What is Social Status?
robkhenderson.com
robkhenderson.com
The two most promiment names, that this text doesn't even mention, are Erving Goffman and Pierre Bourdieu. Goffman systemized a lot of social interactions. Pierre Bourdieu focused on classes and their reproduction.
Instead, a lot of authors and laymen theorize by building a bridge from, say, macroeconomics and geopolitics, directly into human psychology or bio-psychology, deriving big trends and state structures from simple knee-jerk-like psychological reflexes.
any reco? ;-))
btw, I found "The Prince" by Machiavelli very telling on social dynamics: basic you will say, but that kind of fits my TLDR needs ;-)
It was most definitely written to confirm the Medici’s biases and stroke some egos.
Yes, that is the opposite of satire.
Did he believe what he wrote in the Prince was noble or just? Probably not, based on his democratic tendencies.
Imagine if you wrote a send-up of Silicon Valley VCs (for example) and tried to be subtly ridiculous about it, but they took your work extremely well and even applied it. Is that not the most successful and hilarious satire of all?
i.e. don't deny God, don't deny the King, and you can finally write about reality.
What simple introductionary readings/videos on Goffman and Bourdieu would you recommend?
Its a great book to read if you have small family issues, even if you despise us post-Marxists, if you have troubles with a son/brother/sister/daughter, it might give you keys to build a more resilient family.
The first 3 chapters are essential imho, and there is a lot of value reading further (and other books) with the caveat that it's a foundational author, and like most foundational authors, he have blind spot (he did not had real contradictors with good arguments until the last years of his career (and BTW, handled it way better than Chomsky did) (free shot, sorry).
To remedy to that, I highly recommend Joseph Henrich's "The Secret of Our Success". What we call "human behaviour" in such discussions is often culturally learned (or at least shaped).
His point: our psychology is "programmable", and prestige plays a key role in that programming. Western culture (market norms, trust towards strangers, monogamy as the norm, etc.) is forming our psychology in a way that is very far from (historically) typical humans.
(That said, I'm no expert in this area and cannot put Henrich's work into context.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...
I think we in the social sciences with our departure from positivism are unable to produce clear laws, or direct applications, we're more concerned with understanding, and not explaining.
I think I am just expanding on your point.
What a shameless lie! Replication is the key distinction between sciences and talkings. Do you even know what "Nullius in verba" motto is about?
Replication being a necessity is the opposite of my interpretation of the Wikipedia description.
I agree it would be nice if we didn't have to go to that extreme, but the history of science, and of scientists either fooling themselves about their own results or being willing to outright fabricate results, has made it necessary. The Royal Society when they originally came up with their motto might not have fully grasped that possibility.
I come up with "It is unknown", though this is a rather unusual way of thinking these days.
> I agree it would be nice if we didn't have to go to that extreme, but the history of science, and of scientists either fooling themselves about their own results or being willing to outright fabricate results, has made it necessary. The Royal Society when they originally came up with their motto might not have fully grasped that possibility.
Oh, you are preaching to the choir!
Harder one, Popper's, says that a theory must provide a verifiable/falsifiable prediction, and it should be correct. (Problem is, there are too many probabilistic things, so you must lower the bar, by checking error rate/margin.) But not everything is verifiable or falsifiable strictly to this definition.
Then it's Kuhn's definition: a systematic observation and description of nature phoenomenons in own strict terms. Anthropology and sociology are exactly in this department.
Just an example what discovery sociologists made in mid-XX century: poor people tend to learn habits that lead them to risky and reckless behavior, stop them from getting education, etc. (What's the cause is another big talk, too broad for this thread.) And just talks by intellectuals would be like "they're just fools", "they have some genetic deficience", or maybe "they just haven't money, with enough money they'd be fine". That's talks.
Popular psychology that drops broad and seemingly profound judgements and commands, but that have nothing of substance -- that is talks too.
You gave me examples which are not even defend psy* fields as a scientific ones because your examples are from economic fields (I made pro-psy* argumentation here reasonably better). But one systematic observation per all the field is not enough to build a science. It is enough to build religion. Do you want a proof that psy* is a religion? Everything in psy* which is neither neuro-physiology nor economy nor philosophy nor talkings nor [1] nor palliative medicine is... a legal enforcement.
1. That person is in some way sad regardless of what they profess, or
2. They have their own subgroup where they rate status according to the status rankings of the subgroup. This can include rejecting the status hierarchy of the mainstream, but this itself is a status play
With the internet this sub group can now be entirely online. But there does not exist such a thing as someone entirely insensitive to social status.
If you posit there is, can you name an example of such a person?
And i, myself, would probably also qualify.
Because "do not care" is internal and can only really be judged indirectly. Saying "I do not care" is one of those things where it can both genuinely be said or where it is a countersignal.
The claim is NOT however "does this person care about the esteem of their coworkers" or "does this person care to be seen". Status can be had in other ways.
For example, you work, you write on Hacker news, you have 3,000+ karma - no easy feat.
One way of measuring status would be whether you were pleased or disappointed by someone's reaction to something you did. Either in person or virtually. Whether for work, a hobby, or for fun. This truly is not an experience you have?
Lobsters also have a sex drive, but not everything is sexual.
I would agree with weaker claims such as "many people care less about status" or "many people ignore loss of status to pursue other goals".
I'm procrastinating because my dayjob is boring. Isn't this what all people on HN do?
