I once attended a talk by a man who was head of a creative marketing agency. He also had a side gig of being a presentation consultant. I forget his name and agency, but I don't think I could forget what he said.
He would lead his company's pitches to new clients, and would turn up to the presentation wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops; tattoos all over his arms and neck, and thereby set the expectations of the room quite low.
He would then continue brazenly with his presentation – charming, intelligent, and confident – and by the end of the pitch would hopefully have won the prospective clients with this wit.
His logic was that everyone plays the status game, but to be remembered you need to change people's perception of your status drastically. Setting expectations low, and then making them feel foolish for misjudging you.
> Setting expectations low, and then making them feel foolish for misjudging you.
It's a risky game. People tend to make their first impressions within seconds, and then spend the rest of the time looking for evidence to validate that assumption.
Not really. As a shy person, I've been playing it my whole life. For some reason, people meet me and assume... I dunno, that I'm just someone who can be swept aside. I let them believe that.
But I'm a lot more capable than people give me credit for being, and I'll be honest, a part of me enjoys it when that realization starts to set in.
It's not really a machiavellian ploy on my part to optimize some kind of social outcome, just a pattern I've settled into. It's fine for most aspects of my life. Good for poker games with strangers. Bad for first dates and FAANG-style job interviews, where I excessively downplay my abilities.
However, I think generally in life you shouldn't try to "be" anything except healthier and kinder. You were given a role in life, and it is up to you to play it to your best ability. I'm paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut, I think, when I say be careful who you pretend to be -- because that might be the person you become.
Consciously playing social games is foolish. What you really want in life is inside of you. Strive to be better, not to find artificial ways to dominate others.
You may be interested in this article then:
http://www.thedistilledman.com/how-introverted-men-attract-w...
(How an introverted man can attract women naturally). I found it interesting but haven't tried it in practice yet. The article argues 99% of dating advice on the net is written for extroverts and people who want to be like extroverts.
Thanks for sharing. If you enjoyed this, you will probably also enjoy Models by Mark Manson. I’m only 1/3 of the way through, but the topic of focusing on your strengths rather than changing yourself is a theme throughout the book.
I'm always sceptical of the artificial/natural distinction. Everything is artificial. Everything feels natural eventually. It feels more like learning one way to be, but then deciding not to learn more.
I think it's fine to be happy, but it's fine to have goals, and then change to better accomplish those goals. To pretend to be someone who you truly would rather be. It's not like the old you disappears when this happens... you just grow more nuanced.
I'm not distinguishing artificial vs. natural -- I'm distinguishing conscious vs. subconscious. You should be careful about what you consciously try to be, and make sure if you go through the hard work of changing your personality, the changes are unambiguously positive. Your subconscious, your identity, and the cultural beliefs society has loaded you up with may be wiser than you think.
(There are lots of positive changes that you should consciously strive towards -- being more focused, more in control, kinder, less neurotic, etc. etc.)
If you tinker with your personality to gain more of what you think you want -- wealth, status, etc. -- it can bring you farther away from what you really want out of life, and it can be hard to undo your changes. Few of us in society today are actually in touch with what we want at the deepest level of our soul.
So when you try to "be" something new, make sure it's not conflicting with what your soul actually wants. That sounds hippie dippie as hell, but I think it's actually very real and it's a big problem, especially in fast paced, modern society.
As someone who is also sometimes underestimated, I sympathize with your situation.
Good on you though for being self-aware and perceptive enough to realize it is they who have the incorrect view and having the patience to let that view correct itself over time. Turning it to your advantage and taking joy in watching that correction take place is doubly good.
Most people in your position just assume, “people don’t think highly of me on first impression, and they must be right”
Right, but -- if for example -- you're trying to raise VC money, you only need a couple of yeses.
There's definitely enough people that love to have their mind changed, that you could play specifically to this crowd, and do very well.
