I have a less flattering interpretation of people being 'traumatized' leaving cults. They leave an old status hierarchy for a new one - one in which cults and cult leaders are *low status.* It's not about complexity at all. If someone leaves Islam for a new more restricted and simple social circle in which Islam is low status, I predict they'll call themselves traumatized if they lean towards framing things that way. Islamic societies are big and complex things, but that's not particularly relevant.
People don't like having status ripped away from them, at all. Similar story for people getting dumped and then deciding they are 'traumatized.' You invest in something that you subconsciously thought was raising your status and then it gets inverted.
It makes me think of the quote "When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression". The feeling of losing status is very dysphoric, giving those with power an incentive to defend it.
In theory this argument could be hard to falsify. Maybe someone says 'Squid, you value status a lot'. I say I disagree, and claim I do not value status very much. The person could then say 'well actually Squid, the fact that you do not pursue status and make a point of saying that you do not pursue status to strangers is actually evidence that you do care about status a lot, because you make it a point to note that your mediocre status is a result of a lack of effort rather than failure'. This argument could be true, but in this world there is nothing I would be able to do to show that I actually authentically do not value status much.
However, these articles have still been cool and good. I think maybe there are three important factors that go into status that are important to parse out.
The first factor maybe is how much esteem you hold a person in based on your values. Some people value intelligence a lot. Other people value wealth a lot. Other people might value loyalty, reliability, or trustworthiness more. Some people might be mostly superficial and mostly value looks. Someone who values intelligence a lot might more naturally think of Elon Musk as high status, while a looks centered person might more naturally think of Kim Kardashian as high status.
The second factor is maybe how your broader social group views the person. If you do not value looks very much, but you happen to have a friend group that all views Kim Kardashian as high status, maybe you end up viewing her as somewhat high status yourself. If you like some mother you met at the PTA, but your mother friend group thinks that she is trashy and low status, maybe you grow to view her as trashy and low status yourself.
The third factor is literal status. In a friend group, the group will create an invisible agreed upon hierarchy, with some people at the top, and other people at the bottom. People will try to be coy about the hierarchy, but it will be there. Society also does this: it is generally universally agreed upon that the McKinsey consultant is higher status than the truck driver.
The tricky part is for me how much esteem I hold a person in (the first factor) has little to do with how my social group views them (the second factor) or their literal status (the third factor). I suspect there might be a gendered difference with this: women are more attracted to status signals in men than men are in women (a woman with a hot face who carries herself like a zero confidence loser will do better dating wise that a man with a hot face that does this around women), and so maybe for the average woman esteem is just more connected to social consensus and status than it is for the average man.
I generally have the same problem as you...this is unfalsifiable and seems to me to just be a word game, reassigning literally every value in the world to "status". I don't believe it, personally. So I mostly agree with what you've said, however I do want to point out that your last bit is quite wrong. There is extensive research on status, literally thousands and thousands of studies where they do things like link every single person in a school based on their friend groups and have them all rank each other's popularity, status, and how much they like them. And the result of all those studies is that men value status and dominance hierarchies far more than the other way around. To the extent men seem to truly believe that women care more, which to me they very obviously don't, it seems to be projection. And btw, obtaining a girlfriend with a pretty face is not worth nearly as much to a man if he can't show the world and impress other men with it.
This is a good comment. I am a man who is high functioning on the autism spectrum who earnestly does not care about the social reputation of people I associate with. But there is a good chance this does not represent how the median man thinks. If most women form social preferences in a way that is less contingent on looks and on status than men, as you suggest, I would be curious as to what fills that gap.
Well I don't think there needs to be a "gap". Just focus on direct values like being kind, funny, fun, supportive, attractive etc etc. Also there is a spectrum of people caring more or less about these things. I think your typical sorority girl is likely very concerned about what her friends think of who she's dating. And plenty of other's who don't, or don't have friends to be concerned with, or whose friends aren't that concerned with or impressed by social status themselves.
Well sure but I also think that social advice that stays purposely vague like this often ends up being harmful to people on the spectrum who earnestly do not have 'social common sense'. I feel like Aella's blog would tend to be the place where people who like to have legible discussions about how social preferences and social skills work would congregate. Some people have odd, unusual, or abnormal internal values, and cannot rely solely on 'common sense' or 'being their favorite version of themselves' to have social success.
And to be clear, I definitely think that the frame you suggest here is the healthiest one for the average person. I just happen to think that the types of people who self-select into reading Substacks like this are not the average person. Given this reality, if your argument is saying that men tend to systematically weigh both looks and status more than women, then on a statistically scalable and testable way what social variables would you say women systematically weigh more than men in the aggregate?
I don't think I said anything about being yourself or favorite version of yourself or whatever?
Also there is no factor that is an unlock key for everyone, people have very different tastes and values. One person requires athleticism, probably bc they themselves are athletic, while plenty of others care nothing about that at all and would even find interest in sports or athletics a detriment.
That said, if you are looking for variables that virtually all women care about, and probably more than men on average, they would be (and yes I've put these in order with the ones on top being weighed more than the ones on the bottom):
1. Being funny;
2. Being kind, gentle, and affectionate with vulnerable beings (ie animals and children);
3. Being tall;
4. Being playful/silly or at least capable of being that way sometimes;
5. Being capable of creating comfortable and safe circumstances in a disaster or dangerous situation (examples: while camping, or if the power goes out for a long time, or if your car breaks down, things like that)
Most of the other things would not be that different between men and women. Those would be things like thinking YOU are funny and enjoying your humor, being interesting to engage in conversation with, being honest, evidencing upholding ethical principles, etc. Women like that stuff but so do guys.