Edit: Implication, do you write for social status? You even have a bio and use your actual name.
> One way of measuring status would be whether you were pleased or disappointed by someone's reaction to something you did.
I laugh when i deliver some good burn. But that's not gaining social status, its just being mean.
I'm on the spectrum and growing up I worked with special needs kids with my mother as she ran a non-profit focused on specials needs community. Let me tell you, some people are simply not cognizant of social status and there's a whole swath of people who are passingly aware but find it irrelevant to their life. Solitary creatures that go their own way exist in all kinds of highly social species.
This thread feels akin to threads you occasionally see where a bunch of selfish people insist altruistic acts _cannot_ exist. Their insistent claims against the possibility of altruistic acts only reveal their internal state, they aren't high quality arguments, just assumptive assertions by people who can't imagine alternate mental states.
Some people just want to spend their lonely numbered days free.
But the claim that some people are literally immune to status strikes me as implausible. It would imply, for example, that people on the spectrum are literally unbothered by being mocked, insulted, berated, laughed at, rejected, abandoned and so on.
Is that truly what you're claiming?
I took this broad definition of status from Improv. This is the actual status one would be sensitive to or not on a biochemical level, because it addresses our feelings and actions as they exist, rather than what our title or formal status says.
"Keith Johnstone understands status as something one does, independent of the social status one has. Social status represents one's rank in a social order. At the upper end are secular and spiritual leaders (kings, priests), at the bottom end, dependents and outcasts. Social rank is approximately demonstrated through offices, titles, awards, and status symbols. Johnstone's "status", on the other hand, comes from the behavior of the characters in a specific encounter. He stresses that there is no neutral status; rather, some sort of difference is always present. A good actor is always conscious of the relative status of the portrayed characters and can playfully vary it."
https://improwiki.com/en/wiki/improv/status#:~:text=In%20imp....
> How do you explain that some people are not sensitive to social status?
You're interpretation of that question:
> The original claim was that some people are "not sensitive to status" and have no biochemical changes from it.
As a 3rd party observer I don't have confidence that the original question and your interpretation of it are equivalent, perhaps OP could provide clarity.
>In the brain, serotonin seems to be deeply related to social status. This is Jordan Peterson's bit about lobsters - it's so ubiquitous that even lobsters share the same mechanism. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01378-2 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.94.11.5939
OP says: social status is baked into us at a biochemical level another commentor: How do you explain why some people are insentive to status
You cited the 2nd commentor. I was linking that top comment to show you that both comments are linked in terms of framing the subject.
For me its the discord that gives me pleasure. Disagreeing and teasing. To the extent that dang reprimanded me for flaming. Also I'm a nobody and i do not consider that a problem. So i'm largely selfish, not motivated by the status others attribute to me.
We write on HN for different reasons. They assumed that their reason is something universal. Just a tiny mistake.
I would be surprised to learn anyone is truly immune from status in this sense.
"Keith Johnstone understands status as something one does, independent of the social status one has. Social status represents one's rank in a social order. At the upper end are secular and spiritual leaders (kings, priests), at the bottom end, dependents and outcasts. Social rank is approximately demonstrated through offices, titles, awards, and status symbols. Johnstone's "status", on the other hand, comes from the behavior of the characters in a specific encounter. He stresses that there is no neutral status; rather, some sort of difference is always present. A good actor is always conscious of the relative status of the portrayed characters and can playfully vary it."
https://improwiki.com/en/wiki/improv/status#:~:text=In%20imp....
They might be getting their share of social status validation on groups/subgroups outside work. They can also think that by saying they don't care, this makes them above the rest - which is a social validation
Maybe the social status chasers were the odd ones all along. They would surely hate that thought.
And I've seem groups where 'not-conforming to the norm' was seem as being superior, so people would say they don't care about social status, but as a way to feel superior and connect to those people that also say they don't care about social status. Positioning themselves as not being a 'normie'
It might be that they truly don't care, but on the other hand, for someone that don't care, they put too much importance on not-caring which is... odd.
There is this man and his brother is a monk. So he tells this monk "if you please the king, you don't have to live on rice and water anymore", where the monk replies: "if you learn to live on rice and water, you don't need to please the king".
Find a study or do a study that detects (and defines) variations in sensitivity to social status, and if they have detected some people that are completely immune, examine those people for differences from the people that are not. But as it is, it sounds like "but how can you explain that Jesus rose from the dead?"
Like: "We tamed ourselves by weeding out bullies and domineering males throughout our evolutionary history. Humans organized egalitarian societies, and any male that violated this too much was subsequently the victim of a targeted killing."
Women competing with with other women using dominance behavior like bullying is a very common behavior, and I doubt there is a parent with a teenage daughter or teacher who has not observed this. We can also see this in apes, with female to female dominance behavior being one if not the biggest causes of death for female baboons. To continue with animal observations, male baboons have a different form of dominance behavior, and their behavior also result in dead baboons. Female aggression is about depriving the lower ranked females of food, water, sleep and grooming (together with some amount of bites and scratches), while male aggression is primarily about major injuries sustained during fights. If we define the latter as the single definition of aggression and dominance then the other form becomes invisible to us.
Going down further in the article, they define power as access to and control of resources. Not access to and control of people. This in order to say that women don’t have a strong craving for power because "obtaining power entails the risk of being disliked, and, unlike status, power has few social payoffs". It uses an exclusively male definition for power.
