Who wants to play the status game?
thepointmag.com
thepointmag.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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”
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.
But if that's not the case, all he has to do is not give them any reason to validate the assumption. That's hard, but not risky.
Expectations for him starts at a 3, and might rise to 8. Someone well dressed, might start at a 6 and rise to 8.
The difference is, well, what makes the difference.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If 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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
[0] https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/dutch-pm-form...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/06/06...
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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 entirely predicated upon status and status is only partially predicated upon trade.
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?
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.
Price is not enough.
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).
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.
Possibly, yes.
> which is why people care about it
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.
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.
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?).
[0] https://meltingasphalt.com/social-status-down-the-rabbit-hol...
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?
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.
"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
This kind of stuff is harder to do now, since the first one would have been on Twitter within minutes.
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 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.
I see you are truly gifted at this game - that is a sublime opening gambit.
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.
* 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...
Who wants to play the love game?
So you must go it alone, and realize that you are ultimately alone as The One.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
Oh, but Nietzsche has. This is what master morality vs. slave morality is 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.