This is a good list! So if we synthesize upwards the argument here is saying that the gender analysis in my initial comment was a misread. In reality, based on available data, men tend to value status hierarchies in the aggregate more, and women instead tend to comparatively value humor and caretaking qualities in the aggregate more. Of course, these being statistical distributions, and not iron clad laws, abundant exceptions to both 'rules' exist. Insofar as passive internet culture memes the opposite, this is largely projection: people tend to accuse others of flaws they have themselves. I think I can buy this.
Is it universally agreed upon that the McKinsey consultant is higher status than a truck driver?
I consider the truck driver a respectable and hard working man, and a McKinsey consultant either an idiot in adult daycare or an honest to God reptilian skinwalker, depending on how smart and high-level they are within their company. This is apparent to most people who have ever interacted with consulting companies like McKinsey or consumed their output.
I think the most resilient status hierarchies actually come from entertainment. If I know Johnny Depp pretty much everyone will think that's interesting, even if they hate his movies or think he's a creep, they will grudgingly raise my status rating in their heads.
I think the first question you’d have to ask is “can caring about status be separated from the human organism?”
The idea that you can care about status or not care about status suggests that status is something that exists outside of us. I think that the evidence would show that that’s not true. We experience status as changes to neurotransmitter function, which indicates how deep it is.
Some people will care more or less, and maybe the rare person will care not at all, but this will be tied to physical functioning. In the same way that sexual desire does not exist outside us as something to care about or not and is tied to physical functioning. Sure you get people that are asexual, but it’s not like they’re choosing to care or not care about sex.
I literally didn't even know status existed, I've avoided people my entire life. I'm autistic, so I know I'm not normal. But I don't care about status - I care about actual results. My problem with status is that it barely ever has anything to do with actually being good at something - it's more about signalling that you are.
And you think you never responded to status in any way whatsoever? Did you never have a hobby or interest where you liked people for being good at it, or preferred people who did it over people who didn’t?
As for your point about signalling over substance, status began as a true marker and has developed into something that can be faked. Taking it back a long way, the king who had the finest clothes, horses, castles, etc. was showing status through things that actually mattered to a lot of people and were very hard to get. The same is true today, although some of it can be faked, like having fake versions of expensive clothes, or an expensive watch, or presenting yourself as wealthy by your clothes but you have a tiny, cheap flat and eat noodles every day.
I have, but that's not status, that's talent. My understanding is that status refers solely to the fake stuff that has nothing to do with talent. Otherwise we would call it talent.
As an example if you can "talk good" (be charismatic, emotionally intelligent, etc), for some reason society has decided that that must mean you're good at other stuff. But in my experience, social skills take a ton of time to learn, and being good at anything else also takes a ton of time, so you have to choose one or the other if you want to be one of the best. I would much rather just prove myself by being good at stuff instead of trying to trick people into thinking that I'm good at stuff by using words in certain ways.
I’m trying and failing to come up with an accurate, concise description of status, but we can get at what it’s “trying” to do:
- It’s trying to visually represent something “good” or “useful” in the context of a particular status hierarchy, e.g. wearing a very fine suit conveys that you have access to the money to buy it and probably then access to money for other useful things, wearing it confidently suggests you aren’t so precious about it and could probably afford more if you wanted to
- It’s lower resolution than the thing it’s conveying, and therefore takes less energy to process and understand, e.g. a high status person to someone might be that they can have all the sex they want with the most beautiful people, but instead of showing that explicitly, you are seen in public with a series of such people in such a way as to make it clear that you’re having sex with
It’s interesting that you see status as wholly fake. I think that maybe suggests more about the content and media you consume than about the concepts. Status is meant to be (but is flawed and therefore isn’t always) an easier to process representation of utility.
Talent is just being good at something, so why does that matter? Well, it depends what the talent is. Why are there cooler and less cool talents, or, said in another way, talents that are more prized or less prized? Why is being the world champion in yo-yo less important to society than the best musician?
A few things are true here:
- We are living in a world of so many abstractions built on top of the deeper truths of biology
- We are imprecise calculators prone to error
- We are balancing many, often conflicting wants, needs, and desires at once all the time
So is status totally fake? No. Can it sometimes be fake? Yes. Is it a direct mapping to talent? No. Is it trying to convey talent? Yes.
Your description of talking good illustrates this complexity. In some individuals being able to communicate well would be an indication of being able to do others things well. In some others it wouldn’t. But for some, probably very ancient reasons, we take a mental shortcut where people who are good communicators are probably capable at other things. Why is that? I’m not sure, but it’s interesting to ponder. In the same way, we do a mental shortcut where beautiful people are imagined to be better and nicer until proved otherwise. Why does this happen? God knows, but another example of the imprecise predictions we live with as humans.
