-> You might think of all this as cold, but it’s built into your behavior so deeply that you likely don’t even see it.
I think status is often depicted as/sold as "things that make you happy", rather than "things that other people want". You are not encouraged to seek a high-paying career because it raises your status, but because being highly-paid supposedly makes one more happy (which is true to some degree, but hedonic treadmill and logarithmic increases in happiness only, so it probably feels untrue for a decent amount of people).
If it were more explicit "this will raise your status", some people probably would not attempt that. I think the majority of people genuinely do care more about being happy than about having a high status, and are status-seeking because the two things are conflated and society does not do a good job at disentangling them.
If the high status thing they are vying for doesn't make them as happy as they thought it would make them, it feels hollow - and after such an experience, they look for something different to make them happy, which probably also is status-increasing, because of that conflation.
For example, Kayleigh from your story might realize that her local frienships are a lot more meaningful to her and invest in those. This might come with an increase in status (as somebody who invests in their friendships is something other people want), but that's incidental and not the motivation for doing it.
So I'd think most people are very aware that they are happiness-seeking, and only lack awareness that they are doing so by incidentally also improving the odds of being higher-status.
I think most people in highly compensated roles (say $1m+) are in it for the status/competition and are aware of that. The lifestyle difference between $500k and $1m is pretty small, but the status difference is huge.
As Janeane Garofalo says in West Wing. Money is about “Scorekeeping. Quantitative evidence that I’m smarter than you.”
Possible. I'm from Germany, both compensation and status work slightly differently here. I don't think I know anybody who is mostly in it for status, even at highly compensated (top 1% income) roles (but my sample size is also small, I don't know that many 1-percenters).
A lot of highly compensated people are in it for the thing itself. They love what they do, so they get good, so people offer them more money. And of course, status and money are different things. Einstein was extremely high status but only moderately wealthy. If your status is high enough, you need less money because people just give you things. Wealthy people give away money to gain status (or maybe for fun).
So, for some people who make a lot of money, it is more literally about score-keeping. Not being smarter, not the value of money. Just tokens in a game they enjoy playing.
No idea what the norm is, though. Perhaps Aella could make a survey. How much X do you have? Why do you have X?
He does look a little like a young Robin Williams. But it's clearly someone big in the heterodox, young millennial, silicon valley, circles that match this blog audience.
This article is a little odd to me. I definitely like attractive, intelligent, and interesting people. However, my liking attractive, intelligent, and interesting people is definitely not contingent on them being viewed as 'high status' or cool by others. If anything, someone I like being low status is preferable to me, because then it is easier for me to get social access to them. I have also never felt much of a desire to become super rich or 'high status' in any conventional sense. This article probably describes a way that many people think, but it is a mentality that is pretty foreign to me specifically.
I think it's foreign to many people. Remember, Aella lives in SF and her social circle is of a certain type and she's chronically online. Those 3 overlapping create a certain niche mentality.
" I definitely like attractive, intelligent, and interesting people."
This resonates with something I’ve been sitting with lately. I wrote about it in a recent reflection while traveling alone: how the most beautiful moments often feel fuller when they’re shared, not for status, but for presence.
Sure, we post the beach photo or the stunning sunset. Is that status? Sometimes. But I wonder how often it’s something else.
Sometimes I send a photo not to say “Look where I am,” but more like “I wish you were here with me.” It’s less about broadcasting my access to something desirable, and more about filling a quiet ache for connection, about being witnessed, not admired.
Maybe the real difference is internal. If I’m grounded and whole, I don’t need you to want what I have, I just want to feel close while I have it.
I'm an old man. If/when I'm given opportunities to be useful to a pretty young woman, I might just take them. It's not out of any expectation of reward, it's enjoyable to help someone, especially someone with a nice smile.
The men who helped your career would likely also have pulled over to help you change a flat tire on the interstate. The smile and thank you they get for that isn't nothing, but it's dwarfed by being able to spend the rest of the week looking in the mirror and thinking 'I'm the kind of person who helps people with no thought of material reward.'
It's a fair question. And I think I have a decent track record. I also think that my free time is fairly limited, and I try to spend it on people I like being around, to whom I feel like I might be useful. That's not just or even primarily pretty young women.
One thing I kept thinking is that can it be the fruit alone that gives status? What if you make it known you've got so much fruit you can eat it every day but they're all yours to eat. Do you still get high status? In the story the status seems to come from the expectation of partaking in the fruit riches. What about money. You have enough money to not work ever again. You got it, though, because you're thrifty and planned well. Sharing it isn't part of the plan. Do you still get status if you make it known?
“My favorite way to conceive of status is having what other people want. The more you have what other people want, the higher status you are.”
However, this definition misses the status that comes with being able to impose on people something they don’t want (dominance status). My definition of status - the potential to influence the behavior of others - includes both of these ways:
“Fitness is determined by the ability to attract quality mates, to form alliances and coalitions, and to gain deference from non-allies. Key to all of this is the individual’s potential to influence the behavior of others. is how I define status. Status in human societies can be obtained in two ways. Dominance – by subduing others – using force or the threat of force – and prestige – by changing the behavior of others through awe, and the expectation of benefits to be gained by deferring... Prestige and dominance are two different strategies with the same goal – to maximize status. In economics, individuals maximize their ability to influence the behavior of others who are valuable to their goals.“ https://www.jurajkarpis.com/moneyisstatusmemory/
"Status in human societies can be obtained in two ways. Dominance – by subduing others – using force or the threat of force – and prestige – by changing the behavior of others through awe, and the expectation of benefits to be gained by deferring"
I like the dominance side of this definition. However, I think that the category of prestige ought to be split into two subcategories. One category, still retaining the label of prestige, covers scenarios where status is gained via awe, social connections and stated capabilities. The other is respect, which covers scenarios where status is gained by being reliable, consistently providing good advice and preforming good work. I make this delineation because a society with a status hierarchy defined solely by what I call "prestige" will be quite different compared to a society where status is solely defined by what I call "respect".