Here (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237101081_Female_Do...') is a study done on dominance behavior in female vs male hierarchies. It basically fully invalidates most of this article's claims on male vs female behavior in terms of dominance. It does not seem to use a male-centric definition of dominance.
I am not all against this article. It is a fairly in-depth description of the topic and an interesting read. I would however advise to consider some of the terminology and definitions to be a bit limited, and occasionally leading the reader into misconceptions by trying to use a single definition for both men and women.
This quote is horribly wrong anyway. Human history, even before agriculture and industrialization, is filled with tribal wars. Maybe it would be more right to say that the aggressive bullies have historically had an outlet for their aggression: killing the aggressive bullies of other tribes. If aggressiveness were absolutely useless personality trait in past societies, it would have been weeded out by the evolution a long time ago.
> Humans organized egalitarian societies
bit is so incredibly wrong. Status differences can be seen in any social creature, and humans are no different. History is absolutely overflowing with slavery, wars and various more-or-less official class systems like organized nobility or priesthoods.
I winced a little on that part too, but he does give the caveat later that women and children weren't equal to men at all, which means that "egalitarian societies" means "something like 30% of the tribe was somewhat egalitarian" which really isn't saying much.
I also winced when later in the article there is what I consider to be an enormous leap of logic, when stating that a child staring at two puppets being rewarded differently means the child yearns for equality.
I've got to say that the older I get, the more effort it takes me not to dismiss social science commentary unless backed up with strong evidence. There is just so much bullshit.
That's also what ancient Athenian democracy was
Athenian democracy was far worse: ~15% of the population was hereditary uncitizens (metics) with almost no rights, ~40% were slaves with zero rights, women and children from citizen families had very limited rights of their own, so the Athenian democracy was really democracy for the ~12% of the population who were adult citizen males.
But, as you hint at, you still need aggression for war. War for defense and to fight for resources.
So the evolution drive within the tribe, was to reduce aggression/bulling, but also to keep aggressive tendencies enough to fight other tribes. We still need defense, so need to keep aggression, but for a tribe to succeed, need to control aggression internal to the tribe, to drive cooperation. Hence, probably why aggression has not been weeded out completely, there are still cases where it was needed. And as the definition of 'tribe' changes, someone's perception of in group, out group, can flip the switch on 'this is war'.
Sorry, one edit. And as all tribes grew egalitarian, all tribes would find reduced need for aggression. And think we need a scale for aggression, sure egalitarian societies still had plenty of wars, but humans were still a less aggressive animal than a band of chimps.
Did they? I'm more inclined to agree with WJW. These "egalitarian tribes" do not seem to be the conclusion one reaches from an unbiased reading of the historical record.
In terms of absolute casualty numbers, the trend seems to be mostly reversed. That's mostly due to the deadliness of modern weaponry as well as the increased state capacity of the combatants.
On the third hand, casualty numbers as a percentage of total population are probably still down, mostly driven by the very large population growth.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/history-and-the-d...
https://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-natu...
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/decline-violence-steven-pin...
Often individuals can't survive on their own, so if they become ostracized by the group they die off, either starve, get picked off by wild animals, etc....
So the behavior that remains viable is to be aggressive to external groups, but better not alienate the in-group.
No they wouldn't. If a tribe needs bullies that can be targeted against outgroups... well, how does one even become a bully?
Bullies need practice. It's a skill like any other. Maybe every great once in awhile some natural is born that needs no practice. Too rare to count on.
No, you let your own children grow up bullies. You let the bullies have the marginal people in your group (when's the last time you heard of a school bully picking on the football players and cheerleaders?). Then you can keep a reserve of bullies, in case you ever need them.
It's plainly obvious this happens. I'm always a little surprised that everyone is so blind to it. Sure, it's instinctive and not deliberate, but still.
This is delusional anyway. We're by far the most unegalitarian of all animal species besides maybe things like ants. We have individuals that command entire countries worth of resources and armies to go with.
Society (especially now) will approves of a woman's destruction of her target, seeing it as a positive example of "female empowerment", independent of any other fact of the case other than gender. In other words, there is social pressure that encourages females to become domineering bullies. At the same time, causal misandry encourages this false idea that women are somehow excluded from a wide variety of the worst of human behavior, the same behaviors that are actively encouraged in women! This is in addition to the fact that women's anger, violence, sexual assault (especially against children), is very real and, I believe, wildly under-reported.
I cannot agree with this. Bodily harm was far far worse than being picked on.
You use an extreme case for the women, but a near harmless case for a man? What if you get your skull smashed in and have a brain injury forever? (I saw that happen). What if your face gets smashed and plastic surgery can't fix it?(seen that one too) Not to mention becoming a paraplegic. (or death)
I'll take a chance at ostracization over being afraid for my life.
imo, the main difference between female violence and male violence is that female violence happens in an environment where on average, 75% of people are stronger than you, and 40% of people are so dominant over you physically that a fair fight would be suicide. Male violence is done by people who are stronger than 75% of people, and are dominant over 40% of those so strictly that they have no physical fear at all of them. The reason violence gets normed as male violence is because of how easy it is for males to practice it, not because there's a special type of girl violence. Throw weak men in a prison with strong men, and the weak men will turn to female violence to survive.