I don't think it's just physical functioning. If you have adequate resources and safety and competence, there is simply far less reason to care about status. The only reason to care about status is either 1. Bc that's just your temperament, to be a really ambitious person who desires to have influence over a bunch of other people, and 2. The much, much more common reason, which is that you don't have sufficient resources to feel secure in your life, and need to convince others to help you or at least let you acquire them. This is exactly why most teenagers are the most status obsessed people...bc they have zero resources. I think if you are still caring much at all about status by the time you're older and have acquired for yourself a home, a partner, created your children if you wanted them, and have a built up well of resources...there is actually something wrong with you and you're wasting a lot of energy for basically no pay off. Why the hell should you care so much what others think, once you have what you need? We are no longer living on a savannah where being disliked by your group means certain death. It's a big cognitive error, at least one that will make you less happy, to continue caring so much once you've achieved sufficient safety and obtained a mate. Aella seems to have "realized" she cares a ton about status now and didn't before when living in suburbs ... In reality what she's done is trade living in a place where everyone is safe and secure and has enough resources and a mate and family, such that they don't need to waste cognitive energy worrying about a status hierarchies, to a place that is an aggregation of the most ambitious people in the world who all moved to that one location from around the world precisely bc they're people who care a ton about status and want to win a global status competition. And she's also traded monogamy for a sexual system that requires constant competition and status anxiety regarding rivals. Of course even monogamy still requires that, unless you live in a place with no other partners, but at a much much lower level when everyone else around you is partnered up too.
Major metros are literally places people with unusually high concern with status and ambitions move to, in order to be around the highest status people and test their mettle competing with them. That's basically what a big city is. And most people do NOT desire to live in big cities, it's a minority preference, and a huge part of the reason is bc they think it seems misery making, pointless, and sort of just a ridiculous waste to be so concerned with being cool and putting oneself through those machinations and all the cost and inconvenience of living in a major metro just bc you're still concerned with being cool as if you're in high school.
At the very end of the post, you write "Is my entire identity just strategy all the way down?
(Mostly, but not entirely - will get into this in an upcoming post)"
I commented in part 2 that I think people are mainly happiness-seeking, and the status is an add-on, and I continue to hold that stance. Some things you describe as a status competion (a friend suggesting to watch a movie from a genre they know a lot about), I think of as that friend wanting to watch something they actively enjoy. Yes, there may be a bit of status-seeking involved that they are unaware of - but I'd think for the average person it's something like 95% fun, 5% status, while from your posts, I get the impression you think of it as 95% status, 5% fun.
But I also acknowledge there are actual differences in how much people care about status, and while pretty much everybody says they don't care about status, it is be truer for some than for others, and for some, it is actually 95% about status.
this is a good point. I've noticed my status awareness and attachment has moved up and down on a spectrum through my life. And I think there is a distinct difference I have between feeling high status on one of my little hierarchies and being more detached from status in general, with status detachment being a much happier feeling.
I can empathize somewhat work your cult experience. I was part of one without knowing until after I left and similarly I also didn't find my time at the cult traumatic at all until I heard others had had traumatic times there.
A complicating factor is that status hierarchies approximate actual value.
Suppose I am good at painting warhammer miniatures. There are people who will find this impressive because they're into miniatures, but there's a general audience who will find this impressive just on the technical and artistic merit, even if they think it's a bit strange and they'd respect a regular painter more. On the other hand, if your thing is painting black dots on the wall 10,000 times every day, nobody will be impressed even if a niche community finds black dots on the wall to be the coolest shit ever.
Perhaps this is about transferability of skills - a skilled mini painter, especially if branching into dioramas, is likely a good DIY craftsman in general, knows a thing or two about design and composition, is maybe acceptable at painting on canvas... But even so, the things that give status are overwhelmigly _not random_. People being high-status for nothing is an exception, not the norm, and even then they are usually at least leading entertaining lives.
So you can reduce all motivations as status-optimization if you squint, but status itself is downstream of various kinds of value, that are correlated with each other to a smaller or bigger degree. I think this is a very good frame for analyzing social interaction (how to make someone like you? raise their status!) but a near-useless one for analyzing human behavior in general.
It also might be useful to make a division between two sub-types of status: being good at stuff that makes you higher status exclusively in that community, and being good at (or good at signalling) things that make you higher status across multiple communities.
Being hot is absolutely the best example of this division, since being hot will by default allow you to be higher status in other communities that should theoretically have nothing to do with hotness. Being hot and good at skateboarding makes you higher status than just being good at skateboarding, and this applies accross many fields. This effect is so pronounced that enough hot people doing something previously considered low-status can make that thing high status. This is one of the most basic principles of advertising.
On the other hand, knowing a lot about One Piece, or writing really good fanfic, or even being skilled at a higher-status activity -- like skateboarding -- doesn't automatically make you higher-status when you transition into a new community where your old skill isn't socially rewarded.
Like plants, some status symbols are hardier and can flourish in many climates, and some are delicate, and temperamental, and won't grow roots in the wrong conditions.
There are exceptions to this -- being hot might lower your status if you're both female and in a male-dominated STEM profession -- but I think as a general rule it might help to understand how some status symbols have a wider range than others.
Interesting one, thanks! I don't like how large a role status plays in life due to its zero sum nature, and I like to think I'm "above it all". But that itself is probably a subtle play for higher status, and it hit close to home when you have pointed out how we tend to downplaying areas of life that we're low status in. I gotta watch out for that!
I hate how right you are about this status stuff. I thought I was immune. Not caring about status was the main thing that made me high-status. But now you've made me admit that I care! The only thing still holding me together is, I try to think of it as "inspiration" rather than "status." I do cool stuff to inspire others. When other people do cool stuff, they inspire me. We all grow and improve together!
Re, "For example, most child sexual assault is not traumatizing or upsetting to the child at the time, it’s after the child grows up and realizes the context that the trauma sets in."