I would lump them together, because both of them ("awe" and "respect") work similarly - they are pull strategies = create followers. Dominance is a push strategy and creates subordinates.
"Prestige status is the newer form of status acquisition strategy.
Prestige status is based on a person’s competence, ingenuity, and superior characteristics: such as size (height and muscularity), beauty, skills, knowledge, bravery, social and networking skills, verbal ability, entertaining ability, entrepreneurship, leadership.
The behavior of others is altered by awe, admiration, and expectation of benefits to be gained by deferring. These can take many forms such as access to mates, goods, services, knowledge & information (Henrich, Gil-White, 2001), coordination, leadership, and gaining status through association.
The resulting cooperation from prestige is based on voluntarily conferred deference."
It's very interesting watching this work in situations that do have very *explicit* status markers.
I train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which has belt rankings. A black belt takes something like 10 years to earn. And every day of those ten years, you are getting beaten up (and taught and helped, but also beaten up) by the higher ranks. We're all adults doing a hobby, but the belt status infuses *everything*, to the point where you get blog posts reminding everyone that just because your local black belt is good at Jiu Jitsu doesn't make him an expert on stocks or marriage.
Men defer to higher rank implicitly. A 50 year old investment banker in the top 1% will act meek and deferential to an 19-year-old unemployed kid or 30-year-old auto mechanic who outranks him. Same with a cop and the local pothead.
Women who train will almost never date someone lower rank than them if they met at the gym, to the point where "white belt women dating black belts" is a recognized phenomenon and a point of concern. There's a huge debate over how much the instructor is to blame for "grooming" them vs the women for status-hunting.
Even my wife, who really does not play status games much (hell, she married me back when I looked like a perfect incel) had her opinion on my training rise substantially when she came with me and saw how all the lower belts treated me like some combination of a celebrity and a wise master.
notice that grugg's bright ideas just occur, they're not controlled, nor does he control or understand the oasis. but bc of retarded genetic evolution, grugg may hubristically see himself as superior to others & exploit the oasis. he's a complex replicator. genetic evolution < cultural evolution. let's find out together how the oasis works, let's not create status hierarchies, stressful stratification, cycles of resentment, grievances & revenge, bc grugg's loot & the bright ideas and the others' lack of those, are uncontrolled luck. grugg & other high status replicators may on average be more cognitively advanced/complex than the rest, but not enough to be able to realize that this genetic replicator strategy is zero/negative-sum in the long term. let's help the gruggs of the world understand this.
I would add one thing that you’ve hinted at but not quite made explicit here: status comes from not only having what other people want, but from being able to at least potentially share it with them or help them get it themselves.
Like, the caveman in the first example can share his fruit, and at least in theory could tell others where to find it. Successful professionals can help other people succeed, and their status comes in part from showing that they have ways to do that—by offering advice, connections, or opportunities to work with them directly.
On the other hand there are a few ways to have things other people want that aren’t easily shareable. Being handsome or in great shape only confers very limited status because all you can offer others is advice, which they could look up themselves. Being in a happy relationship? Most people want that but again, you can give some advice maybe but you can’t just share your relationship (yeah you might be poly but letting other people date your partner doesn’t mean they’ll have the same relationship you have). People want to be younger, and yet youth doesn’t convey status—often quite the opposite.
So demonstrating the ability to help others get what they want in some way is also a component of status.
I love the explanation of status as "having what other people desire." It's the most concise and consistent explanation of the concept I've ever heard, at least for prestige (status based on other peoples' admiration).
I think it's incomplete with regard to dominance - status based on intimidating others, in having the power to take from them and demand their submission. Most of our interactions do not involve domination, but there are still plenty of situations where the threat of force, firing, shaming, etc., is used to control behavior. Melting Asphalt has a good post that goes into detail about the difference between prestige and dominance. https://meltingasphalt.com/social-status-down-the-rabbit-hole/
An example of the difference, according to Melting Asphalt: in interactions governed by dominance, a stare is a threat. It's the privilege of the dominant to look at people as much as they want, and the less-dominant people may avert their eyes to avoid challenging the dominant. But if the interaction is governed by prestige, not dominance, then eye contact is a gift of welcome attention. It shows respect and interest, not threat or challenge.
If anyone is interested in learning more about status: I recommend The Elephant In the Brain, which is about how many of our behaviors are more status-motivated than we consciously realize. It's disillusioning, disturbing, and fascinating.
Your conception of status captures an essential element and got me thinking. I like it. That said, some aspects you mention later—like prediction and marketing—seem fundamental enough to deserve inclusion up front. You also briefly mention aggression, but I’d prefer to see it addressed more directly. The capacity for aggression is a kind of status: if Grugg knows you can take his fruit, your power can override his social standing.