It would be dangerous if you needed a 50% nod of approval. But not so much if all you need is one yes. It's probably beneficial to optimize yourself for a small niche.
Thats why its met with "varied success" I think, because impressions at the end will be polarized. The wins are from when he successfully breaks the first-impression barrier. If you are able to convert their impression of you then you are at a significant advantage because they are now fully disarmed.
This technique can also work from a status perspective.
When someone is playing by all the rules, you assume they are doing their best to cement their status.
When someone bucks the norm, you create at least two potential thoughts in people’s minds: 1) this person lacks status or 2) this person’s status is so high they don’t need to conform.
People who dance to the beat of their own drum rather than conforming automatically, garner a lot more respect from me. Otoh, people who are rebel against the "norm" just to be edgy are very obvious and are a detriment to their credibility on the onset.
I couldn't care less if someone's wearing shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt to give a presentation if they obviously know what they're talking about.
Wear what's comfortable, with some respect to common decency - wearing a speedo to give a presentation on a JS library probably won't warrant a great response (though I'm sure stranger things have happened).
I don't meant to be whiny but it's interesting how ineffective this would be for certain groups of people. Imagine a woman showing up in sweatpants and no makeup or a black guy wearing basketball shorts, white socks and Nike slides.
I understand that every room of people is different, and that some might react the exact same way to all three, but I'm skeptical.
It might be ineffective, or the subconscious bias we all have might automatically lower the person's status. IOW, they might have this effect normally.
If that feels unlikely, it's because it is. But we have very little way of knowing how this would play out in any other situation.
My point is we should all be less certain of the stories we tell.
thats interesting. Consider a scenario of a guy with proper attire vs this guy. If the guy with proper attire did the same level of presentation as this guy, who have the probability to "win the clients"
Reminds me of what I called “emotional ramping” when I worked at conference booths. Most people in a booth are either a zombie (exhausted and uninterested) or a clown (putting on a show of excitement). The trick is to start your interactions with people somewhere above zombie and end somewhere below clown. If you start at a 10, you have nowhere to go.
I mean, he was head of a marketing agency, which in itself already implies a certain level of success (that many people can only aspire to). Seeing as how he was a consultant on the side too, I'm assuming that he's done okay for himself.
Perhaps he was judging himself too harshly. You're not going to win 100% of prospective clients anyway, so it's easy to interpret that as varied success, instead of just success that lets you keep going.
To me, what you wear to a meeting is not about signaling status. It's about signaling respect. And that's directly correlated with how much effort you have put into how you present yourself.
Signaling respect based on how much status a person has is not about respect, its about status. Unless you also dress up for e.g. serving soup at a soup kitchen.
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.
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.
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.
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.
+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.
> 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
> It is much easier to mock others for engaging in the Importance Game and the Leveling Game than to acknowledge one is doing it.
And it's critical to realize: mocking others for engaging in the Importance Game and the Leveling Game is just a way of engaging in the Importance Game.
This is an even stranger game than Nuclear War: it sometimes seems that the only winning move is not to play, but not to play isn't really an option.
> And it's critical to realize: mocking others for engaging in the Importance Game and the Leveling Game is just a way of engaging in the Importance Game.
I grew up in Los Angeles and now live in Portland, OR. People in LA play the status game rather brazenly and are roundly mocked for it. But the exact same game is played by everyone doing the mocking here in Portland. Except, instead of buying luxury automobiles and extremely expensive clothes, as people in LA do, people here signal status using markers of enlightenment and moral purity such as diet, meditation, political positions, etc.
I’m conflicted. In some ways, I appreciate the honesty of the LA approach. But I also appreciate the more subtle nature of the Portland approach.
I think this gets at something I hinted at in my other post on this thread: It's important to master both the Importance Game and the Leveling Game because they're subgames in the Self-Actualization Game. Both are necessary parts of interacting with people. Mastery of the Importance Game and Leveling Game involves reading the situation: when in Rome, play as the Romans do. The ultimate master of these games can play them effectively in both LA and Portland, but I think realistically, a proficient player chooses which stage in which to play based on their own strengths and goals.
