The Moat of Low Status
usefulfictions.substack.com
usefulfictions.substack.com
As a very senior member of my team, which has a lot of new college grads, I've been asking the "dumb" questions, the "irritating" questions, intentionally speaking up what I believe others may be thingking, specifically because I figure I can afford the social (career) hit.
1. Give plenty of credit to the juniors when they do good work, even if they were reliant on support, with no need to take credit myself
2. Give up some time working on my own objectives to coach the juniors, even though there's no cost code to book the time to and nobody asks me to do it
3. Easily say, with zero guilt: "no sorry that can't be done in 2 weeks, that's a 6 week job" or "sure I can do my part of this job but I'm going to need you to commit XYZ other resources if you want it to be a success"
4. Interpret the rules in the way I think is best for the organisation, not trying to please the person with the most pedantic interpretation
5. I can produce convincing explanations of how my work performance is delivering value to the organisation (whereas juniors can sometimes work their arse off and get no recognition for it)
I'm also a middle aged white man which seems to confer a lot of unearned trust, but combined with my professional experience I seriously think I have it easier than the juniors in so many ways, and it's my responsibility to give back a bit.
This is one of the most effective ways to lead because it builds goodwill and trust on the team. It also takes almost nothing away from you because as the senior/leader you will get default credit for most everything. It's always odd to me more people don't realize this.
Soft skills need to be valued from above in order to be workable strategies in the trenches. And often / usually that’s how it works.. but not always.
Also never be afraid to question people who answer quickly. We spend way too much effort training smart people to answer quickly rather than deeply, and there’s almost always a tradeoff between the two.
Unfortunately that's the kind of black-and-white advice that seldom applies in the real world. Would you want to see your surgeon asking stupid questions? The pilot of the flight you're on?
You wouldn't, because part of your psychological comfort depends on your perception that people like this -- people whose decisions really matter -- actually know what they're doing.
ETA: By "stupid questions", I don't mean "basic but obviously important questions". I mean questions that reveal that you don't know something that other people expect you to know, that signal to them (rightly or wrongly) that they may have overestimated you.
Asking "Did I mess up my left and right?" or "Is this the right patient?" feels like a stupid question to ask. I'd certainly rather they ask those questions before operating on me! But turns out it's very hard to get them to do that, so we do surgical site marking instead.
Ok but you didn’t bring up the phrase “stupid questions” so it’s less about how you define it, and more about a best effort interpretation of how it was originally meant.
You don’t have a great mental model of how most people think
The thing is that in many a case those basic questions have not all actually been asked and answered because everyone involved thought the same: it's stupidly simple, I better not ask for fear of being marked dumb.
I get the feeling that it's because of fear of being marked dumb by people like you actually.
But then it often turns out that one of those stupid questions has not been answered sufficiently or people were thinking of completely different answers to the question. So it was a good thing that someone brought it up.
And if the question did already get taken into account and people did have the same answer(s) in mind then if a senior person asked, it will probably just be taken as "this guy knows his stuff and is just dotting Is and crossing Ts" VS a junior "asking dumb questions that everyone should know the answer to, duh!"
> I get the feeling that it's because of fear of being marked dumb by people like you actually.
I make positive and negative judgements about people based on things they do, which is an imperfect heuristic but the best one available and much better than nothing. So do you.
The way I read your comment was that you categorically oppose asking "dumb questions" no matter what.
* What invariants does this complex transformation preserve? What guarantees does it make about the output? (Come on, we all have a general idea, SpicyLemonZest should read the code if he wants all the details.)
* What’s the latency impact of adding this step? (It can’t be big enough to matter, stop trying to block my project!)
* Why did the last release advance to production when it wasn’t passing tests? (How dare you, our team works so hard, it says right here in our release manual that those test failures count as passing.)
When I wrote my comment, I didn't have such questions in mind. I wish I'd written it to exclude such questions, because I think they're not central to the issue here, which is whether or not asking questions that have negative implications about one's own ability is always a good idea.
We have an expectation that "smart people" should be able to quickly fill in gaps in lightly-explained systems. Sometimes this is good: when you're teaching people a new concept it's great if they can grasp it quickly and approximately. When you're describing the design of a complex system, you absolutely do not want people to make incorrect assumptions about the parts you're skipping over.