The most notable omission, which you hint at discussing later, is the highly subjective nature of status. Grugg’s world is simple; ours involves complex and often conflicting evaluations. Our evolutionary instincts and cultural conditioning often misalign our sense of status with actual utility.
I also wonder if your career makes you more sensitive to the fame-status link than others might be. Often, it's not just individuals with status, but organizations that construct and project it. "Taylor Swift" is more of a brand entity—an imagery-generating machine—than just a person. The real person behind the brand might have less practical status.
It’s a cliché, but often true, that fame can hinder personal goals due to constant attention. Status, in that context, can be a barrier more than a benefit.
Let me try to refine "having what other people want": Having what the people who have what you want want. Clunkier, but closer to the dynamic game-theoretic model that status often resembles—anticipated opportunity for beneficial exchange.
Marketing and prediction errors distort that exchange. Status becomes partly about false advertising, and our predictions of others' assets and desires are often wrong.
My working model: status is a composite of (1) our estimate of a person’s potential to affect what we value, (2) our model of other individuals’ estimates, and (3) our model of group-level evaluations. That covers personal status, partner modeling, and collective norms. We could just say influence, but simplification loses some of the nuance. The goal, perhaps, is a usable in-the-moment heuristic that balances simplicity and guidance, adapted to one's current social goal.
It’s worth noting that ideas also have status. Status often attaches to anything perceived as influential or desirable. The topic of status is a shiny idea on your mantle.
Personally, my social brain doesn’t track my glow much or other people's (but it is an annoying background chatter). I think mostly about goals and how to get what I want. Sometimes what I want involves people, and I think about how to barter with them. When I think about social glow, it usually runs into inefficiencies, and I seek alternative paths. People attracted to my glow can mislead me. I want to work on longevity, and when I figure out they don't want to work on longevity, I want them to go away (even though I like the intimacy). My brain struggles with longevity, and glow is sort of tertiary. Sometimes I notice the glow thing and like it, but it's also distracting. I don't focus that much on social stuff. It seems easy enough when I do, but limited compared to ideas, unless I can glow people into being useful about longevity ideas (a near-term concern).
Paying attention to status isn’t cold. It’s essential to coordinate with others around shared values; my values being longevity, knowledge, enjoyment, and connection. Thinking about status can help us navigate when our instincts or inherited social models are outdated, and adapt by satisfying those instincts in more aligned ways.
At the moment, I’m particularly focused on evaluating experts. That’s closely tied to status: who is worth listening to, and about what?
If I understand your view, much of modern culture is centered on ornamental signals—pretty feathers. They may indicate some fitness, but they’re not the tools we need to address existential risks. We’re sending our prettiest peacocks to fight the tiger. It's irrational. Still, many people are reasonably practical; the universe is just hard. I do try to promote more grounded efforts. A beautiful voice is nice, but insufficient.
I like Taylor Swift’s music and she seems like a decent person, but I doubt I’d be thrilled if she invited me to lunch—unless she wanted to talk about longevity. That would be exciting. Otherwise, there’s not much mutual value. She has a lot of status with others, and I respect her success, so let’s say she has “medium” status to me—worth about $200. But that adds up when multiplied by a million fans. She could use her general status to buy my time for $50-$5000 an hour or equivalent barter. Unless I have something she wants specifically, she probably has more efficient options. I like her music, and she likes my pennies—or maybe the abstract sentiment behind them. We don’t really share significant status.
In contrast, good friends often have high mutual status, and that kind of barter of attention, insight, and support can be fluid. Yes, it can change, but sometimes we like people close to us because of rare commonalities that can not be substituted easily. Beauty or wealth, because they are so common and changeable, may be less reliable than shared values, hobbies, and history (assuming one has enough of the common valuables like money, sex, etc.).
Here’s a fun trick: list the people you most want to talk to, invite them to a party, and include the invite list. If they like each other and don’t see each other often, you might end up with a self-reinforcing high-status event. Or just go to the coolest places (by your standards) and see who shows up. This won't give you status, but it might let you access the benefits of status: time with those you value.
We need status tricks. Theory is fine, but how do we use it?
So yes: figure out what you want, who has it, what they want, and how to connect the dots. That’s status-informed barter. You can also collect broker fees.
It feels odd to suggest tricks like this, but when energy and insight align, the world can be surprisingly malleable.
A related concept is pecking order, which is good enough for chickens, but humans operate in more complex networks. Connection can outrank hierarchy. It feels like this should be modelable in terms of networks—nodes, links, weighted edges—but I’m not quite there yet.
Excellent comment! I don't really like this recent trend of conflating virtually all positive values with status. There are enormous differences in how much certain individuals (and even certain cultures) value status versus other values. People who really care about status tend to argue that literally all values eventually collapse down to status. They don't. One problem is that the people who care the most about status have traditionally also been precisely the people to do things like move to a major metro, go into media, and attempt to spread their ideas. Which is fine in and of itself, but I when the message actually being spread is that status is everything and everything is status, to a bunch of other people for whom that is not actually true, it can be detrimental for a variety of reasons and lead to bad outcomes.
This reminds me of a then-popular 50+ year-old Soviet skit (suitably adapted to the modern day:
You’re walking down the street, you see me.
“Hey, man! Come over tonight.”
“What for?”
“Just come. You’ll see.”
I show up. You did it. Through the brand manager, the VP of Product, your guy at the flagship store — you got it: the new limited-edition Chrono-Shift smartwatch. No one has it. But you do. I try it on — the haptics are like butter, the interface is insane. I respect you.