Honesty might seem like an escape from the Importance and Leveling Games: you say the truth, so you're not basing what you say on an attempt to get status, so you've exited the game, right?
Well, that doesn't quite work out in practice: First, you can only be as honest with others as you are with yourself, and being honest with yourself is hard: you just end up playing the games unintentionally. Second, honesty is never complete by the simple nature that you don't have time to say everything, so the things about yourself that you choose to be honest about create a picture that has implications for the Importance and Leveling Games. Third, lying isn't the only way to change what you say: you can change what you say about yourself by changing yourself. If you do different things, you can say different things about yourself without lying, and your actions can be motivated by the Importance/Leveling Games. And as a sub-point of that: being honest is a choice of actions that's usually geared toward winning the Importance Game.
Part of my conflict is that I appreciate the restraint and subtlety of the Portland approach, but I also appreciate the honesty of the LA approach. The compromise I've come to is to acknowledge that I strive to be part of the elite class, but promise myself that I won't be a jerk in pursuit of my ambitions.
I suspect that the honesty/subtlety of the approaches really only is differentiable at the low levels which most people are able to master. If you can't do that you can't play, of course, but being able to do that doesn't really differentiate you.
At the higher levels, I suspect LA involves just as much dishonesty as Portland, and as much subtlety to make those lies work in an environment where brazen-ness is the norm.
When people are locked out of one ladder, they may latch onto another ladder where they can have more success; you can opt into the vegan ladder, zero waste ladder, hippie queen ladder, gangster ladder, slacker ladder, redneck ladder, ad infinitum.
I question whether the described Portland approach is actually subtler. Is it actually? It's definitely more meta. It's definitely less resource-intensive. But in my experience there's nothing subtle about sour grapes.
> I question whether the described Portland approach is actually subtler. Is it actually?
I think it is, FWIW. Nothing about the game is actually spoken aloud; everything is inferred and gathered via subtle clues. In my experience, one major factor that separates the social classes is the ability to notice these subtleties and modify your behavior accordingly.
> It's definitely less resource-intensive.
I'm not sure that I agree. It requires less money. But it requires way more time. And it probably also requires a level of intelligence and mental sophistication that can't really be faked. If you have money, it's easy to just buy expensive stuff. But it's hard to fake an Instagram feed filled with vegan meals, yoga, hiking, political rallies, etc.
Actually getting money is harder than playing intellectual sophistry. By the fact that you have to deal with the reality, which is more complex than the Portland model of it.
You don’t have a choice but to play, however you do have a choice about which games to play. The only justified game is that of sincere moral virtue; what that means is a deep philosophical issue.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I get the sense that the conflict the author describes is a problem in American culture, because most of us want to believe in a classless society, yet at the same time, class is everywhere.
I feel in many cultures it's far more explicit and tolerated. You know who your "betters" are. In America, you'd never acknowledge that.
I'm not saying that a rigid social hierarchy would be better -- but our approach to society is to try to downplay social hierarchies, while in some sense they're inescapable.
In Dutch society there is a saying "Act normal, then you are crazy enough". Showing ones wealth and status is not done and seen as flashy and arrogant, something to be ashamed of really.
Edit: Good examples of where this leads to is the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte visiting the King by bike [0] or cleaning up his own spilled coffee by himself [1] while the cleaners are watching.
Riding a bike is a way to show off the best cycling infrastructure in the world, as well as your modern, wealthy, functional society where this is not a security concern. It's a pretty big flex. I burn with envy, and look at American transport infrastructure with disgust.
It is not done in certain circles, and of course all circles engage in wealth (or its proxy, virtue) signalling, because we are apes who can't help themselves. Dutch society pretends to be above all that, and thereby developed a neat little blind spot on its radar. That situation isn't helped by its particularly irritant way of ignoring any contrarianism until the evidence is so overwhelming we all pretend we have always seen it in this new way.