We can also seen in the animal kingdom how physiological harm often lead to bodily harm. A common tactic in female to female aggression is to induce miscarriage through stress. It is similar outcome as physical harm. It just that researcher until fairly recent (~50 years) attributed those thing to nature rather than to violence. A dead female baboon must be dead because the jungle is a dangerous place, while a dead male baboon is obviously dead because he got beaten to death.
And a man wouldn't ? I haven't checked but I bet anti social behavior, narcissism and psychopathy is higher in males than females.
This is also why teen girls are so prone to ostracism. A higher status girl risks her own status by hanging out with an ostracized girl.
That’s not to say we don’t see the same patterns among males, they are just less pronounced.
I think the first paper about this stuff was:
Henrich J, Gil-White FJ: The evolution of prestige: freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/culture_cognition_coev...
There's a review here: http://joeytcheng.com/s/dominance-prestige-leveling.pdf
But I see it as a useful construct to delineate the differences regardless, because it maps pretty easily onto the traditional question of “is it better to be feared or loved”? Most people have been exposed to Machiavelli in one way or another, and understand the distinction between the carrot and stick.
I'm not sure it's about fear vs love so much as fear vs aspiration and admiration.
Prestigious people are widely admired - sometimes for reasonable reasons, sometimes for trivial ones, such as being funny, glib, and/or charismatic, and being a successful grifter and chancer.
When you get individuals who combine perceived class and status with hardcore grift, either funny or passionately sincere/angry superficial glibness, perhaps some scapegoating, and some hints of dominance, you've built yourself a successful demagogue.
The same applies to the more populist and opportunist religious leaders. And perhaps some startup founders and senior managers.
It's hugely depressing to realise how inevitable this is. Most people assume they're making rational decisions about status interactions. They have no idea how their own software works - or even that they have software.
The possibility that it might be flawed, biased, and easy to exploit is completely foreign to them.
Uh. All recorded history would suggest otherwise. Humans love bullies, strongmen, charlatans who promise panaceas at the wave of a stick.
What humans actually don’t like are bullies outside of the current established and expected hierarchy - bullies that threaten their bully.
Prestige and dominance are an utter time-sink, and the reward curve is hideously steep - unless you are at the very pinnacle of the hierarchy, you grind to stay afloat - whereas at the top, prestige and dominance magnetically attract to you.
I think a lot of what we take as being the default condition isn’t - we see all these behaviours and we assume it’s something innate to us and other primates - but I think it’s cultural and Malthusian, rather than a hard-baked desire for primacy.
The hard-baked desire is for survival - and prestige play is a minmax route to this for most people living in a society - it’s easier than setting up your own society. With blackjack. And…
Anyway. Ramblings. My perspective emerges from stepping sideways off the highway of life:
I once strove for status, and garnered no small amount. Didn’t do a damned thing for me - the hierarchy may as well be infinite.
I have found that I enjoy having less than zero status, as there’s nothing to lose, no plays to make, no maintenance payments to be made - here, everyone thinks I am a pauper, possibly mentally defective, definitely helplessly living in squalor off the land like our ancestors. The reality is somewhat different, but I’m content for others to think otherwise. I spent far too much of my life being dogged by high expectations.
I’m a sample of one, but I can’t help but try to examine why I feel as I do - and I think the answer is that I derive my security entirely outside of interpersonal relationships - I don’t owe anyone anything, nor they me, and I need nothing from them.
So… is status “real”? I doubt it. I think it’s just a manifestation of fear and insecurity, and a primal need for a parent figure who can protect and guide.
Perhaps the latter - parents - are also an important part of the need for social hierarchy, as they’re also an element I lacked, being largely raised by impersonal, militarised institutions.
Like you said, the parenting aspect is crucial- that’s been well established in mainstream psychology for a long time now.
The opposite of insecurity is trust (either in oneself or others), and this is difficult to develop later in life. There is research into this nowadays, anywhere from cognitive science psychology to MDMA assisted PTSD treatments to develop self-trust, but conclusive understanding still evades humanity at this point in time.
I do think most people who are very intelligent in terms of IQ, but have other issues… end up in a similar situation as you. Smart enough to overthink and realize where they exist in society, not smart enough to solve the problem when the solution is supposed to be handed to them from their ancestors.
That’s not an insult by the way- Einstein was smart enough to create relativity, but he had algebra and calculus etc handed to him from his ancestors. I doubt Einstein would have invented relativity from scratch.
I wonder if it’s possible to capture the key essence of parenting and re-teach people critical information that’s supposed to be taught in childhood. We all know about language acquisition and the critical period, after which if a child is not taught, they end up like Genie (the feral child, born 1957). But I suspect there are other social skills that are supposed to be taught, but commonly are not taught by parents, or simply unable to be taught if the parents do not exist.
That’s the whole point of a hierarchy, to mediate disputes other than the raw exercise of power — and conflicts become sudden and unexpected if insufficient status is granted to those able to wield power. This is a corollary to your point about outsider bullies; if someone strong isn’t integrated into the hierarchy, violence isn’t predictable and hence survival less assured.
Outside of that, I can’t say that “The Game” has held any particular appeal to me — and I dislike many of the status seekers I’ve met.
Indeed, entire industries that are high-visibility can get away with paying in prestige rather than money at the entry level. Think low- to no-pay internships. In addition to academia, this includes the top journalism outlets (well-known websites, magazines, etc); fashion houses; and political campaigns.