The next day, I see you.
“Hey! Come to my place tonight.”
“What for?”
“You’ll see.”
You come over. I, through the brand manager, the VP of Product, the warehouse back door — I got the real thing: the unannounced Chrono-Shift Eclipse Edition. Yours is impossible to get — mine doesn’t technically exist yet. You try it on. You’re speechless. You respect me. I respect you. We’re respectable people now.
At the big tech launch, who’s in the front row? The respected people. The brand manager, the VP of Product, the top reseller behind them. Everyone loves the brand manager. Why? Because he controls the drop. Scarcity — that’s what keeps our whole social game alive.
But imagine: the scarcity disappears. I go online, you go online, even that guy we hate goes online.
“Do you have the Chrono-Shift?”
“Yep.”
“Titanium model?”
“Yep.”
“Solar Flare orange?”
“Yep.”
“Black case, white band?”
“Yep.”
“White case, black band?”
“Yep.”
“45mm?”
“Yep.”
“The one that was never in stock?”
“We have it.”
“Rose gold women’s edition with diamond bezel?”
“Yep.”
You bought it. I bought it. That guy we hate bought it. Everyone did.
We shuffle around, pale, yawning, bored. The brand manager passes — we don’t even see him. The VP of Product — nobody cares. The top reseller? Just some guy with an app now.
Is this good? Disgusting.
Abundance? Fine. Let there be everything.
But please — let there be something you just can’t get.
That's why commodification is so powerful. Make everything you possibly can so abundant and replaceable that is strips people posessing them of their power. In a sense our caveman that monopolizes access to fruits is a hindrance to progress. Modernity has incredible tools to disrupt these ancient status mechanics.
Both of these past posts I have intuited as "mostly right" or "not wrong". But in both instances, it has felt like they are missing consideration of an X factor or overweighting some element.
It has created an itch that I need to scratch. This is the rambling which resulted from me trying to reconcile the instinct.
I think the crux of where the discordance is felt the most is in letting others know about the talisman. It feels like it is overweighting "fame" on the money-power-fame triad. If "power" includes inherent talent and abilities, then most of your thought process maps well to that more traditional status framing.
However, while being loud and well-known is intrinsic to status based on fame, it does not always map so cleanly to status based on "power". In absolute terms, you are correct that one must project their status in order to be able to wield it. But I feel some friction with the statement, "...display is required for them to have power."
This is very true for fame, but for certain kinds of power, part of its status value is in its concealment. This kind of status would be rooted in tropes such as the power behind the throne; the fixer; and, the illuminati. No denying those positions have status. And it is true that someone needs to know. But, part of the prestige of such status is in fewer people knowing, not more.
Grugg knows about the oasis, because his close confidant Durgg whispered its location in his ear. For whatever reason, Durgg is a caveman of simple needs and he is content to let Grugg publicly reap the majority of the rewards of this knowledge. He freely shares further secrets and counsel with Grugg, in exchange for Gruug bearing the brunt of the irritation managing the social interactions and threats which come from being a public facing figure.
Most in the tribe do not know who Durgg is. Only that he often sits quietly in the back corner while Grugg holds court. A few of the sharper cavepeople vaguely sense there is more to Durgg, but most overlook his presence. Attempts to glean what talisman he holds which allows him a place in court are brushed off as nothing more than an old friendship with Grugg. But nothing Grugg does happens without input from Durgg. And in those rare instances where Durgg needs to quietly exercise his true status, Grugg is more than happy to surreptitiously place his hand on the appropriate scale.
In the status hierarchy of the tribe, Durgg quietly sits as a dotted line to the left of Grugg under a mutually beneficial understanding which keeps them both at the top of the status hierarchy to their respective satisfactions.
Is Durgg putting all his status providing eggs in one basket? Yes. But it is a basket of eggs he gathered himself. Is it critical that Grugg understand the nature of their status dynamic for Durgg to have status? Yes. And to that extent, Durgg's importance to Grugg maintaining his status must be known to Grugg.
However, the balance of this status dynamic relies on others not knowing that Durgg knows just as much (if not more) than Grugg. For if the other cavepeople knew of Durgg's importance to Grugg, they would begin to pester Durgg for fruit directly. This would shatter the illusion that Grugg has a monopoly on his source of fruit and, in turn, diminish the benefits of high status secretly shared between Grugg and Durgg. As an additional irritant to their relationship, Durgg would become a perceived threat to Grugg's status were his talisman more publicly revealed.
None of this is to say this dynamic does not map to the spirit of your framing. However, it feels like there is an accent in your expression of it which is somewhat fame-coded (e.g. an implication that the talisman needs to be widely known for high status to exist). This accent may not be intentional. And my perception of it may be due to my own biases in preferred sources of status.
Whatever the root, it leaves me with the impression that this framing is accented to be just a few degrees off course. It captures most of the status market, but is missing (by inherent design) an easy to overlook segment.
-> You might think of all this as cold, but it’s built into your behavior so deeply that you likely don’t even see it.
I think status is often depicted as/sold as "things that make you happy", rather than "things that other people want". You are not encouraged to seek a high-paying career because it raises your status, but because being highly-paid supposedly makes one more happy (which is true to some degree, but hedonic treadmill and logarithmic increases in happiness only, so it probably feels untrue for a decent amount of people).