Class signalling is thus more subtle, e.g. you better not sound too provincial, you can observe the way one dresses, and what clubs or sports are frequented. The usual, but more toned down compared to driving a ridiculous BMW or somesuch.
I feel a lot of Americans feel the same way, too. I feel uncomfortable having people wait on me or clean up after me.
My fiancée likes borrowing very expensive shoes from her sister and frankly, I find it very embarrassing. I kind of want to just... reject all of that, and live simply. She mostly agrees, but she does like nice things from time to time.
As someone who really admires Dutch culture, I would just add that in my experience "you are crazy enough" is more true in the Netherlands than elsewhere ;) It's probably not for nothing that such a small country has had such an outsized impact on the history of Science and Technology...
Another way it’s hidden is in the way we project our status. It’s not tasteful here to have something that’s just “expensive” anymore. They’ll create more expensive versions of everything (such as iPhones). Ostensibly to give better features, but the “higher end” things tend to simply be a way to show wealth.
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.
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
The greatest invention of civilization is trade, which makes status obsolete. In a society that upholds property rights of everyone, even the lowest can get ahead without being seen as superior or excellent. Just offer something that other people want to have, and ask for a little money in return.
The result of that process - that a low-status-looking, fat, filthy, cowardly trader ends up driving a BMW - is hated by the public, who would rather see a proud warrior in that BMW, winning it through status instead of lowly trade. But fuck that. I hope trade keeps ascending, and people who are disliked but provide good things to others - cowardly traders, smelly nerds, the whole sad group that I identify with - keep getting more good stuff in lieu of status competition.
> The greatest invention of civilization is trade, which makes status obsolete. In a society that upholds property rights of everyone, even low-status "omegas" can get ahead without ever being seen as superior or excellent. Just offer something that other people want to have, and ask for a little money in return.
"Trade" doesn't let you escape status. "Omegas" who get ahead by being smart are competing for status and are "seen as superior or excellent".
Humans have built all this stuff because we have been able to invent arbitrary status games. If our status games were only about some combination of physical size and cunning, we'd still be living in a "state of nature".
Trade is the opposite of a zero-sum status game: it creates gains and shares them among participants. (Gains from trade exist whenever Alice and Bob have different rates of exchange between good X and good Y.) Success in trade doesn't come from being better than others and making them less successful, it comes from trading with others and making them more successful.
I think you're making a good point but I don't think it has to do with status (as understood by the author of this article). Status games aren't necessarily zero-sum. "Facilitators" can accrue status without being directly involved in anything. Harvey Weinstein never directed a movie; Steve Jobs never built a computer.
I don't think you can escape status games while interacting with other people. Things that people compete for grant status. That includes money, fame, and even notoriety. If you invent some game (i.e. trading) and you earn lots of money doing it, then people will mimic you, and suddenly you're playing a status game even if that was never your intention.
Even opting out of status games is a status game (as the article points out). If you decide "I'm going to live in the woods alone," some reporter is going to follow you and write a story about you. That actually happens a lot! Maybe if you successfully remove yourself from all other people until you die so that there's no trace of you anywhere, you've opted out. But that's hard to do and we never hear about the people who do it (for obvious reasons).
I think that's way overstated. As an outsourcer in Moscow working for Western companies, I got plenty of gains from trade, despite having lower status than Western folks. And remember how China took over world trade while being so low status that "made in China" was a joke?
Moscow has a relatively high status. Russia is nearer the top than it is to the bottom of the 196.
To pick an aribtrary example WITHOUT casting aspertions because that’s not my goal - a Somalian company producing the best product X would struggle severely against a trashy X made in, again arbitrary choice, China.