The worst example I've seen was learning that the security of an industrial control platform came down to the fact that the management software wasn't installed by default. The designers had assumed that "knowledge of a software library" was a valid access control mechanism. As the cherry on top, another engineer chimed in that the software was actually installed on the system anyway, just in a different location. It took a pile of incredibly "stupid" questions to surface this knowledge.
Is it? Because the original statement used the word "never" and didn't mention growth and change over time as qualifiers.
The more one attempts to qualify -- that is, restrict the scope of -- the advice, the more one tacitly admits the point I'm trying to make, which FTR is: This advice is not always good advice.
In practice, some of what it takes to do a given thing comes from thing-specific information (which is appropriate to ask questions about), and some comes from a background of experience in doing/studying other similar things (formally or informally). For complicated tasks it basically has to be this way, because there just isn't time to train a person up from scratch for each task -- a random person off the street could not perform surgery merely by first asking a sufficient number of questions about exactly how to do it. People find "stupid questions" alarming because they reveal holes in this important second category, and make people wonder what else important might be missing.
You could make the argument that it's better for society if everyone asks whatever "stupid" question comes to mind, because then incompetent people and charlatans will be quickly exposed and the harm they would do minimised. But it's not good for the charlatan!
I don't side with actual charlatans, of course, but most of the time I do side with people of imperfect competence, because that's most of us. Competence is improved by practice, and most tasks are low-stakes. If a person is already near the threshold of being perceived as unacceptably incompetent by others, and can discover the information they need via other means than by asking "stupid questions", that may well be the best way for everyone.
That's not to say that I advocate never asking stupid questions. In fact I would encourage people to lean more in that direction as a default setting -- they are the fastest way to get the necessary information. They just have a cost that it would be naive to ignore. It's a judgement call, is all I'm saying.
Once you start asking stupid questions on the regular it's quite an interesting experience how often you can ask "stupid" questions to rooms full of senior engineers and sort of get back confused silence. In my experience there's a lot of really important but "stupid" questions that often just gets half-ignored because imagination and prioritization is hard.
StackExchange is a massive, global forum which has to react defensively in order to maintain its high-quality knowledgebase against spammers, scammers, and the same questions being posed 10^N times.
The context here is about knowledge dissemination in local teams, groups, or organizations. Completely separate category, levels of trust, motivations, incentives, etc.
The main issue I've run into happens when a person's reply to my stupid question doesn't make sense to me. If I continue asking follow up questions in order to understand better they sometimes get angry. But if I stop asking questions when I start to detect anger then I am left feeling confused about how the system works. Either way I'm left with a negative emotional impression of the person's caliber. Which isn't great for me cohering with the team.
I imagine that you've also run into this problem. How do you think about it?
As a high status person, you have an outsized influence on culture whether you like it or not, and an environment in which this kind of question can be asked ultimately leads to better outcomes.
Over the years I did this less and nowadays I mostly only speak when asked so in rather big meetings.
How did this come to be? I found that people who feel that they belong in the higher ranks of the social pecking order sometimes don't like this behavior and actively try to make you look bad. As I'm quite sensitive and am generally a people pleaser who thrives on getting external validation (I'm working on it...), it did not feel good and I feel it wasn't worth the trouble...
But then there are likely also situations when you feel that you ask a bunch of stupid questions but are faced with blank stares because people doesn't understand the context enough for those questions either or they are struggling enough with other problems to even entertain that kind of question.
It can kind of lead to a similar situation to when the math professor at uni jokingly asks a "trivial" math question in front of his students. It's trivial only once you have worked that kind of problem a 1000 times.
I'm the exception to the rule, I always do this and I'm not senior. I make it clear too that I do this.
Ah, I just read the article. Yea, I'm not afraid of the moat of low status. I know what reward it brings, it's easy +EV.
because they are afraid the benign topic will cause them to get ad hominem attacked or generally vilified
most people’s reddit profiles are their whole identity and they try to stay in moderate “polite company” at the expense of remaining ignorant
Over the past few years, I've managed to convince (and occasionally demonstrate) to my kids that "you'll be bad at anything new" and that they only way to get better is practice.
As a result, when other kids have made fun of them for failing, they rebut with "I've never done this before! I'll get better!" which is awesome.. being able to handle failure, acknowledge it as failure, and then figure out how to get better.
If you can get and hold onto that mindset, it's kinda awesome.
I think the relationship is kinda the other way around - you'll feel like your hobby is "serious" when you stop having fun with it.