If it were more explicit "this will raise your status", some people probably would not attempt that. I think the majority of people genuinely do care more about being happy than about having a high status, and are status-seeking because the two things are conflated and society does not do a good job at disentangling them.
If the high status thing they are vying for doesn't make them as happy as they thought it would make them, it feels hollow - and after such an experience, they look for something different to make them happy, which probably also is status-increasing, because of that conflation.
For example, Kayleigh from your story might realize that her local frienships are a lot more meaningful to her and invest in those. This might come with an increase in status (as somebody who invests in their friendships is something other people want), but that's incidental and not the motivation for doing it.
So I'd think most people are very aware that they are happiness-seeking, and only lack awareness that they are doing so by incidentally also improving the odds of being higher-status.
I think most people in highly compensated roles (say $1m+) are in it for the status/competition and are aware of that. The lifestyle difference between $500k and $1m is pretty small, but the status difference is huge.
As Janeane Garofalo says in West Wing. Money is about “Scorekeeping. Quantitative evidence that I’m smarter than you.”
Possible. I'm from Germany, both compensation and status work slightly differently here. I don't think I know anybody who is mostly in it for status, even at highly compensated (top 1% income) roles (but my sample size is also small, I don't know that many 1-percenters).
A lot of highly compensated people are in it for the thing itself. They love what they do, so they get good, so people offer them more money. And of course, status and money are different things. Einstein was extremely high status but only moderately wealthy. If your status is high enough, you need less money because people just give you things. Wealthy people give away money to gain status (or maybe for fun).
So, for some people who make a lot of money, it is more literally about score-keeping. Not being smarter, not the value of money. Just tokens in a game they enjoy playing.
No idea what the norm is, though. Perhaps Aella could make a survey. How much X do you have? Why do you have X?
Agreed still enjoying life being happy and not manipulated towards ones dreams sounds great.
I'm not sure if this runs counter to your assertion or not but...
I don't know who the guy posing with Lauren is.
Me neither, who is he?
HA. take That Lauren! Your status farming doesn't work on us.
My first thought was Robin Williams, but I'm not sure.
He does look a little like a young Robin Williams. But it's clearly someone big in the heterodox, young millennial, silicon valley, circles that match this blog audience.
This article is a little odd to me. I definitely like attractive, intelligent, and interesting people. However, my liking attractive, intelligent, and interesting people is definitely not contingent on them being viewed as 'high status' or cool by others. If anything, someone I like being low status is preferable to me, because then it is easier for me to get social access to them. I have also never felt much of a desire to become super rich or 'high status' in any conventional sense. This article probably describes a way that many people think, but it is a mentality that is pretty foreign to me specifically.
I think it's foreign to many people. Remember, Aella lives in SF and her social circle is of a certain type and she's chronically online. Those 3 overlapping create a certain niche mentality.
" I definitely like attractive, intelligent, and interesting people."
Those things don't overlap very often.
This resonates with something I’ve been sitting with lately. I wrote about it in a recent reflection while traveling alone: how the most beautiful moments often feel fuller when they’re shared, not for status, but for presence.
Sure, we post the beach photo or the stunning sunset. Is that status? Sometimes. But I wonder how often it’s something else.
Sometimes I send a photo not to say “Look where I am,” but more like “I wish you were here with me.” It’s less about broadcasting my access to something desirable, and more about filling a quiet ache for connection, about being witnessed, not admired.
Maybe the real difference is internal. If I’m grounded and whole, I don’t need you to want what I have, I just want to feel close while I have it.
Status may be about what others desire.
But joy, I think, is what we desire to share.
Beautiful.
I'm an old man. If/when I'm given opportunities to be useful to a pretty young woman, I might just take them. It's not out of any expectation of reward, it's enjoyable to help someone, especially someone with a nice smile.
The men who helped your career would likely also have pulled over to help you change a flat tire on the interstate. The smile and thank you they get for that isn't nothing, but it's dwarfed by being able to spend the rest of the week looking in the mirror and thinking 'I'm the kind of person who helps people with no thought of material reward.'
Or just to be liked. It's interesting to what extent the post dismisses that as a motivation.
Does the person have to be "pretty" to help her, or even female?
It's a fair question. And I think I have a decent track record. I also think that my free time is fairly limited, and I try to spend it on people I like being around, to whom I feel like I might be useful. That's not just or even primarily pretty young women.
One thing I kept thinking is that can it be the fruit alone that gives status? What if you make it known you've got so much fruit you can eat it every day but they're all yours to eat. Do you still get high status? In the story the status seems to come from the expectation of partaking in the fruit riches. What about money. You have enough money to not work ever again. You got it, though, because you're thrifty and planned well. Sharing it isn't part of the plan. Do you still get status if you make it known?
Less so. You can't really have that much if you don't have enough to give some of it away.
“My favorite way to conceive of status is having what other people want. The more you have what other people want, the higher status you are.”