The second order effect of these industries and organizations paying in prestige is to limit the pool of people in such entry level jobs to those who can afford it. Yes, you see some working-class people there, but you see many children of the elite. And that is how a certain class reproduces its dominance across highly visible cultural and political industries.
At the extreme, there is an element of potlatch in accepting no-pay jobs. Sam Altman's amazing interaction with Senator Kennedy during the AI hearings is a good example of that. Sam can afford to take no pay, and that makes him immune to a certain kind of criticism, augmenting his prestige and influence.
This might be true for the author but is very presumptuous imo.
I spend approximately no time per day judging others or interrogating my social status. I of course think about other people, but there are many ways to think about others. There are many ways to think about yourself.
I guess it's not surprising the author of a piece on status has a highly status alined thought process, but it's not by a longshot the default mode for everyone.
> But if you say you want to be promoted because you want respect, that’s often regarded as an appropriate desire.
I would think the same in each case. If someone doesn't think they have respect because of their job title, or they think they have it for the inverse, I feel bad for them. If I meet you on a monday and you're an x, and tuesday you're an x+1, in my eyes you're the same person. Similarly if I meet people for the first time. I honestly don't think I'm being particularly contrarian on this. I know idiot ceos, intelligent homeless people, and some kind of everyone in between. This whole take strikes me as naive to the nature of people.
Even the author of some other quoted book has weird priors I completely disagree with:
> for many of us this price is simply too high; we’d rather be low on the totem pole than be perceived as arrogant and domineering
If you're arrogant and domineering _you are low on the totem pole_. It's really interesting to see that this author is putting someone "high" on the totem pole because of some singular status markers like job title / situational power regardless of their behaviour. It says a lot.
It's not that I don't think status is real. I just don't believe it can be gained by maxmimising any one or even some multiple of typical status markers.
Idk. I just find this surreal.
Agreed; I can't think of a more boring way to spend my time. However, their writing allowed me to finally model why overt racists might spend their time being racist: self-gratification.
Either way, it honestly blows my mind to find out people spend their time thinking about social hierarchy this much; go use that time to create something instead ffs.
But, unless you already have wealth, you need social status to get to a place of owning significant equity.
You need peers willing to work with you as co-founders on a new venture.
You need to impress investors, unless you're self sustaining from the start.
Once you start to grow, your business needs to be a place employees want to work.
Especially early on, your connection with customers and gaining their trust and enthusiasm will be a big part of convincing them to buy your product.
Reputation for good customer service and quality products is also an aspect of social status.
In other words, you need some forms of social status to bootstrap wealth accumulation.
> a white couple waved guns at the protestors
If this is the case I'm thinking of, the protesters had broken down a gate and were trespassing on their property. What were they supposed to do in that situation? Risk their lives and property by putting themselves at the mercy of the mob?
> Black, can raise voice
That's a hell of a euphemism for "threatening to kill people". Apparently the subway riders felt that he was a real threat, because he was restrained by 3 people, and all of the passengers that have spoken up about it seemed to think it was necessary
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57521756
Mr Callahan described the demonstrators as a "racially mixed and peaceful group, including women and children", who had made a wrong turn on the way to their protest. There was no evidence the group was armed, he said.
https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/video-shows-gate-was...
Video shows gate was intact when St. Louis couple pointed guns at protesters Videos and photographs show the couple pacing on their Portland Place property, periodically pointing the weapons at the crowd
For the Yelling I've seen a lot of people yelling about killing people. People act out, 'verbally'. Typically they calm down. Yelling didn't use to be a crime, especially with a death sentence.
Nobody is saying that social hierarchy doesn't ever matter, just that it can be largely ignored with minimal consequences.
I'm not goading you with a straw man. You are the one that made it.
1. You won't get treated fairly, someone with perceived high social status will get fairer treatment. This I personally witnessed in a hospital setting where the sole presence of someone "important" was notified in advance and they got more attention which means probably better attention to detail and therefore outcome in treatment. You might also receive worse service, such as in restaurants, flights, hotels. As people want to court and leave a better impression with someone in a social status
2. People will not respect you. As the article said status comes with respect. You might not judge others by their status but others will for sure judge you. They will talk behind their back about you and this will negatively affect any encounters with other people. Even if you don't judge others low social status will negatively discolor your interactions with others.
3. Also cause and effect might be inverted here. Low skill and ability in a specific domain usually leads to low status. Therefore other's treat you worse as your skills are of relative little importance in the domain. If someone in a tech setting can't solve trivial problems they will aquire low status and suffer in a multitude of ways. In the best case you will be ignored and assigned to tasks with relative little value. In the worst case you can't continue to work there. Just the fact that you have low social status should get you to worry. If you had better skill your social status would actually improve, at least to people that are in the same domain and value the particular skills needed there.
Either you suffer repercussions due to your low social status or you suffer repercussions due to the factors that lead to your status.
I had an absolutely massive post written but I think it might be easier to ask, what do you think a low status person is?
I think my examples address the questions or what do you think they miss? You suffer either because of low status or you have low status because you suffer of some deficiencies that other people think you have. For sure low status can also be arbitrary in many cases but it still has consequences.
I'm not from the US so the hospital example doesn't really apply to me, it's far more egalitarian here, but even in the US I think the above counterexample shows some cracks in the notion.
Furthermore, I don't think a lack of advantages are the same as repercussions. Repercussions are active negatives, where lack of advantages are inactive positives. This is specifically what I was asking about, and why I don't feel like these examples are getting at "repercussions".