I've wondered about this: if the child doesnt realize the event is bad at the time, why does it get logged in their memory. If it was a non-event, why dont they forget it? Is the abuser, despite their attempt to make it seem like a game or normal, just giving off creep vibes that the kid picks up on?
I feel like woven through a lot of this is a central and unexamined question about when, whether, and to what extent status matters to each of us as individuals. I think you've shown that any interactions with others can be viewed through a status/competition lens. And to the extent that we want particular things in the world, status will often come strongly into play. While it may be that want and desire are inextricably bound to status, I don't think that our sense of identity need be.
For me personally, there is a strong negative correlation between how much my thoughts and actions are status driven and whether or not I'm enjoying my life and existence right then at that moment.
I believe that we all have tremendous agency in shaping our own sense of identity. When I wake up in the morning and feel my best, most alive self, it's usually because I'm looking forward to something exciting happening that day, or sometimes a generalized relaxed feeling of bliss that I have another day to go out and explore the world. Status hierarchies are real of course and they will impinge on my day in short order but the part of my identity which I cherish the most is set quite apart from any status competitions.
Thank you this was fantastic. I've been resistant for a while to your claim that status is in everything, (though I recognized it was a large part of life), but this finally did me in.
What a good read. Humans are often shy to admit at how damn calculating we really are. All the time. Making split second decisions on how to present ourselves to others, and how to push our own agendas without making it obvious. I'm a 46 year old graphic designer and the proverbial writing is on the wall, I need to start a side hustle soon before I become redundant in my industry (or become a manager of sorts, something that will give me too much anxiety). My only other skills that can be resurrected and thus no need to start from scratch, is making art. It's not an easy choice by any means, but I feel confident about it seeing as I have a good foundation. And these days you can monetise art in many more ways than before.
BUT, there was also this part of me that thought hmmm if I can get really good at art again, I will get the recognition and admiration that I am not getting from the rest of my life that is independent, sustainable, healthy and not worth noting in the bigger scheme of things. Just another person getting by. So yeah, it will take years to monetise this new side hustle but the status rewards will be equal to the effort I put in. I can't wait lol
Excellent piece — at the UN too it’s an ape’s world, full of shifting keys, subtle manoeuvres, and more than the occasional backstabbing — very Machiavellian too. 🐒🔑🗡️
Thank you for this series - most of this stuff is present in my mind but mostly as slippery underwater impulses I can only occasionally notice, and this is an uncomfortably (but usefully) lucid exploration of that underwater landscape.
Some thoughts I had while reading this post:
1. Re: joining status hierarchies you can do well in: there's a complication here, which is that if you notice you're pretty good at something and you go hang out with the people who are good at that thing, locally in that environment you will be less high-status wrt that thing than you are in less selected environments. This can create weird incentives to seek out environments where people *care about* that thing but are less specialized in it than you are.
e.g. I am quite good at music for an amateur, but not really at a professional level. When I hang out with professional musicians I feel kind of bad about myself! Whereas when I, like, run rationalist Solstice, I feel very good about myself. This is a bit unfortunate because hanging out with people who are better than you at a thing is pretty good for improving at that thing. But, another thing that's useful for improving at a skill is confidence -- I actually self-taught a bunch of new music skills (e.g. songwriting, conducting) as a result of my music skill being in demand in rationalist contexts. I do wish I could keep that confidence in contexts where I'm not a big fish in a small pond (especially since in a lot of ways it's *more fun* to do music with people who are as good at it as me).
2. Re: social anxiety just reflecting status: I think this is true but it's not the only input.
For one thing, people's status sense isn't always well calibrated. Sometimes people have a really strong prior that others don't like them, and this makes them depressed (and sometimes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy). Sometimes people have a prior like that and it CAN be overcome but with difficulty & a sense that this is always precarious, and that makes them anxious (and can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy).
Personally I've noticed that at some level it feels like the thing I'm optimizing for is *never overestimating my status*. If I think someone likes me and it turns out they don't, this is the *worst thing in the world*, nearly infinitely worse than the opposite scenario. This naturally makes me kind of poorly calibrated, because I avoid one direction of error much harder than the opposite one! Which is pretty limiting tbh.
Also it does seem like different people have different levels of tolerance for being locally low status (i.e. different levels of security in oneself). Maybe this is about having some status hierarchy on which you know you're doing well even if the one you're currently interacting with is less advantageous for you. (to connect this to attachment theory, maybe if you've internalized a really strong sense that in the status world of *your family* you have an unshakeably secure and good position then this makes it easier to weather all kinds of other status perturbations...)
Disagree on sub-keys having the same dynamic as primary keys.
Keys can betray a (sovereign) dictator and get rewarded, ok, but why should this work for the keys of keys? Let's say that Augustus is the emperor and Pontius he's prefect in Judea. His aid Biggus betrays Pontius because he does not give him and other sub-keys large enough share of Fiscus Judaicus. Ok, what now? Does Augustus just shrug and make Biggus his new prefect?Outside some tribal settings traitor's neck gets replaced by a pike unless the system in whole changes.
I have a less flattering interpretation of people being 'traumatized' leaving cults. They leave an old status hierarchy for a new one - one in which cults and cult leaders are *low status.* It's not about complexity at all. If someone leaves Islam for a new more restricted and simple social circle in which Islam is low status, I predict they'll call themselves traumatized if they lean towards framing things that way. Islamic societies are big and complex things, but that's not particularly relevant.