However, this definition misses the status that comes with being able to impose on people something they don’t want (dominance status). My definition of status - the potential to influence the behavior of others - includes both of these ways:
“Fitness is determined by the ability to attract quality mates, to form alliances and coalitions, and to gain deference from non-allies. Key to all of this is the individual’s potential to influence the behavior of others. is how I define status. Status in human societies can be obtained in two ways. Dominance – by subduing others – using force or the threat of force – and prestige – by changing the behavior of others through awe, and the expectation of benefits to be gained by deferring... Prestige and dominance are two different strategies with the same goal – to maximize status. In economics, individuals maximize their ability to influence the behavior of others who are valuable to their goals.“ https://www.jurajkarpis.com/moneyisstatusmemory/
"Status in human societies can be obtained in two ways. Dominance – by subduing others – using force or the threat of force – and prestige – by changing the behavior of others through awe, and the expectation of benefits to be gained by deferring"
I like the dominance side of this definition. However, I think that the category of prestige ought to be split into two subcategories. One category, still retaining the label of prestige, covers scenarios where status is gained via awe, social connections and stated capabilities. The other is respect, which covers scenarios where status is gained by being reliable, consistently providing good advice and preforming good work. I make this delineation because a society with a status hierarchy defined solely by what I call "prestige" will be quite different compared to a society where status is solely defined by what I call "respect".
I would lump them together, because both of them ("awe" and "respect") work similarly - they are pull strategies = create followers. Dominance is a push strategy and creates subordinates.
"Prestige status is the newer form of status acquisition strategy.
Prestige status is based on a person’s competence, ingenuity, and superior characteristics: such as size (height and muscularity), beauty, skills, knowledge, bravery, social and networking skills, verbal ability, entertaining ability, entrepreneurship, leadership.
The behavior of others is altered by awe, admiration, and expectation of benefits to be gained by deferring. These can take many forms such as access to mates, goods, services, knowledge & information (Henrich, Gil-White, 2001), coordination, leadership, and gaining status through association.
The resulting cooperation from prestige is based on voluntarily conferred deference."
It's very interesting watching this work in situations that do have very *explicit* status markers.
I train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which has belt rankings. A black belt takes something like 10 years to earn. And every day of those ten years, you are getting beaten up (and taught and helped, but also beaten up) by the higher ranks. We're all adults doing a hobby, but the belt status infuses *everything*, to the point where you get blog posts reminding everyone that just because your local black belt is good at Jiu Jitsu doesn't make him an expert on stocks or marriage.
Men defer to higher rank implicitly. A 50 year old investment banker in the top 1% will act meek and deferential to an 19-year-old unemployed kid or 30-year-old auto mechanic who outranks him. Same with a cop and the local pothead.
Women who train will almost never date someone lower rank than them if they met at the gym, to the point where "white belt women dating black belts" is a recognized phenomenon and a point of concern. There's a huge debate over how much the instructor is to blame for "grooming" them vs the women for status-hunting.
Even my wife, who really does not play status games much (hell, she married me back when I looked like a perfect incel) had her opinion on my training rise substantially when she came with me and saw how all the lower belts treated me like some combination of a celebrity and a wise master.
Nicely put!
What you describe is typically considered as power. Power tends to increase status. Status does not necessarily increase power.
notice that grugg's bright ideas just occur, they're not controlled, nor does he control or understand the oasis. but bc of retarded genetic evolution, grugg may hubristically see himself as superior to others & exploit the oasis. he's a complex replicator. genetic evolution < cultural evolution. let's find out together how the oasis works, let's not create status hierarchies, stressful stratification, cycles of resentment, grievances & revenge, bc grugg's loot & the bright ideas and the others' lack of those, are uncontrolled luck. grugg & other high status replicators may on average be more cognitively advanced/complex than the rest, but not enough to be able to realize that this genetic replicator strategy is zero/negative-sum in the long term. let's help the gruggs of the world understand this.
I would add one thing that you’ve hinted at but not quite made explicit here: status comes from not only having what other people want, but from being able to at least potentially share it with them or help them get it themselves.
Like, the caveman in the first example can share his fruit, and at least in theory could tell others where to find it. Successful professionals can help other people succeed, and their status comes in part from showing that they have ways to do that—by offering advice, connections, or opportunities to work with them directly.
On the other hand there are a few ways to have things other people want that aren’t easily shareable. Being handsome or in great shape only confers very limited status because all you can offer others is advice, which they could look up themselves. Being in a happy relationship? Most people want that but again, you can give some advice maybe but you can’t just share your relationship (yeah you might be poly but letting other people date your partner doesn’t mean they’ll have the same relationship you have). People want to be younger, and yet youth doesn’t convey status—often quite the opposite.
So demonstrating the ability to help others get what they want in some way is also a component of status.
I love the explanation of status as "having what other people desire." It's the most concise and consistent explanation of the concept I've ever heard, at least for prestige (status based on other peoples' admiration).
I think it's incomplete with regard to dominance - status based on intimidating others, in having the power to take from them and demand their submission. Most of our interactions do not involve domination, but there are still plenty of situations where the threat of force, firing, shaming, etc., is used to control behavior. Melting Asphalt has a good post that goes into detail about the difference between prestige and dominance. https://meltingasphalt.com/social-status-down-the-rabbit-hole/
An example of the difference, according to Melting Asphalt: in interactions governed by dominance, a stare is a threat. It's the privilege of the dominant to look at people as much as they want, and the less-dominant people may avert their eyes to avoid challenging the dominant. But if the interaction is governed by prestige, not dominance, then eye contact is a gift of welcome attention. It shows respect and interest, not threat or challenge.
If anyone is interested in learning more about status: I recommend The Elephant In the Brain, which is about how many of our behaviors are more status-motivated than we consciously realize. It's disillusioning, disturbing, and fascinating.
