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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

When my family travels, I don't believe we do it at all with status in mind. In fact, from a safety/opsec standpoint, I try to keep my travel entirely a secret until after it's completed.

If you look at the cars we drive (a 2005 Honda CR-V and a 2015 Nissan LEAF), I doubt any significant status is accruing to us from those choices. [I am much more often asked "why do you still drive cars like this?!" than "Oooh, nice car!"]

My ideal condition would be to have assets that would be able to provide a fully secure income stream in retirement but for no stranger to be able to reasonably guess that we have that.

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This entire comment is actually signalling status.

Yes, making sure to fill up the oil before loading two kids into the rusty, 19 year old, 235K mile CR-V to drive 750 miles to see their grandparents, while trying to not have someone break in and steal their stuff.

High status, conspicuous consumption, gram-worthy life, indeed.

Yeah actually. The key is the phrase "why do you still drive cars like this?" It's not because you have to, but because you are signaling that a car as a status signal is irrelevant to you. That's actually the next level status signal :)

It's probably driven much more from being an optimizing engineer (alternatively phrased: a cheapskate) and wanting to spend as little as feasible on reliable transport in order to funnel more money into retirement savings/financial independence.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

Not taking a side, but to understand the comment you are replying to, you would do well to look up the concept of countersignalling.

Does counter-signaling require intent or only action?

A. If I care what people think, but work to communicate that I don't, that's pretty obviously counter-signaling.

B. If I genuinely don't care what people think, but my actions are outwardly indistinguishable from those in A, is that counter-signaling?

This sounds equivalent to "Is signaling about the signal-giver or the signal-recipient?"

Indeed it does. If I practice haruspicy*, in so doing am I receiving signals from the gods?

* - the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals

It might be signalling status, but I don't think it's fair to assume that was the motive of its author.

Of course, so is your comment here :-) (and mine, too)

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