People don't like having status ripped away from them, at all. Similar story for people getting dumped and then deciding they are 'traumatized.' You invest in something that you subconsciously thought was raising your status and then it gets inverted.
It makes me think of the quote "When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression". The feeling of losing status is very dysphoric, giving those with power an incentive to defend it.
In theory this argument could be hard to falsify. Maybe someone says 'Squid, you value status a lot'. I say I disagree, and claim I do not value status very much. The person could then say 'well actually Squid, the fact that you do not pursue status and make a point of saying that you do not pursue status to strangers is actually evidence that you do care about status a lot, because you make it a point to note that your mediocre status is a result of a lack of effort rather than failure'. This argument could be true, but in this world there is nothing I would be able to do to show that I actually authentically do not value status much.
However, these articles have still been cool and good. I think maybe there are three important factors that go into status that are important to parse out.
The first factor maybe is how much esteem you hold a person in based on your values. Some people value intelligence a lot. Other people value wealth a lot. Other people might value loyalty, reliability, or trustworthiness more. Some people might be mostly superficial and mostly value looks. Someone who values intelligence a lot might more naturally think of Elon Musk as high status, while a looks centered person might more naturally think of Kim Kardashian as high status.
The second factor is maybe how your broader social group views the person. If you do not value looks very much, but you happen to have a friend group that all views Kim Kardashian as high status, maybe you end up viewing her as somewhat high status yourself. If you like some mother you met at the PTA, but your mother friend group thinks that she is trashy and low status, maybe you grow to view her as trashy and low status yourself.
The third factor is literal status. In a friend group, the group will create an invisible agreed upon hierarchy, with some people at the top, and other people at the bottom. People will try to be coy about the hierarchy, but it will be there. Society also does this: it is generally universally agreed upon that the McKinsey consultant is higher status than the truck driver.
The tricky part is for me how much esteem I hold a person in (the first factor) has little to do with how my social group views them (the second factor) or their literal status (the third factor). I suspect there might be a gendered difference with this: women are more attracted to status signals in men than men are in women (a woman with a hot face who carries herself like a zero confidence loser will do better dating wise that a man with a hot face that does this around women), and so maybe for the average woman esteem is just more connected to social consensus and status than it is for the average man.
I generally have the same problem as you...this is unfalsifiable and seems to me to just be a word game, reassigning literally every value in the world to "status". I don't believe it, personally. So I mostly agree with what you've said, however I do want to point out that your last bit is quite wrong. There is extensive research on status, literally thousands and thousands of studies where they do things like link every single person in a school based on their friend groups and have them all rank each other's popularity, status, and how much they like them. And the result of all those studies is that men value status and dominance hierarchies far more than the other way around. To the extent men seem to truly believe that women care more, which to me they very obviously don't, it seems to be projection. And btw, obtaining a girlfriend with a pretty face is not worth nearly as much to a man if he can't show the world and impress other men with it.
This is a good comment. I am a man who is high functioning on the autism spectrum who earnestly does not care about the social reputation of people I associate with. But there is a good chance this does not represent how the median man thinks. If most women form social preferences in a way that is less contingent on looks and on status than men, as you suggest, I would be curious as to what fills that gap.
Well I don't think there needs to be a "gap". Just focus on direct values like being kind, funny, fun, supportive, attractive etc etc. Also there is a spectrum of people caring more or less about these things. I think your typical sorority girl is likely very concerned about what her friends think of who she's dating. And plenty of other's who don't, or don't have friends to be concerned with, or whose friends aren't that concerned with or impressed by social status themselves.
Well sure but I also think that social advice that stays purposely vague like this often ends up being harmful to people on the spectrum who earnestly do not have 'social common sense'. I feel like Aella's blog would tend to be the place where people who like to have legible discussions about how social preferences and social skills work would congregate. Some people have odd, unusual, or abnormal internal values, and cannot rely solely on 'common sense' or 'being their favorite version of themselves' to have social success.
And to be clear, I definitely think that the frame you suggest here is the healthiest one for the average person. I just happen to think that the types of people who self-select into reading Substacks like this are not the average person. Given this reality, if your argument is saying that men tend to systematically weigh both looks and status more than women, then on a statistically scalable and testable way what social variables would you say women systematically weigh more than men in the aggregate?
I don't think I said anything about being yourself or favorite version of yourself or whatever?
Also there is no factor that is an unlock key for everyone, people have very different tastes and values. One person requires athleticism, probably bc they themselves are athletic, while plenty of others care nothing about that at all and would even find interest in sports or athletics a detriment.
That said, if you are looking for variables that virtually all women care about, and probably more than men on average, they would be (and yes I've put these in order with the ones on top being weighed more than the ones on the bottom):
1. Being funny;
2. Being kind, gentle, and affectionate with vulnerable beings (ie animals and children);
3. Being tall;
4. Being playful/silly or at least capable of being that way sometimes;
5. Being capable of creating comfortable and safe circumstances in a disaster or dangerous situation (examples: while camping, or if the power goes out for a long time, or if your car breaks down, things like that)
Most of the other things would not be that different between men and women. Those would be things like thinking YOU are funny and enjoying your humor, being interesting to engage in conversation with, being honest, evidencing upholding ethical principles, etc. Women like that stuff but so do guys.