Being treated worse is a repercussion. Being actively denied them is a repercussion and also an active negative in your definition. If you are keen on this distinction you can ignore the health care example. But the social consequences fall definetely in this category.
Hello status person being rude to a high status person is not prohibited by the laws of physics.
The point is the cost. There is a cost. If you are hungry and living on the margin, then the cost could be great enough you will die, then that behavior gets weeded out. If you are already high status enough to not worry about the cost, then you have enough resources, and 'higher' status.
Think you are still thinking about the modern age, can you get a minimum wage job and completely ignore everyone and still survive? Maybe. Is that living?
It is only a recent development where there are plentiful resources where this is possible. There is some arguments that people have made, that the modern glut of resources does lead to behaviors like this, because there are no longer the consequences of dying.
It seems like you were saying that it is impossible to ignore social hierarchy and status, which simply isn't true.
>can you get a minimum wage job and completely ignore everyone and still survive? Maybe. Is that living?
By definition, yes, living is living. There are lots of assholes in this world, and they don't drop dead from ignoring social hierarchy.
>Someone has to already be high status, or somehow independently wealthy, to even have the opportunity to ignore others. This ability to ignore others is an indicator of already being high status
By your definition, the bum yelling at people on the street must be high status. Terrorists and criminals must also have high status, because they too chose to ignore social power structures. These are extreme examples obviously.
To read these comments, you think it would be impossible to go through life ignoring social status when in fact it's commonly done. You can make it pretty far in life by simply treating people with human decency, but not granting special defference to people with social power. Ignoring social hierarchy doesn't mean you have to punch your boss or a police officer in the face, it means treating them like you would any other person
But, also, the GROUP has a lot of control and feedback. If one dominant high status leader, turns into a bully, and irritates and pisses of enough members of the group, then the entire group can collectively take action and kill/banish/etc.. the bad leader.
So there are competing drives. The group can turn on bad actors. But also there is a fight for dominance in the group.
So over thousands of years, the behavior of humans has evolved, and tended towards more egalitarian societies.
It appears from your response, that you are viewing this through the lens of the modern world were we have fluid groups, resources, modern weapons, etc.. Which all tilt the balance of what is possible. The modern world then is different from how we evolved, but our evolution still built into us, the idea of status and egalitarianism.
To the point that it is possible to go through life ignoring social status, it is not common and is so wrong I think what is actually happening is you are not aware when it is happening to you and thus think it is not occurring. Especially since "Treating people with common decency" is the actual point, that is an evolved behavior based on status in a group.
I understand the historic difference, but my point is that people are making conclusions of what behavior is and is not possbile TODAY, in the modern world, which I think is erroneous.
>To the point that it is possible to go through life ignoring social status, it is not common and is so wrong I think what is actually happening is you are not aware when it is happening to you and thus think it is not occurring. Especially since "Treating people with common decency" is the actual point, that is an evolved behavior based on status in a group.
The position that I am disagreeing with is that modifed behavior in response to social status is not abosulte. It is likely evolutionarily and socially encouraged, but not deterministically impossible to avoid. Individuals can and do show a wide range in how much they modify their behavior based on the social status of others. Some individuals are flatterers, kiss-asses, and subservient. Some individuals do not modify their behavior based on social status. Treating people with common decency, is not an evolved behavior or necessarily dependent on status. It isn't universal behavior, and highly dependendent on individual choice and conditioning.
It is reductionist and detached from reality to think people must act a certian way because of their status or that of others. All you have to do is look around at the real world and see a wide variety of behavious to disprove such bold claim. Not all low status people act the same, not all high status people act the same, and the degree to which they change their behavior based on the status of others varry wildly from individual to individual.
To say that nobody can resist modifying their behavior based on the status of the person they are interacting is simply incorrect.
I am coming from more deterministic view. That all of the examples you gave are some form of response to status, even decency. The brain evolved with some group behaviors built into the architecture, but it is also very adaptable. All of the huge variety of behaviors you are outlining as choices (ass kisser, flatter...all), I am saying are pre-determined through evolution, and the environment the brain was raised in (culture, nature, etc..). In todays world there are too many variables to make 100% predictions, so it looks chaotic and like there are choices. It is super complex to map out those responses, because the brain as system is modifiable, and todays world inputs a lot of seemingly random variables.
I'd say all behavior, status, or decency, is programmed by evolution, as we evolved to live in groups. Because, where else would it have come from? But, the brain is also adaptable, so this 'pre-programming' isn't an easy black/white formula.
Re-reading your note. I think what you said here "likely evolutionarily and socially encouraged, but not deterministically" is it. We are agreeing, but on a sliding scale on one variable 'status'. I'm saying it is a stronger variable than you are. But now we are splitting hairs.
This is typically what I come back to, eventually we will boil down human responses to some chemistry and neuroscience. And then we'll know, but until then we are coming up with these 'speculative' models to see what fits.
Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills. Schopenhauer
>All of the huge variety of behaviors you are outlining as choices (ass kisser, flatter...all), I am saying are pre-determined through evolution, and the environment the brain was raised in (culture, nature, etc..). In todays world there are too many variables to make 100% predictions, so it looks chaotic and like there are choices.
I am saying that most of what we see IS chaotic and emergent behavior, not behavior that was selected for. Most of human complexity and experience is artifacts and unintended results from an evelutionary perspective.