I disagree. Innate talent / affinity and transferable experience exist. I agree with "10% inspiration and 90% perspiration"; however, given equal effort, people with innate talent are going to win over people with no or less talent by a wide margin. This applies to everything. Gym / sports performance, muscle growth, work that needs IQ, work that needs EQ, life events that need resilience, general happiness, everything. Genetics is hugely definitive.
And I'm convinced some people bounce back more easily after a failure because failure is genuinely less hurtful for them. They don't need to "hold onto that mindset"; they just have it.
I think you are misreading the person you're replying to.
They aren't saying "everybody can be equally good at everything with practice."
They're saying "don't quit just because you aren't great on day 1."
First time playing basketball even if you've played soccer a ton and have good general athletic ability? Don't expect to hold your own if joining a game being played by people who play every week.
First time doing woodworking even if you have an electrical engineering background and the methodicalness is not foreign to you? Don't expect your first table to be stunning. Still gonna be bad at it compared to people with more practice!
Honestly, if you think you're great at something the first time you try it, you probably just don't know what being great at it actually looks like. (It could even be "similar result, but better in some hidden ways, and done in 1/10th the time.")
But if you believe that you'll get better at it with practice, you'll keep doing it.
If you believe "guess I just don't have innate ability here" you'll give up and never get good.
That's not what they're saying. They literally wrote, "you'll be bad at anything new". That's what I disagreed with. There are people who are great at something new (for them), and catch up with (and surpass) old-timers incredibly quickly. And their learning experience -- not that it doesn't take effort -- is generally enjoyable, exactly because they succeed from very early on. I've witnessed this with at least two colleagues. Entered completely new fields (one of them repeatedly), and in a few weeks, surpassed old-timers in those fields. These are the guys who tend to be promoted to senior principal or distinguished software engineers.
> First time playing basketball even if you've played soccer a ton and have good general athletic ability? Don't expect to hold your own if joining a game being played by people who play every week.
Do expect to mostly catch up with them in 1-2 months! (In my high school class, the soccer team was effectively identical to the basketball team.)
> and done in 1/10th the time
I agree with this; yes. But my point is that, for some people, approaching such a short completion time, with comparable results, is a relatively fast, and enjoyable, process. They don't plateau as early, and don't struggle from the beginning.
> If you believe "guess I just don't have innate ability here" you'll give up and never get good.
Correct, but it doesn't imply that "giving your all" does make you good (at an absolute scale). You will no doubt improve relative to your earlier self, but those advances may not qualify as "competitive", more globally speaking. Giving up (after serious work) may be objectively valid. For some people, persevering is the challenge (= lack of willpower, persistence); for others, accepting failure / mediocrity, and -- possibly -- finding something better, is the challenge.
What fields, if I can ask?
* Not an electronics pun
Just an expectation that something will be easy (without a strong tie to identity/sel-worth) can make failure more painful.
Easy successes can also lead to not developing progress-enabling skills when in a "friendly" environment (e.g., an academically gifted person not learning study skills and disclipline before college). When the innate skill and casual training is no longer enough to meet expectations, there is not the emotional reserve and external support to develop the meta-skills.
Failure aversion and lack of self-discipline is somewhat independent of "work ethic"; a person terrified of failure can work very hard at easy tasks or tasks with results that lack internal or peceived external judgment in part because such feels so much better than not really trying.
Sadly, a "safe" activity can be "ruined" by a person's well-meaning compliment, that introduces expectations to the activity. (Weirdly, indirect compliments seem significantly less problematic; "these decorations look really nice" can feel acceptable even when the person knows one did them while "you did a really good job on the decorations" can feel crushing by setting a new higher baseline of expectations and/or introducing self-doubt because the person is just being nice.)
True, but I think the quote was more about not worrying about the outcome just do what you really want to do.
instead?
This article is countersignaling. It also happens to be directionally correct.
There is absolutely nothing low status about being present-day Cate Hall. But present-day Cate Hall probably tried and pushed through a lot of really tough stuff in part because yesteryear Cate Hall had this mindset. It so happened that she also had the talent to actually end up in impressive places.
The real lesson one should probably take from a person like this is that learning to eyeball your own strengths and weaknesses before you start down the long path of honing them is really important. If you are low status now but you have reason to believe you will become much higher status in the future by persevering, then persevere. If not...
Sounds like from the online bullying she suffered from at Yale, she was low status there.