Your conception of status captures an essential element and got me thinking. I like it. That said, some aspects you mention later—like prediction and marketing—seem fundamental enough to deserve inclusion up front. You also briefly mention aggression, but I’d prefer to see it addressed more directly. The capacity for aggression is a kind of status: if Grugg knows you can take his fruit, your power can override his social standing.
The most notable omission, which you hint at discussing later, is the highly subjective nature of status. Grugg’s world is simple; ours involves complex and often conflicting evaluations. Our evolutionary instincts and cultural conditioning often misalign our sense of status with actual utility.
I also wonder if your career makes you more sensitive to the fame-status link than others might be. Often, it's not just individuals with status, but organizations that construct and project it. "Taylor Swift" is more of a brand entity—an imagery-generating machine—than just a person. The real person behind the brand might have less practical status.
It’s a cliché, but often true, that fame can hinder personal goals due to constant attention. Status, in that context, can be a barrier more than a benefit.
Let me try to refine "having what other people want": Having what the people who have what you want want. Clunkier, but closer to the dynamic game-theoretic model that status often resembles—anticipated opportunity for beneficial exchange.
Marketing and prediction errors distort that exchange. Status becomes partly about false advertising, and our predictions of others' assets and desires are often wrong.
My working model: status is a composite of (1) our estimate of a person’s potential to affect what we value, (2) our model of other individuals’ estimates, and (3) our model of group-level evaluations. That covers personal status, partner modeling, and collective norms. We could just say influence, but simplification loses some of the nuance. The goal, perhaps, is a usable in-the-moment heuristic that balances simplicity and guidance, adapted to one's current social goal.
It’s worth noting that ideas also have status. Status often attaches to anything perceived as influential or desirable. The topic of status is a shiny idea on your mantle.
Personally, my social brain doesn’t track my glow much or other people's (but it is an annoying background chatter). I think mostly about goals and how to get what I want. Sometimes what I want involves people, and I think about how to barter with them. When I think about social glow, it usually runs into inefficiencies, and I seek alternative paths. People attracted to my glow can mislead me. I want to work on longevity, and when I figure out they don't want to work on longevity, I want them to go away (even though I like the intimacy). My brain struggles with longevity, and glow is sort of tertiary. Sometimes I notice the glow thing and like it, but it's also distracting. I don't focus that much on social stuff. It seems easy enough when I do, but limited compared to ideas, unless I can glow people into being useful about longevity ideas (a near-term concern).
Paying attention to status isn’t cold. It’s essential to coordinate with others around shared values; my values being longevity, knowledge, enjoyment, and connection. Thinking about status can help us navigate when our instincts or inherited social models are outdated, and adapt by satisfying those instincts in more aligned ways.
At the moment, I’m particularly focused on evaluating experts. That’s closely tied to status: who is worth listening to, and about what?
If I understand your view, much of modern culture is centered on ornamental signals—pretty feathers. They may indicate some fitness, but they’re not the tools we need to address existential risks. We’re sending our prettiest peacocks to fight the tiger. It's irrational. Still, many people are reasonably practical; the universe is just hard. I do try to promote more grounded efforts. A beautiful voice is nice, but insufficient.
I like Taylor Swift’s music and she seems like a decent person, but I doubt I’d be thrilled if she invited me to lunch—unless she wanted to talk about longevity. That would be exciting. Otherwise, there’s not much mutual value. She has a lot of status with others, and I respect her success, so let’s say she has “medium” status to me—worth about $200. But that adds up when multiplied by a million fans. She could use her general status to buy my time for $50-$5000 an hour or equivalent barter. Unless I have something she wants specifically, she probably has more efficient options. I like her music, and she likes my pennies—or maybe the abstract sentiment behind them. We don’t really share significant status.
In contrast, good friends often have high mutual status, and that kind of barter of attention, insight, and support can be fluid. Yes, it can change, but sometimes we like people close to us because of rare commonalities that can not be substituted easily. Beauty or wealth, because they are so common and changeable, may be less reliable than shared values, hobbies, and history (assuming one has enough of the common valuables like money, sex, etc.).
Here’s a fun trick: list the people you most want to talk to, invite them to a party, and include the invite list. If they like each other and don’t see each other often, you might end up with a self-reinforcing high-status event. Or just go to the coolest places (by your standards) and see who shows up. This won't give you status, but it might let you access the benefits of status: time with those you value.
We need status tricks. Theory is fine, but how do we use it?
So yes: figure out what you want, who has it, what they want, and how to connect the dots. That’s status-informed barter. You can also collect broker fees.
It feels odd to suggest tricks like this, but when energy and insight align, the world can be surprisingly malleable.
A related concept is pecking order, which is good enough for chickens, but humans operate in more complex networks. Connection can outrank hierarchy. It feels like this should be modelable in terms of networks—nodes, links, weighted edges—but I’m not quite there yet.
Excellent comment! I don't really like this recent trend of conflating virtually all positive values with status. There are enormous differences in how much certain individuals (and even certain cultures) value status versus other values. People who really care about status tend to argue that literally all values eventually collapse down to status. They don't. One problem is that the people who care the most about status have traditionally also been precisely the people to do things like move to a major metro, go into media, and attempt to spread their ideas. Which is fine in and of itself, but I when the message actually being spread is that status is everything and everything is status, to a bunch of other people for whom that is not actually true, it can be detrimental for a variety of reasons and lead to bad outcomes.
