhile for further collaboration. But most of the time, best to turn it off.
I think this is also a sort of power play, but also an amusing one that I too enjoy - e.g., it's quite fun, when questioned about what I do by someone who obviously cares about social status, to not mention my well-paid job working at a FANG company but instead talk about working as a dance teacher.
In personal conversations some are eager to share that they are doing something amazing, but those on the "next level" don't try to impress the others :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXH5CD3O7Oc
Wikipedia: "In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation."
> It is much easier to mock others for engaging in the Importance Game and the Leveling Game than to acknowledge one is doing it.
If you think that playing 'to lose' is somehow opting out then you're fooling yourself. The point us that we are always playing.
I can tell you I grew up extremely poor, to the point of homelessness, and if you think for a second I give a shit what bob thinks of me, you're wrong. Those sorts of experiences give you a different perspective. It's one of the major reasons why I've situated my life in such a way that these same people's disapproval isn't going to affect me. In fact, I had a company inadvertently learn that lesson late last year, and it hurt them way more than it hurt me. They made the mistake of evaluating my worth by how I play that game.
https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer...
If you met these millionaires next door, they signal this security in many different ways outside of material wealth.
There was a thread on HN about shibboleths. It was kicked off by someone who pointed out that tech support took them seriously and skipped the basic "have you tried turning it off and on" steps when they saw XCode was installed.
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1201003855770607618
Why do we need this? Is the author suggesting that without an externally provided target, none shall be inspired?
The status game is inherent to all socially cooperative creatures. It's not a morality thing; it's an evolutionary thing. It's nothing we can legislate or moralize or shame away; all you can do is push it underground (as in, "I'm so important that I don't even need to play" or "I disdain all who play, and am therefore superior to the rabble who do"), which doesn't solve anything.
In truth, we've already reached a pretty decent point in countering the game's worst effects. When someone demands "just who do you think you are?", I can simply respond "I am a free man." And that's that. They'll usually have no recourse to harm me for such insolence, and their bruised ego is of little concern in the majority of cases. Long gone are the days where insulting a Lord would get you run through.
Of course, if you want to enlist the work of others by means other than coercion or bribes, the status game (i.e. charisma, popularity, respect) is the only way to do it. So for some occupations, it is essential.
>> all you can do is push it underground (as in, "I'm so important that I don't even need to play" or "I disdain all who play, and am therefore superior to the rabble who do"), which doesn't solve anything.
It's possible to teach people humility.
And it's not pushing it underground - It's a good social skill to have if you want to collaborate with other people.
No, it isn't. You can simply trade something valuable to them that you have, for something valuable to you that they have.
To get to the moon.
This is one of the reasons that the great divide is so brutal. One side is competing based on openness, exploration, and understanding while another is identifying authority based on measures of sanctity and staying loyal to what they find is true.
The way the author frames this, status is a requirement for "excellence, creativity and accomplishment".
But there are other motivators for excellence, creativity and accomplishment. Some may have an intrinsic yearning to do what they perceive is the right thing. Others may be motivated by love and ready to set aside their own interests for the good of someone else, or for a higher ideal. Still others may be compelled to act by empathy, by seeing others push their own boundaries and step in to reduce their load.
Competition is only one motivator.