Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

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"we get to choose which ones, if any, matter to us."

Definitely!

It can be amusing (and awkward) when the game is played by people who have wildly different things they value. Someone (politely, of course) reveals they're a wealthy executive and you react by looking on them with pity because they have to sell their time to others to work on dumb things that don't matter while you get to be footloose and backpack around Europe. Or you dress well and have the right accent so everyone assumes you're powerful when you're not (when I first moved to Ireland I was startled how many people assumed I was the boss and just visiting for a few days because I had an American accent). Or maybe you farm - and people look down on you - but wait! You quit the rat race to start an organic farm selling high end niche-goods to upscale restaurants - and suddenly you're the shrewd individual who made the right decisions in life to be able to do that.

It can be useful to remember that everyone wakes up and goes to the toilet in the morning, no matter their status. Years ago I read a quote from someone who liked naturism (nudity) because it stripped away most of the immediate signifiers of class from people.

Right. There isn't one game, there are infinitely many, and different people will have success at different games.

But there is also the meta-game: The game of being able to win the highest variety and largest amount of different games. I think this meta-game is closest to what we think of as status.

It's kinda funny how we selectively care. Usually we only care about the things we feel we could be good at. Someone like Lebron James has a lot more status than I ever will. But I just don't care because I have never been good at basketball (or sports) and I don't really care about the skill.

But someone who is a 10x programmer or has published a lot of great results in mathematics? That pit of envy in my stomach will appear.

It gets worse when you compare yourself to someone who is better in both the things you care about AND the things you don't care about. This is because we placate ourselves with the fact that others are better at what we care about by saying, "at least I am better at them in this area, even if I don't care about it too much."

The way Christianity deals with this problem is one of the most appealing things about it for me. "From dust you came to dust you will return." Instead of focusing on your selfish ambition and self-glory, focus on the beauty of what is at play, ultimately seeing it as rays of light coming from God's glory.

Which games we selectively care about are a result of our values. So our ranking of the importance of games mimics our value hierarchy. Christianity provides a value structure with a clear "Top", and the instructions to organize our ranking of games in accordance.

And while not religious, I also believe that they've got this right.

"From dust you came to dust you will return." - a valuable thing to keep in mind. Much the idea behend the memento mori I believe. It's easy for it to let it get you down but if you consider your mortality on a regular basis (daily or more often) it really changes how you see things. It certainly makes it easier to decide what matters.

> There isn't one game, there are infinitely many, and different people will have success at different games. But there is also the meta-game: The game of being able to win the highest variety and largest amount of different games.

I am less certain the meta-game is inherently about broadening the variety of status measurements, and more about setting the terms by which status is measured. A person who can win a large variety of such measurements might trend toward a broadening strategy such as you describe (since this is likely to favor their odds of winning any given contest), but ultimately the problem of of a "split decision" between multiple comparisons means we should expect any given contest to only ever use one means of status measurement.

Therefore the meta-game is about winning the selection process for that measurement (with the broad strategy being just one among many possibilities)....

IMO, the sooner you learn this, the better you can try to understand other people’s journies and the better yours becomes. That whole being rich versus being wealthy thing.

Also, after more than a year, I just lost the game.

The game! The game. The game you lose when you think about the game.

I hadn't thought about that since college, which is far longer ago than I care to say.

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