Getting into Yale directly confers high status, and it is fairly well gated by other status-related tests: honors classes and private schools nudge you to learn the kind of thinking that does well on the SAT, not the kind of thinking that keeps you out of danger, as well as pushing you to AP exam prep classes; and access to extracurricular activities is gated both implicitly (by school choice) and explicitly by disciplinary measures for low-status behaviors. Rednecks like JD Vance are a tiny minority of the Yale entering class, and lower-status groups like illegal immigrants are as far as I know completely absent.
Also, I think the idea that there is something that it takes to be high status is incorrect. Social status is its own phenomenon with its own rules, and sometimes it's pretty random: you get a good job against the odds, or a good spouse, or you narrowly escape a disabling accident. You could argue that "what it takes" in such cases is luck, but graduating from Yale doesn't indicate that you will be lucky in the future, only of things that have happened before that.
>Getting into Yale directly confers high status
Don't these two ideas contradict one another? It sure sounds like we have at least one known pathway to becoming high status, and that is getting into Yale.
Again my specific claim here is merely that such a statement exists, nontrivially, for this kind of problem. Not even that we can write it down in full or whatever. I don't see why that's illegal.
If we're talking about the abstract problem in classical propositional logic, there's no requirement in classical logic that a proposition Q be true for some external reason. It can just be true. Causality is outside the scope of propositional logic.
It's true that, in classical propositional logic, there is necessarily a proposition that is necessary for Q's truth, that is, a proposition that Q implies. There are infinitely many of them, in fact. Q implies Q, for example. It also implies Q or not Q, because in classical propositional logic, any proposition implies all tautologies. You can't list them all, and it wouldn't help.
If you have some finite list of atomic propositions to try to compose your set S from, there is no guarantee that listing all of the sufficient conditions from that list (other than Q itself) will give you an S whose disjunction is a necessary condition. A simple model of this is P = no, Q = yes, S = {P}.
Just as an example, a whole lot of dysfunctional dynamics happening lately seem to involve billionaires jockeying for status with other billionaires.
Edit: I'd recommend Paul Fussel's book Class since it involves discussion of these two dynamics.
The real moral of this story is you should get rich eccentric friends from the Ivy League elite who throw money at you to do AGI. Like you really think this company of like 40 people is going to crack AGI?
Man I should cross the moat and get some rich friends.
To be honest Alvea doesn't sound like a crazy idea on paper. Reducing lead times on new drugs is a really good idea that seems like it is bottlenecked more by bureaucratic concerns.
A company which focused on that as its sole mission could be really profitable, if they could sell their professional services to a group that already had plenty of in house expertise on actually creating the drugs. My very low resolution guess is that they slipped up when they actually tried to make the drug themselves. That may have been a requirement to get funding from the US government at the time, I don't know.
https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/the-perils-of-imitating-high...
B: It must feel good to say so when you have the money.
A: It does.
(Quoting from memory, can't remember the movie.)
As far as I can tell, you jargony phrase means that this is something like the humble part of "humble bragging". I'd disagree, I think the article gives honest good advice, an honest "meta-analysis" of social status and jumping into new things. It's "actionable", something you can do.
I would add that its advice for the sort of person who is normally always thinking about and fairly competent with social status and is held back from new skills by this. I personally was never too worried about social status and have learned massive new things by just being willing to try them but wound-up bitten by my ignoring of status. My advice for my younger me is to be strategic about publicly ignoring status but keep going into private.
Also statements like "she succeeded 'cause she was tough" are meaningless as advice or actionable/verifiable statements. Maybe she succeeded 'cause she had a bunch of strategies like the one she outlines, maybe she succeeded 'cause of good luck, maybe she succeed by family positions, maybe "luck", "toughness" or "mojo" did it.
The action you are supposed to take from this is to figure out whether you're tough, and if you find out you're not, to give up and go to something else you're better suited for. This seems like exceptionally actionable advice - just not advice that strokes anyone's ego.
I will give you an example. When I was 17 I spent exactly one day as a door to door canvasser for an environmental charity. I got dropped off into a neighborhood I had never seen before, told to walk up to people's doors and beg them for money for something I was pretty sure wasn't particularly effective at solving anything important, and then do this about a hundred times.
Door #1 gave me one dollar. Door #2 let me call my parents in tears to come pick me up. Whatever Unusual characteristic that particular job needed, I did not have it. I do not have it to this day.