This is a good list! So if we synthesize upwards the argument here is saying that the gender analysis in my initial comment was a misread. In reality, based on available data, men tend to value status hierarchies in the aggregate more, and women instead tend to comparatively value humor and caretaking qualities in the aggregate more. Of course, these being statistical distributions, and not iron clad laws, abundant exceptions to both 'rules' exist. Insofar as passive internet culture memes the opposite, this is largely projection: people tend to accuse others of flaws they have themselves. I think I can buy this.
Is it universally agreed upon that the McKinsey consultant is higher status than a truck driver?
I consider the truck driver a respectable and hard working man, and a McKinsey consultant either an idiot in adult daycare or an honest to God reptilian skinwalker, depending on how smart and high-level they are within their company. This is apparent to most people who have ever interacted with consulting companies like McKinsey or consumed their output.
I think the most resilient status hierarchies actually come from entertainment. If I know Johnny Depp pretty much everyone will think that's interesting, even if they hate his movies or think he's a creep, they will grudgingly raise my status rating in their heads.
I think the first question you’d have to ask is “can caring about status be separated from the human organism?”
The idea that you can care about status or not care about status suggests that status is something that exists outside of us. I think that the evidence would show that that’s not true. We experience status as changes to neurotransmitter function, which indicates how deep it is.
Some people will care more or less, and maybe the rare person will care not at all, but this will be tied to physical functioning. In the same way that sexual desire does not exist outside us as something to care about or not and is tied to physical functioning. Sure you get people that are asexual, but it’s not like they’re choosing to care or not care about sex.
I literally didn't even know status existed, I've avoided people my entire life. I'm autistic, so I know I'm not normal. But I don't care about status - I care about actual results. My problem with status is that it barely ever has anything to do with actually being good at something - it's more about signalling that you are.
And you think you never responded to status in any way whatsoever? Did you never have a hobby or interest where you liked people for being good at it, or preferred people who did it over people who didn’t?
As for your point about signalling over substance, status began as a true marker and has developed into something that can be faked. Taking it back a long way, the king who had the finest clothes, horses, castles, etc. was showing status through things that actually mattered to a lot of people and were very hard to get. The same is true today, although some of it can be faked, like having fake versions of expensive clothes, or an expensive watch, or presenting yourself as wealthy by your clothes but you have a tiny, cheap flat and eat noodles every day.
I have, but that's not status, that's talent. My understanding is that status refers solely to the fake stuff that has nothing to do with talent. Otherwise we would call it talent.
As an example if you can "talk good" (be charismatic, emotionally intelligent, etc), for some reason society has decided that that must mean you're good at other stuff. But in my experience, social skills take a ton of time to learn, and being good at anything else also takes a ton of time, so you have to choose one or the other if you want to be one of the best. I would much rather just prove myself by being good at stuff instead of trying to trick people into thinking that I'm good at stuff by using words in certain ways.
I’m trying and failing to come up with an accurate, concise description of status, but we can get at what it’s “trying” to do:
- It’s trying to visually represent something “good” or “useful” in the context of a particular status hierarchy, e.g. wearing a very fine suit conveys that you have access to the money to buy it and probably then access to money for other useful things, wearing it confidently suggests you aren’t so precious about it and could probably afford more if you wanted to
- It’s lower resolution than the thing it’s conveying, and therefore takes less energy to process and understand, e.g. a high status person to someone might be that they can have all the sex they want with the most beautiful people, but instead of showing that explicitly, you are seen in public with a series of such people in such a way as to make it clear that you’re having sex with
It’s interesting that you see status as wholly fake. I think that maybe suggests more about the content and media you consume than about the concepts. Status is meant to be (but is flawed and therefore isn’t always) an easier to process representation of utility.
Talent is just being good at something, so why does that matter? Well, it depends what the talent is. Why are there cooler and less cool talents, or, said in another way, talents that are more prized or less prized? Why is being the world champion in yo-yo less important to society than the best musician?
A few things are true here:
- We are living in a world of so many abstractions built on top of the deeper truths of biology
- We are imprecise calculators prone to error
- We are balancing many, often conflicting wants, needs, and desires at once all the time
So is status totally fake? No. Can it sometimes be fake? Yes. Is it a direct mapping to talent? No. Is it trying to convey talent? Yes.
Your description of talking good illustrates this complexity. In some individuals being able to communicate well would be an indication of being able to do others things well. In some others it wouldn’t. But for some, probably very ancient reasons, we take a mental shortcut where people who are good communicators are probably capable at other things. Why is that? I’m not sure, but it’s interesting to ponder. In the same way, we do a mental shortcut where beautiful people are imagined to be better and nicer until proved otherwise. Why does this happen? God knows, but another example of the imprecise predictions we live with as humans.
“Takes less energy to process and understand” I am sorry that it takes so much energy for y’all to think. It must be hell.