This reminds me of a then-popular 50+ year-old Soviet skit (suitably adapted to the modern day:
You’re walking down the street, you see me.
“Hey, man! Come over tonight.”
“What for?”
“Just come. You’ll see.”
I show up. You did it. Through the brand manager, the VP of Product, your guy at the flagship store — you got it: the new limited-edition Chrono-Shift smartwatch. No one has it. But you do. I try it on — the haptics are like butter, the interface is insane. I respect you.
The next day, I see you.
“Hey! Come to my place tonight.”
“What for?”
“You’ll see.”
You come over. I, through the brand manager, the VP of Product, the warehouse back door — I got the real thing: the unannounced Chrono-Shift Eclipse Edition. Yours is impossible to get — mine doesn’t technically exist yet. You try it on. You’re speechless. You respect me. I respect you. We’re respectable people now.
At the big tech launch, who’s in the front row? The respected people. The brand manager, the VP of Product, the top reseller behind them. Everyone loves the brand manager. Why? Because he controls the drop. Scarcity — that’s what keeps our whole social game alive.
But imagine: the scarcity disappears. I go online, you go online, even that guy we hate goes online.
“Do you have the Chrono-Shift?”
“Yep.”
“Titanium model?”
“Yep.”
“Solar Flare orange?”
“Yep.”
“Black case, white band?”
“Yep.”
“White case, black band?”
“Yep.”
“45mm?”
“Yep.”
“The one that was never in stock?”
“We have it.”
“Rose gold women’s edition with diamond bezel?”
“Yep.”
You bought it. I bought it. That guy we hate bought it. Everyone did.
We shuffle around, pale, yawning, bored. The brand manager passes — we don’t even see him. The VP of Product — nobody cares. The top reseller? Just some guy with an app now.
Is this good? Disgusting.
Abundance? Fine. Let there be everything.
But please — let there be something you just can’t get.
"But please — let there be something you just can’t get."
Contentment.
That's why commodification is so powerful. Make everything you possibly can so abundant and replaceable that is strips people posessing them of their power. In a sense our caveman that monopolizes access to fruits is a hindrance to progress. Modernity has incredible tools to disrupt these ancient status mechanics.
Both of these past posts I have intuited as "mostly right" or "not wrong". But in both instances, it has felt like they are missing consideration of an X factor or overweighting some element.
It has created an itch that I need to scratch. This is the rambling which resulted from me trying to reconcile the instinct.
I think the crux of where the discordance is felt the most is in letting others know about the talisman. It feels like it is overweighting "fame" on the money-power-fame triad. If "power" includes inherent talent and abilities, then most of your thought process maps well to that more traditional status framing.
However, while being loud and well-known is intrinsic to status based on fame, it does not always map so cleanly to status based on "power". In absolute terms, you are correct that one must project their status in order to be able to wield it. But I feel some friction with the statement, "...display is required for them to have power."
This is very true for fame, but for certain kinds of power, part of its status value is in its concealment. This kind of status would be rooted in tropes such as the power behind the throne; the fixer; and, the illuminati. No denying those positions have status. And it is true that someone needs to know. But, part of the prestige of such status is in fewer people knowing, not more.
Grugg knows about the oasis, because his close confidant Durgg whispered its location in his ear. For whatever reason, Durgg is a caveman of simple needs and he is content to let Grugg publicly reap the majority of the rewards of this knowledge. He freely shares further secrets and counsel with Grugg, in exchange for Gruug bearing the brunt of the irritation managing the social interactions and threats which come from being a public facing figure.
Most in the tribe do not know who Durgg is. Only that he often sits quietly in the back corner while Grugg holds court. A few of the sharper cavepeople vaguely sense there is more to Durgg, but most overlook his presence. Attempts to glean what talisman he holds which allows him a place in court are brushed off as nothing more than an old friendship with Grugg. But nothing Grugg does happens without input from Durgg. And in those rare instances where Durgg needs to quietly exercise his true status, Grugg is more than happy to surreptitiously place his hand on the appropriate scale.
In the status hierarchy of the tribe, Durgg quietly sits as a dotted line to the left of Grugg under a mutually beneficial understanding which keeps them both at the top of the status hierarchy to their respective satisfactions.
Is Durgg putting all his status providing eggs in one basket? Yes. But it is a basket of eggs he gathered himself. Is it critical that Grugg understand the nature of their status dynamic for Durgg to have status? Yes. And to that extent, Durgg's importance to Grugg maintaining his status must be known to Grugg.
However, the balance of this status dynamic relies on others not knowing that Durgg knows just as much (if not more) than Grugg. For if the other cavepeople knew of Durgg's importance to Grugg, they would begin to pester Durgg for fruit directly. This would shatter the illusion that Grugg has a monopoly on his source of fruit and, in turn, diminish the benefits of high status secretly shared between Grugg and Durgg. As an additional irritant to their relationship, Durgg would become a perceived threat to Grugg's status were his talisman more publicly revealed.
None of this is to say this dynamic does not map to the spirit of your framing. However, it feels like there is an accent in your expression of it which is somewhat fame-coded (e.g. an implication that the talisman needs to be widely known for high status to exist). This accent may not be intentional. And my perception of it may be due to my own biases in preferred sources of status.
Whatever the root, it leaves me with the impression that this framing is accented to be just a few degrees off course. It captures most of the status market, but is missing (by inherent design) an easy to overlook segment.