I've had so many awesome conversations with random interesting people every day during my trips thanks to this. I've gone places I'd otherwise not experience, all for the sake of exciting adventure and pushing my own bounds. The confidence that comes from this is significant.
Also, as a former remote software engineer of 3 years, it has been so energizing to socialize with people again. Best upper that there is.
For instance, if you want to make a product that requires a database and you like building database stuff, do the database stuff last. Do what is difficult first - fail fast.
The easy or default route will always be well known to someone.
At that point I was already living part time in Italy for over two years, but since I was working remotely for a company in my country, I hardly had an opportunity to learn the language.
Fortunately Italians appreciate people attempting to speak their language.
> In poker, it’s possible to improve via theoretical learning.... But you really can’t become a successful player without playing a lot of hands with and in front of other players, many of whom will be better than you.
This is an interesting example because poker is a game that has existed for many years, and for most of those years everyone learned by doing and was terrible at it.
People who excel at things have typically done more theoretical learning than the average person. Doing is necessary, but it's rarely the main way you learn something.
Either you have a mentor who has already absorbed theory and transmits it to you in digested form, or you have to learn the theory yourself.
But most people get the balance between theory and doing wrong, and most people err on the side of doing because theory is harder and less instantly rewarding.
Low status isn't so bad.
I asked Google to briefly summarize the concept:
> The Dip: It's a term Godin uses to describe the unavoidable and challenging period that occurs after the initial excitement of starting a new project, skill, or career, and before achieving success or mastery. This is the time when things get difficult, frustrating, and many people are tempted to quit
> Embracing the Dip: Instead of being discouraged by The Dip, Godin suggests that dips can be opportunities. They serve as a natural filter, separating those with the determination to persevere from those who are not truly committed. By pushing through the Dip, you can emerge stronger and potentially achieve greater rewards
Well, no. Depends on the person. For some people and for some new undertakings, especially if those people know themselves well already, they can hit the ground running. I've seen it.
I've been trying to live more authentically in general these past few years, making tiny little inroads one step at a time towards being someone I've consciously chosen, rather than merely exist in a safe form that doesn't risk alienating others (or rather, in a form I don't perceive to alienate others - obviously I am not a mindreader). Think classic tech neutral outfits (jeans and neutral shirts, neutral shoes, neutral socks, the sole piece of color being the Pride band of my Apple Watch). OCD hurts the process of trying to live authentically, because it's doing its damndest to ensure I never encounter harm.
So last night, after coming down from some flower and watching the evening roll in, I decided to put on an outfit I'd put together. All sorts of bright colors: neon green and black sneakers, bright pink shirt, sapphire blue denim jean shorts, bleached white socks - and went for a walk. OCD was INCREDIBLY self-conscious that I would stand out (duh), court the wrong sort of attention, or somehow find myself in trouble...for wearing things I see everyone else wear without any issue whatsoever.
The moat is real, and the mind wants to build barriers to minimize perceived harms; for neurodivergent folks, it can be downright crippling. Wallflowering at parties, never gambling on colors or bold styles, never taking on new challenges for risk of failure. It results in a life so boring, sterile, and uninteresting - to yourself, and to others.
So...yeah. I got nothing to add other than my personal nuggets of experience. Really glad this piece came past on HN today, I think a lot of folks are going to enjoy its message.
I do wish we could stop saying “moat”.
Most of us aren’t living in ancient forts we need to protect.
Speak for yourself!
raises draw bridge
Moat.
If you try new things, you may go bankrupt, get laughed at or be humiliated in a much worse way, be regularly rejected or talked down to, etc. It's not just about being brave for a minute. And in the end you might never make it.
I learned in a class on design that you should work with what you already know.
If you don't know about colors, then do it in grey scale, if you don't know about that, do it in black and white.
The best ideas come from working with constraints.
While highly skilled designers/musicians/developers/writers/etc. do this despite being able to work outside of the constraints, a beginner can do it too. Sure, they can't choose the constraints as freely as a pro, but they can make work with what they got and it can lead to interesting results.
This is also a good way to approach new things without embarrassing yourself, as you don't try to impress with skills you don't mastered 100% yet.
There’s a difference between pain and suffering.
This is true for emotions: feelings people often find uncomfortable (sadness, loneliness, fear) don’t have to make you miserable. You can just feel those feelings in your body, pay attention to what they’re asking you to pay attention to, and feel deeply okay about it all.