Yes, competing on quality requires trust, which you call "status". If you don't have that, you must spend some time competing on price first. That's how China did it (and has now moved up to making iPhones) and how Somalia can do it as well. See also: Indian software outsourcing used to be a total joke, but it was cheap, and now look at the demographics of Google including the CEO.
> Humans have built all this stuff because we have been able to invent arbitrary status games.
No, humans have built all this stuff because it provides value to more and more people. Time spent on status games is time not spent doing something productive.
No, people care about it because it produces valuable things. People would still care about productivity even if nobody had the slightest idea what status was.
> Why do people care about "valuable things"? Status
No, they care about them because they need them. People need food, clothing, shelter, companionship, and many other things. People also provide those things. Producing those things and trading for them is not "status"; it's filling genuine needs.
While I'm sympathetic to your view (status feels very "high school", and in some ways profoundly boring), I'd like to make a case for The Good Parts of status (as well it's bottom-up cousin, "prestige" [0]).
I can't remember where I read it (probably also Simler?), but I love the aphorism that "honor can sometimes buy gold, but gold can never buy honor". In addition to the fungible, zero-sum-ish resource economy, there is also a parallel non-zero-sum reputation economy. While this can sometimes be meritless and lacking in positive externalities (Instagram influencers, "being famous for being famous"), it can also manifest in incentivizing pro-social behavior (community contributions, GitHub stars).
Just as the same market mechanisms underlie both the good and bad parts of capitalism (wealth creation vs. rent-seeking), the motivation to climb status hierarchies and earn reputation is a double-edged sword, sometimes resulting in good behavior (competition to be the most cooperative), and sometimes in leveraging status exploitatively or even harmfully (searching for a term here; status arbitrage? status market failure?).
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.
“ 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.”
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.
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.
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).
> 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
> 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.
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).
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."
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."
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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I remember hearing a story about Walmart founder Sam Walton at an annual vendors meeting. He walked up onto the stage and pulled his glasses out of his pocket and a bunch of his personal effects got pulled out and spilled on the floor and he got on his hands and knees to pick them up before going on stage. Then in another meeting with a completely different set of people he did the same exact thing. The guy who told me the story asked him what was going on and he said that the vendors in the room were making American median income and he was one of the richest guys in the world and he had to bring himself down a notch if he was going to connect with them.
This kind of stuff is harder to do now, since the first one would have been on Twitter within minutes.
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.
Of course this is written by an academic. Most of the rewards and penalties of academia are status related. No one besides the football coach is making private sector money, and no one gets fired for anything less than a felony. There are large portions of the ivory tower that do nothing more than burnish the self-importance of other status seekers; armies of Associate Dean of Innovative Circle Jerks attending pointless conferences.
This is largely unavoidable in large organizations. As another article recently posted here described, it's a natural consequence of hierarchical layers never interacting with people doing the work (the bottom) or the people ultimately accountable (the top).
The real danger comes when status seeking culture overwhelms the organization as it has a tendency to be infectious. Status becomes the currency as well method of getting ahead. "Surely I am entitled to this position of importance and compensation. I am not full of shit for if I was, I would not deserve this position of importance and compensation." Actual competence and efficacy are existential threats to these people, so they further reward those below them who excel stroking their ego and bullshitting.
No, not everyone is trying to establish status in every interaction. In polite company we call those people shitheads. Shitheads have a tendency to believe everyone else is also a shithead. Some of us are actually trying to get things done, and play their silly games only because it gets them out of our office.
> 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. In other words, we need worth to come for free, and we also need it to be acquirable. 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.
Maybe it's true that no philosopher has adequately solved this problem. But that doesn't seem to matter. Most of us live in societies that provide a safety net while also providing hierarchies to climb. The fact that there's no clear philosophical grounding for this doesn't seem to bother us.
> 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. In other words, we need worth to come for free, and we also need it to be acquirable. 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.
* When your worth is already infinite, you are free to aspire to whatever accomplishment you choose, knowing that it'll be the same in the end whether you get there or not.