By way of example, the human brain "architecture" was evolutionarily selected to be able to make simple tools and get more calories. The fact that we build spaceships, the internet, and videogames is emergent phenomenon arising from our "architecture", but not selected for.
Styling many (if not most) aspects of human behavior, especially specific ones, to evolutionary fitness or purpose is overfitting or over-applying a huristic. It mostly 2nd, 3rd, or 100th order results of something that was selected for evolutionarily.
>I'd say all behavior, status, or decency, is programmed by evolution, as we evolved to live in groups. Because, where else would it have come from?
Evolution doesn't build or require organisms behave in an optimal way. Evolution simply favors ogranisms with behavior that, on net, is just the slightest bit better than chance.
It doesnt matter if 99% of behavior is random noise, and 1% helpful. It doesnt matter if 49% is actively detrimental, if 51% is advantageous.
You could asky why people find nicotine additictive. The "deterministisic" answer is beer must be evolutionarily advantageous and be programmed for. A closer answer would be that it is random chance that nicotine triggers some biological pathways designed for a different purpose entirely.
I think the vast majority of human behavior and experience is simply evolutionarily unintended consequenses interaction and running away with eachother. Like I said above, 1% advantage and 99% random noise is completely compatible with evolutionary theroy.
Thus everything is evolution, regardless of if it was emergent or artifacts. We exist because we got here by evolving along with everything else in our environment. Sure some things aligned in our favor and it looks emergent. But the base system had to exist for something to emerge from.
So for humans specifically, we can see that group behavior can lead to individual success, groups with more success (more calories) because of some group behavior would survive, and whatever brain architecture lead to that behavior would be the surviving trait. Yes, there is a lot of theories, or models that overfit what was are trying to talk about, like status. But there are human behaviors, and we can study them, even if our early attempts have some faults.
And, with all of what you said, and I said. It is true that there are so many variables that we have evolved/adapted for (including behaviors), that in the modern world we have shifted all of the inputs so that our evolved brain is basically thrown into a blender and it all looks like chaos. And now we are trying to develop models based on the outputs of chaos.
I just happen to be hopeful we will be able to tease it out. The human animal has behaviors and traits just like flocking birds, we can study flocking, we can study humans forming groups. Chimps, Lion Prides, all very stable group dynamics that follow the same pattern over and over. Humans are just another animal to study. And it seems like human primates do pay a lot of attention to status.
I think we are just arguing over the sliding scale of 1%-99% what is random.
For beer. That is curious case. Animals all the way back to the fruit fly have mechanisms for processing alcohol. Even animals very far away on the evolutionary tree can get drunk. So that ability has been around, I think it has something to do with using calories. There are calories in alcohol, so this had an advantage, and getting drunk is the artifact.
Things like Nicotine, cocaine, heroin, trigger things in the brain that are totally random, not evolved FOR. If anything we should evolve the ability to defend against the detrimental effects. Maybe that would happen if we didn't have technology to save people and they died out.
Professional success, education, social skills, and hence money are also related to social status. I think only a few monks are not occupied with social status. (But probably not even them because I wouldn’t be surprised if they look to each other to see who is best in meditation.)
That one kind of baffles me as well. Left to my own devices, I create more devices. I inspect things, I wonder about how things are made. And, yes, like you, there are times when I do think about other people. And also, like you, I am not intending on judging or interrogating my social status.
But, I recognize that I likely have certain social behaviors that limit me professionally. And they are likely related to my lack of concern for the trappings of status. I've lived a good portion of my life believing that doing excellent work would bring excellent rewards. And for a good portion of my life, that has not been true. Status is not merit based.
So I believe there is likely something to this. It's likely not the whole story, but it is at least a chapter. Maybe we should be thinking about status a little more.
I wonder if it's more useful to a certain kind of person for whom this stuff may be less readily legible, but I suspect there's a lot of that kind here.
Read impro.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who successfully climbed the social hierarchy from dysfunctional foster childhood to Ivy league deserves every ounce prestige he earned.
That's a problem with blog posts. A dated, but amusing book length expansion on this topic is "Class", by Paul Fussell.
The psychological definition he uses where power is "control of access to resources" is an ok model. Separating it from status and prestige is key, where he gives the example of olympic athletes vs. nightclub bouncers, where each have high or low status and high or low power respectively.
Conferring power on low status people is a recipe for disaster, where those people will find ways to apply the power to an infinite need for status - without regard for the human desire that confers its legitimacy. It's what makes a lot of the current crop of establishment aspirants so uncanny, they have seized the reins of institutions, but are themselves personally undesirable because they have nothing of their own to share - it's all over leveraged and competing to supplicate themselves. Arguably, the tension in the culture is that there are no good men or good women in institutional power today, and so much so that people in power are trying to erase what "good" even means because it is a source of humiliation for them. They will try arbitrarily to destroy people who have the organic status that their own power does not give them. Never underestimate the capacity of undesirable people for cruelty, it's what the cold war was fought over, imo.
Becoming higher status is a straightforward process of self improvement, where through exercise, education, practice and competence, you become more desirable to others, and the resources you have are ones that are yours to share. There is no mystery there.
The interesting question to me is, given power is rarely ever converted into desirable status, how is status converted into power? We used to call it "convening power," where royalty and celebrities could get people in a room together. If an invitation came from them, it would be accepted, and brokering that meeting (and taking some equity) was how to convert status into power. But if there were a way to convert it directly, I think there is a recipe for peace, where it would mean both a way to respect and participate in civilization instead of trying to rule over its ashes.