The same is true for physical sensations. Pain is loud so it’s really good at drawing our attention, but there’s a difference between noticing you’re hurt and getting upset about being hurt.
I flipped my bike a couple months ago and scraped myself up incredibly badly, but there wasn’t a ton of suffering involved.
The massive adrenaline shot left me shaking, I felt overwhelmed and like I wanted to cry, and the pain was very loud. But I laid on the ground for fifteen or twenty minutes and then walked the fifteen minutes back home. I wouldn’t call it fun, but it was totally okay.
(Nick Cammarata has a good Buddhist take on this: suffering is a specific fast, grabby movement you do in your mind called “tanha” and if you pay attention you can learn to do it less.)
Why do you think old fat guys walk around naked in the locker room at the gym? They've certainly got nothing to show off, but they don't give a shit.
Whenever someone does “statusy” things I just know how it feels like having done it before so I just move on and don’t participate in that theater anymore.
We live in a society in which older people(or men, at least) get some degree of implicit status and respect - which is probably why our governments are all getontocracies.
Or keep holding time against old men, up to you. ;)
Status games and tech-bro style hustle culture only leads to burnout.
> (idiomatic) to relax and be carefree
> Synonym: let one's hair down
Previous art: “ Willingness to look stupid” by Dan Luu.
https://danluu.com/look-stupid/
Precious discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28942189
> High status people don't really suffer from looking silly, they define what looking silly is by being what they don't do.
I also don't know about this. Certain high status people are obsessively concerned with whether they look silly. They used to routinely fight to the death over it.
I've been reading the Book of the Courtier this week, and it's clear that even back in the 16th century high status people were very concerned about whether they looked silly, or even whether their dances looked silly.
In the context of the situation the people worrying probably weren't the highest status person in the room though. In a room full of princes one of them is going to be feeling pressure because they are low status relative to their peers. That is what instincts key off, not absolute numbers of people that a body can't immediately detect.
Simon Sinek says we admire leaders because they take risks on behalf of the tribe. They'll start dancing first knowing they're risking looking silly if nobody joins them. Its impressive because the risk might not pay off.
Being the only person on the dance floor for 3 songs in a row is an interesting move. I think there is something high status about it - in that you're clearly showing that you aren't insecure about how you're seen. I think its polarising. Either it'll make people think a lot less of you, or more of you. Someone who's generally high status will often gain status by doing things like that. And someone who's low status will lose status over it.
People will either say "What an idiot, didn't he realise how goofy he looked?" or they'll say "Oh did you see what Jeff did to get the dance party started? We would never have gotten out there without him. I could never do that!".
It really depends on context.
the obvious difference even right in that sentence is that whether that person actually successfully led or miserably failed
_How_ you do it, and your own physical reaction to those around you while doing it, will reveal whether you're acting from a place of high or low status.
If the person going out on the dance floor is an unknown, then going out there is a status risk. If it pays off, they can become seen as high status: a trailblazer, a trendsetter. If it doesn't, they become (at least for the time being) low status: pathetic, cringe.
Having visible confidence and charisma can help make the gamble more likely to pay off, but it's not a guarantee.
In a situation where someone's status is not already known by a majority of people present, engaging in activities that rely on high status are a risk.
No one's status is inherent. It's a purely social construct—and it can vary depending on what group you're with!
If you look at, say, a black person in the mid-20th century, they might be very high status among other black people, but if they go among white people they will be seen as low status.
Leave your own community, go among people who don't know you (assuming there's nothing immediately visible about you that communicates status to them, as above), and whatever status you had before is only as relevant as you make it.
I started posting on LinkedIn this year. I was afraid all the time there will be assholes coming out of woods to just say “you’re an idiot take this post down” - it happened once in 6 months so not bad. Other asshole was reposting my stuff picking on the details basically making content out of me.
Blocking was effective and shadow banning is great as those most likely moved on not even knowing I blocked them.
Being truly low status isn't much fun.
What is truly low status though ? I'd say it is quite rare. Most people are average. Truly low status I guess would be to be homeless or be so disfigured you cannot find a mate - something of that sort. I think many average or even above average people who are not low status want to have more status and that's their real issue - the unmet desire for more power, not being actually low status.
It implies a defensive structure. I.e the advantage I get out of low status.