I don't think it's just physical functioning. If you have adequate resources and safety and competence, there is simply far less reason to care about status. The only reason to care about status is either 1. Bc that's just your temperament, to be a really ambitious person who desires to have influence over a bunch of other people, and 2. The much, much more common reason, which is that you don't have sufficient resources to feel secure in your life, and need to convince others to help you or at least let you acquire them. This is exactly why most teenagers are the most status obsessed people...bc they have zero resources. I think if you are still caring much at all about status by the time you're older and have acquired for yourself a home, a partner, created your children if you wanted them, and have a built up well of resources...there is actually something wrong with you and you're wasting a lot of energy for basically no pay off. Why the hell should you care so much what others think, once you have what you need? We are no longer living on a savannah where being disliked by your group means certain death. It's a big cognitive error, at least one that will make you less happy, to continue caring so much once you've achieved sufficient safety and obtained a mate. Aella seems to have "realized" she cares a ton about status now and didn't before when living in suburbs ... In reality what she's done is trade living in a place where everyone is safe and secure and has enough resources and a mate and family, such that they don't need to waste cognitive energy worrying about a status hierarchies, to a place that is an aggregation of the most ambitious people in the world who all moved to that one location from around the world precisely bc they're people who care a ton about status and want to win a global status competition. And she's also traded monogamy for a sexual system that requires constant competition and status anxiety regarding rivals. Of course even monogamy still requires that, unless you live in a place with no other partners, but at a much much lower level when everyone else around you is partnered up too.
Major metros are literally places people with unusually high concern with status and ambitions move to, in order to be around the highest status people and test their mettle competing with them. That's basically what a big city is. And most people do NOT desire to live in big cities, it's a minority preference, and a huge part of the reason is bc they think it seems misery making, pointless, and sort of just a ridiculous waste to be so concerned with being cool and putting oneself through those machinations and all the cost and inconvenience of living in a major metro just bc you're still concerned with being cool as if you're in high school.
Status gets you actual results though, that's the point. It's largely the ability to convince people to help in whatever it is you're doing.
At the very end of the post, you write "Is my entire identity just strategy all the way down?
(Mostly, but not entirely - will get into this in an upcoming post)"
I commented in part 2 that I think people are mainly happiness-seeking, and the status is an add-on, and I continue to hold that stance. Some things you describe as a status competion (a friend suggesting to watch a movie from a genre they know a lot about), I think of as that friend wanting to watch something they actively enjoy. Yes, there may be a bit of status-seeking involved that they are unaware of - but I'd think for the average person it's something like 95% fun, 5% status, while from your posts, I get the impression you think of it as 95% status, 5% fun.
But I also acknowledge there are actual differences in how much people care about status, and while pretty much everybody says they don't care about status, it is be truer for some than for others, and for some, it is actually 95% about status.
this is a good point. I've noticed my status awareness and attachment has moved up and down on a spectrum through my life. And I think there is a distinct difference I have between feeling high status on one of my little hierarchies and being more detached from status in general, with status detachment being a much happier feeling.
I can empathize somewhat work your cult experience. I was part of one without knowing until after I left and similarly I also didn't find my time at the cult traumatic at all until I heard others had had traumatic times there.
Hollow hookie
A complicating factor is that status hierarchies approximate actual value.
Suppose I am good at painting warhammer miniatures. There are people who will find this impressive because they're into miniatures, but there's a general audience who will find this impressive just on the technical and artistic merit, even if they think it's a bit strange and they'd respect a regular painter more. On the other hand, if your thing is painting black dots on the wall 10,000 times every day, nobody will be impressed even if a niche community finds black dots on the wall to be the coolest shit ever.
Perhaps this is about transferability of skills - a skilled mini painter, especially if branching into dioramas, is likely a good DIY craftsman in general, knows a thing or two about design and composition, is maybe acceptable at painting on canvas... But even so, the things that give status are overwhelmigly _not random_. People being high-status for nothing is an exception, not the norm, and even then they are usually at least leading entertaining lives.
So you can reduce all motivations as status-optimization if you squint, but status itself is downstream of various kinds of value, that are correlated with each other to a smaller or bigger degree. I think this is a very good frame for analyzing social interaction (how to make someone like you? raise their status!) but a near-useless one for analyzing human behavior in general.
JFC IS ALL MY ANXIETY STATUS ANXIETY.
HOLY FUCK.
It also might be useful to make a division between two sub-types of status: being good at stuff that makes you higher status exclusively in that community, and being good at (or good at signalling) things that make you higher status across multiple communities.
Being hot is absolutely the best example of this division, since being hot will by default allow you to be higher status in other communities that should theoretically have nothing to do with hotness. Being hot and good at skateboarding makes you higher status than just being good at skateboarding, and this applies accross many fields. This effect is so pronounced that enough hot people doing something previously considered low-status can make that thing high status. This is one of the most basic principles of advertising.
On the other hand, knowing a lot about One Piece, or writing really good fanfic, or even being skilled at a higher-status activity -- like skateboarding -- doesn't automatically make you higher-status when you transition into a new community where your old skill isn't socially rewarded.
Like plants, some status symbols are hardier and can flourish in many climates, and some are delicate, and temperamental, and won't grow roots in the wrong conditions.
There are exceptions to this -- being hot might lower your status if you're both female and in a male-dominated STEM profession -- but I think as a general rule it might help to understand how some status symbols have a wider range than others.
Interesting one, thanks! I don't like how large a role status plays in life due to its zero sum nature, and I like to think I'm "above it all". But that itself is probably a subtle play for higher status, and it hit close to home when you have pointed out how we tend to downplaying areas of life that we're low status in. I gotta watch out for that!
Multiple status hierarchies are how we expand the status pie.
The base instinct is zero sum, but we can hack it, and that's largely the project civilization is about.
I hate how right you are about this status stuff. I thought I was immune. Not caring about status was the main thing that made me high-status. But now you've made me admit that I care! The only thing still holding me together is, I try to think of it as "inspiration" rather than "status." I do cool stuff to inspire others. When other people do cool stuff, they inspire me. We all grow and improve together!