* When your worth does not change when it is compared to another's "excellence, creativity, and accomplishment" at some superior "top", you don't have a moral conundrum (or an inferiority complex).
* The "conundrum" becomes non-sensical when you can celebrate the accomplishments of others with the same enthusiasm as your own.
* Worth is not "acquirable": it is something you always have but have to discover. Hoping that comparative excellence, creative output, and worldly accomplishment will provide it for you will simply cost you time.
So I would argue that the real game here is widening your sense of identification to include all players of the game. And once you're there, maybe you'll have a lighthearted, arbitrary aspiration to see that that point of view is spread...
This this this!
The problem with trying to teach or share this is that you have to transcend survival and face your death to become Love/God and devils will demonize you for speaking this Truth.
So you must go it alone, and realize that you are ultimately alone as The One.
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.
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 reminds me a lot of the idea of Transactional Analysis. It's a study of the Ego state of people interacting with the world around them and whether they act as a figurative Parent, Adult or Child in a certain situation and can explain why people might play a particular status game in some situations and not in others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
I love to play this game by taking the oneupmanship to an absurd level. If someone is humble bragging about stressing over a speaking engagement, I’ll causally mention that the student organizations that book speakers at Yale can be difficult to work with. If they start talking about their Tesla, I’ll work in a mention about how tragic it is that Fedship isn’t committing enough resources to electric conversions. I was at a work function and a colleague was going on about Zenga suits, I then started complaining that Zilli hasn’t opened enough boutiques in North America.
I don’t even own a car or a suit, much less a superyacht or far-end men’s couture.
I don’t play in bad faith like this if I value the input of the people I’m talking to. I definitely smile and nod if I like or need something from someone playing this game. I suppose by displaying awareness of the brands I’m also engaging in the game on the same side of the spectrum as the folks who actually wear a Rolex/Patek watch.
Anywho, if you find yourself In a conversation with someone bitching about how the tax benefits of a third vacation home aren’t what they used to be, you might be talking to me.
Reminds me of something I read in Impro (recommended by someone on HN, and a readable-if-totally-anecdotal collection of writings on status): a marker of friendship is the ability to deliberately and enjoyably play status games.
I find myself playing the Leveling Game with cleaners, drivers, etc. and talking about the football team or similar. But it also feels the most preening kind of status assertion — like Harvard grads telling you they went to school “in Boston.” The worst offender is Warren Buffett, whose self professed lifestyle of a $100K house and McDonalds which is just a way of saying “I’m so superior to you that the granite countertops and Michelin restaurants you lust over and will never afford are so meaningless to my amazingly enlightened soul that I could have them for free and don’t bother.”
Christianity already solved this. There is a hierarchy but it’s invisible and you can’t access it. The one you see is not especially relevant to anything except social custom and determining your responsibilities.
I struggle a bit with pieces like this because I genuinely am not trying to establish or gauge another person's status when I first meet them. And I really don't think I'm in denial on this. Outside of a business context, it doesn't feel all that important, nor does it feel in any way clear cut. What qualifies as higher status anyway? It's going to vary based on idiosyncratic values whether you are more impressed by a painter or a CEO or an academic or an activist or a caregiver etc.
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.
Is it not possible for someone to just want to find common positive interests hobbies and goals with a stranger so they can make a connection and be friends? Does it have to be back-stabby position jockeying and dick-measuring? We don't live in an Aaron Sorkin universe. Sometimes smalltalk is just small talk.
He would lead his company's pitches to new clients, and would turn up to the presentation wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops; tattoos all over his arms and neck, and thereby set the expectations of the room quite low.
He would then continue brazenly with his presentation – charming, intelligent, and confident – and by the end of the pitch would hopefully have won the prospective clients with this wit.
His logic was that everyone plays the status game, but to be remembered you need to change people's perception of your status drastically. Setting expectations low, and then making them feel foolish for misjudging you.
In his words: it had varied success.