Op even refers to the concept of moats as used in business, but clumsily hand waves the concept to fit her own.
The cage of low status would be more apt
OP is using the term moat in the standard way, actually. Something you have to cross to get to the reward (skill at a particular thing), that most people won't pay the cost for (being temporarily bad at something and low status). It stops most people from even trying to compete.
Quote from the article:
"It’s called a moat because it’s an effective bar to getting where you’re trying to go, and operates much like a moat in the business sense — as a barrier to entry that keeps people on the inside (who are already good at something) safe from competition from the horde of people on the outside (who could be)."
Similarly, learning a sport (which must be done by practice and alongside conditioning towards the sport) without a good coach is risky with respect to safety and with respect to failing to learn the right thing.
Obviously, you are going to be bad at something when you begin. What did you expect? Know it, accept it, and don’t pretend otherwise. Who expects a beginner to be good? And why are you afraid of someone, I don’t know, laughing at you or being condescending? What kind of prick would do that unless they were envious of your courage or insecure in their own abilities?
The fact is that many people spend their entire lives putting up appearances, and with time, it becomes harder and harder for them to do anything about it, because the whole facade of false identity would have to crumble. They live is a state of fear of being outed and shamed. This is a recipe for mental illness.
This matter situation reminds me of the parable about the Emperor’s new clothes. The boy’s potency comes from stating the obvious. You find something similar in professional life: the person who is like that boy in a room full of posers and blowhards is a threat to pretense, because he states the obvious. In that way, he is more in touch with reality, even if it is at such a basic level. This is a great catalyst for change in an organization, if the insecure and prideful don’t dig in their heels.
The truth will set you free, and where there is good will, there is no fear. And learn to endure suffering.
People have always asked me: Why don’t you have a big house or <status-symbol-x> or <status-symbol-y>?
My response is always: Because I could use that capital to try something new. Granted, there were a few times I wish I had the house because of the market bumps but stocks have made up for it.
People are scared of failing, scared of losing the precarious position they have built up over the years. The housing market has made that 10x worse with the prices but humans need to try different things, learn different things. You can’t just do one thing for 70 years. My father had 4 careers, 3 wives, 5 children throughout his lifetime. 2 degrees. I’ve had 1 wife, 1 child, 1 career, 1 degree, because the world is 100x more expensive now. This is what prohibits us from finding our ikigai.
It consists on punishing people with low status when they objectively succeed and doing so brutally if they excel.
This entire post sounds like the complaints of someone with extreme privilege that lived a completely sheltered life.
In fact, the title of this blog, "Useful fictions", plays exactly into that.
Another CEO flying at 30,000' missing the forest for the trees.
That made me realize: no-one cares. You're the center of your life, and it's very important that you succeed, but the very few people who care about you (and whom you should care about) will have the patience, empathy, and admiration for you to be in that "moat", everyone else won't give a shit. If you fuck up, they'll forget about you in a minute. Try to remember about someone trying to do something you like but badly? You can't.
Whenever I see a public piano I seat at it. Sometimes it's just shit and I'm the only one happy I can press keys. Sometimes I manage to play a piece, and a random couple of people are happy about it.
This is a great article, follow its advice. The definition of low status is only the one you set for yourself. Push the shame and embrace it. No one cares anyways
- Embrace the role of imposter. Instead of whining about imposter syndrome, accept a-priori that you are an imposter. The game is to survive as long as possible as an imposter in a world full of naturals. You lose not when you are made out, but when you give up.
- Embrace being a useless git. You're an idiot, you have no talent whatsoever, you don't have the skill yet, and there's no hope you'll ever acquire it. So, no pressure, you're only playing. Anything beyond failing completely is a bonus.
- Commit to "open to goal". You are starting today and you'll go on for as long as it takes. Possibly until you die. There's no deadline and no expected speed. You're just being stubborn and refuse to stop trying even in the face of evidence that you have no chance.
- Be delusional about "the hack". You are special and you've discovered a hack that makes it easier and faster for you to acquire the new skill and apply it successfully than it is for most people. All you have to do is go through the motions, "the hack" will take care of things.
- Fight injustice. You are _entitled_ to have this skill and the success it affords people, it is your god-given, inalienable right. But the world / family / society / boss / ex / whatever screwed you and you've been deprived of what's rightfully yours. Fuck them, you are now on a quest to acquire by brute force what you deserve.