It does has causal power in the minds of people how actively think of it, as they actively relate to the concept. But for other people who don’t think of it, social status is a composite measure that correlates to things, but does not actually have any effect on anything.
Most of his famous works date from the twentieth century.
the author went on to cowrite a well-received pop-sci book about social signaling theory that i highly recommend as well, the elephant in the brain
And the best way to money is often unknown to most people. Loose lips sink ships.
The most socialist societies seem to place a lot of emphasis on the process and less on status , making people interchangeable
As for whether social status increases number of offspring in today's world, please show me the data to support this instead of making wild extrapolations from thousands of years ago.
Warren Buffet has status. Bill Gates has status.
Elon Musk has status and money but has been told to stop squandering his credibility on side-shows.
Bernie Madoff had credibility and other people's money.
Elizabeth Holmes worked the room to acquire credibility in the hope of gathering enough money to somehow make lies become legitimate.
Donald Trump self-proclaims his status.
Interesting that you call it "self-proclaimed", when he s the only person in the list who relied on his status to climb to the top post of the world.
Whether it's a force-multiplier depends a lot on the context. In an army, status determines the chain of command absolutely. In modern startups, their doors are revolving and Commanders don't have a lot of leverage except transactionally (i.e. by paying more)
As a politician, he tried a couple of times before he was able to parlay his claims into a large following.
Then with this support, he parlayed himself into the top status position in US politics.
His commitment to intellectual enlightenment and integrity being unmistakably dubious, what seems to bother him the most following the loss of the election in 2020 is the loss of status.
I recall reading that higher status was associated with longer life in 19th/20th civil servants in the UK or the US, it's possible that this was true in mesopotamia as well.
In theory, the trappings of what the article called "prestige" status should confer a happier life - if many people like you, you'll have easier access to resources, better social relationships, and perhaps even more meaning/sense of purpose in your life, all of which I believe are correlated with longevity and health.
Yes, we all die. No, nothing we do will matter a few thousand years later. Should we just immediately give up then to skip to the inevitable? If so, why haven't you killed yourself already?
I asked ChatGTP about that:
User: Two individuals with the the same insurance policy but of different social standing go to hospital, who will get more medical attention?
ChatGTP: Ideally, in a fair and equitable healthcare system, the allocation of medical attention should not be influenced by an individual's social standing. The principle of medical ethics dictates that healthcare professionals should provide medical attention based on medical need rather than personal characteristics such as social standing.
In many countries, including those with universal healthcare systems, medical attention is typically allocated based on the severity and urgency of the medical condition. In such systems, patients are generally triaged and treated according to the severity of their condition, regardless of their social standing.
However, it's important to acknowledge that systemic biases and disparities can exist in healthcare systems, and these can impact the allocation of medical attention. Factors such as unconscious bias, unequal access to healthcare facilities, and differences in socioeconomic resources can influence the healthcare experience of individuals from different social standings.
Efforts are made in many healthcare systems to address these disparities and promote equal access to medical attention. Policies and guidelines are implemented to ensure fair treatment and to mitigate the influence of personal characteristics on healthcare delivery. Additionally, healthcare providers are expected to adhere to professional standards and ethical principles that prioritize patient well-being and equitable care.
It is crucial to continue advocating for equitable healthcare systems and addressing any existing biases or disparities to ensure that everyone, regardless of their social standing, receives the medical attention they need and deserve.
User: Can you site studies that confirm the existence of systemic bias in healthcare systems?
ChatGTP: Certainly! There have been numerous studies conducted that highlight the existence of systemic bias in healthcare systems. Here are a few examples:
"Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare" - This landmark report by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) in 2002 extensively examined racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare in the United States. The report concluded that racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive lower-quality healthcare even when controlling for factors such as insurance, income, and education.
"The Anatomy of Health Care in the United States" - Published in 2013 by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), this study analyzed healthcare disparities by socioeconomic status. It found that individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to have worse access to care, higher rates of preventable hospitalizations, and lower utilization of preventive services.
"Patient Characteristics Associated with Differences in Mortality Rates Among Elderly Medicare Beneficiaries in the Top Decile of Risk" - This study, published in JAMA in 2016, examined the impact of socioeconomic factors on mortality rates among elderly Medicare beneficiaries. It found that patients with higher incomes and more education had lower mortality rates compared to those with lower socioeconomic status.
"Hidden Disparities: How Discrimination and Racism Affect Health and Health Care" - This report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies highlights the impact of racism and discrimination on health outcomes. It discusses how biases in healthcare systems can result in unequal treatment and contribute to health disparities among marginalized populations.
Given enough money and time, you could make people do anything and believe anything. Anyone who doesn't bend to the will of big capital will be made irrelevant.
That's why it's absolutely critical that we have a sound monetary system.
Meanwhile people in power maintain their inequality of power by manipulating the monetary system. Uh... Bitcoin pls?
>Given enough money and time, you could make people do anything and believe anything. Anyone who doesn't bend to the will of big capital will be made irrelevant.
I think this is a lot less human than you make it out to be. I looked up BP largest shareholder. Some conglomerate owned 0.6% of the company.
So... its more like economics rather than different people with bags of money.
Made irrelvant to who or what?