Re, "For example, most child sexual assault is not traumatizing or upsetting to the child at the time, it’s after the child grows up and realizes the context that the trauma sets in."
I've wondered about this: if the child doesnt realize the event is bad at the time, why does it get logged in their memory. If it was a non-event, why dont they forget it? Is the abuser, despite their attempt to make it seem like a game or normal, just giving off creep vibes that the kid picks up on?
I feel like woven through a lot of this is a central and unexamined question about when, whether, and to what extent status matters to each of us as individuals. I think you've shown that any interactions with others can be viewed through a status/competition lens. And to the extent that we want particular things in the world, status will often come strongly into play. While it may be that want and desire are inextricably bound to status, I don't think that our sense of identity need be.
For me personally, there is a strong negative correlation between how much my thoughts and actions are status driven and whether or not I'm enjoying my life and existence right then at that moment.
I believe that we all have tremendous agency in shaping our own sense of identity. When I wake up in the morning and feel my best, most alive self, it's usually because I'm looking forward to something exciting happening that day, or sometimes a generalized relaxed feeling of bliss that I have another day to go out and explore the world. Status hierarchies are real of course and they will impinge on my day in short order but the part of my identity which I cherish the most is set quite apart from any status competitions.
Agreed. I want to spend as little time in my life doing the stupid bullshit status games.
Thank you this was fantastic. I've been resistant for a while to your claim that status is in everything, (though I recognized it was a large part of life), but this finally did me in.
What a good read. Humans are often shy to admit at how damn calculating we really are. All the time. Making split second decisions on how to present ourselves to others, and how to push our own agendas without making it obvious. I'm a 46 year old graphic designer and the proverbial writing is on the wall, I need to start a side hustle soon before I become redundant in my industry (or become a manager of sorts, something that will give me too much anxiety). My only other skills that can be resurrected and thus no need to start from scratch, is making art. It's not an easy choice by any means, but I feel confident about it seeing as I have a good foundation. And these days you can monetise art in many more ways than before.
BUT, there was also this part of me that thought hmmm if I can get really good at art again, I will get the recognition and admiration that I am not getting from the rest of my life that is independent, sustainable, healthy and not worth noting in the bigger scheme of things. Just another person getting by. So yeah, it will take years to monetise this new side hustle but the status rewards will be equal to the effort I put in. I can't wait lol
Speak for yourself. I wear what's comfortable and I don't lie about my goals and agendas
Excellent piece — at the UN too it’s an ape’s world, full of shifting keys, subtle manoeuvres, and more than the occasional backstabbing — very Machiavellian too. 🐒🔑🗡️
Thank you for this series - most of this stuff is present in my mind but mostly as slippery underwater impulses I can only occasionally notice, and this is an uncomfortably (but usefully) lucid exploration of that underwater landscape.
Some thoughts I had while reading this post:
1. Re: joining status hierarchies you can do well in: there's a complication here, which is that if you notice you're pretty good at something and you go hang out with the people who are good at that thing, locally in that environment you will be less high-status wrt that thing than you are in less selected environments. This can create weird incentives to seek out environments where people *care about* that thing but are less specialized in it than you are.
e.g. I am quite good at music for an amateur, but not really at a professional level. When I hang out with professional musicians I feel kind of bad about myself! Whereas when I, like, run rationalist Solstice, I feel very good about myself. This is a bit unfortunate because hanging out with people who are better than you at a thing is pretty good for improving at that thing. But, another thing that's useful for improving at a skill is confidence -- I actually self-taught a bunch of new music skills (e.g. songwriting, conducting) as a result of my music skill being in demand in rationalist contexts. I do wish I could keep that confidence in contexts where I'm not a big fish in a small pond (especially since in a lot of ways it's *more fun* to do music with people who are as good at it as me).
2. Re: social anxiety just reflecting status: I think this is true but it's not the only input.
For one thing, people's status sense isn't always well calibrated. Sometimes people have a really strong prior that others don't like them, and this makes them depressed (and sometimes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy). Sometimes people have a prior like that and it CAN be overcome but with difficulty & a sense that this is always precarious, and that makes them anxious (and can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy).
Personally I've noticed that at some level it feels like the thing I'm optimizing for is *never overestimating my status*. If I think someone likes me and it turns out they don't, this is the *worst thing in the world*, nearly infinitely worse than the opposite scenario. This naturally makes me kind of poorly calibrated, because I avoid one direction of error much harder than the opposite one! Which is pretty limiting tbh.
Also it does seem like different people have different levels of tolerance for being locally low status (i.e. different levels of security in oneself). Maybe this is about having some status hierarchy on which you know you're doing well even if the one you're currently interacting with is less advantageous for you. (to connect this to attachment theory, maybe if you've internalized a really strong sense that in the status world of *your family* you have an unshakeably secure and good position then this makes it easier to weather all kinds of other status perturbations...)
Disagree on sub-keys having the same dynamic as primary keys.
Keys can betray a (sovereign) dictator and get rewarded, ok, but why should this work for the keys of keys? Let's say that Augustus is the emperor and Pontius he's prefect in Judea. His aid Biggus betrays Pontius because he does not give him and other sub-keys large enough share of Fiscus Judaicus. Ok, what now? Does Augustus just shrug and make Biggus his new prefect?Outside some tribal settings traitor's neck gets replaced by a pike unless the system in whole changes.