Agreed with 1 and 2. Human forgetfulness is yikes, and there’s a kind of existential dread in re-reading a book after a few years and not recognizing any of it.
I’m skeptical of 3, however. I don’t necessarily see your examples as demonstrating that the act of reading books is intrinsically high status. An alternative interpretation is that people who earn money by writing and being read, and whose readers likely read a lot, make bids to raise the status of reading. And relatedly, the act of publically dissing books is either considered low status, or these people make bids to lower its status. All this would be consistent with book-reading being, among the broader population, ~irrelevant for status.
I don’t approve of suggestions to lie (and I would’ve upvoted the post if not for the parts which advocated for lying). But I don’t think the lying is necessary, either. Assuming the aforementioned status benefits even exist, here are some virtuous alternative strategies to gain (or lose less) status on this topic:
Make bids to lower the status of (reading) books. The OP seems like a good example of this (again, except for the suggestion to lie). Another way would be to associate reading with passive consumption of content, and contrast it with the more virtuous acts of creating content or otherwise achieving real-world outcomes.
Make bids to increase the status of skimming books. E.g. signal-boost people who advocate for skimming books.
Demonstrate the virtues of skimming books by visibly deriving outsized benefits from your book-skimming habit. Even quicker, refer to famous productive people who habitually skim books.
If you don’t like books, don’t diss them in the presence of people who would lower your status for this. Same for not liking to read books. There’s no need to have a public opinion on every issue. (That said, I wonder how unpopular your position on books even is. It seems too popular for the 10th Dentist subreddit, for example.)
SBF-related: Probably nobody will care about your controversial statements one way or another, until you commit a crime which makes you national news. At that point any controversial statement, no matter how mild, will be held against you. This suggests a strategy of not making the controversial statements, and/or of not commiting the crime...
Agreed with 1 and 2. Human forgetfulness is yikes, and there’s a kind of existential dread in re-reading a book after a few years and not recognizing any of it.
I’m skeptical of 3, however. I don’t necessarily see your examples as demonstrating that the act of reading books is intrinsically high status. An alternative interpretation is that people who earn money by writing and being read, and whose readers likely read a lot, make bids to raise the status of reading. And relatedly, the act of publically dissing books is either considered low status, or these people make bids to lower its status. All this would be consistent with book-reading being, among the broader population, ~irrelevant for status.
I don’t approve of suggestions to lie (and I would’ve upvoted the post if not for the parts which advocated for lying). But I don’t think the lying is necessary, either. Assuming the aforementioned status benefits even exist, here are some virtuous alternative strategies to gain (or lose less) status on this topic:
Make bids to lower the status of (reading) books. The OP seems like a good example of this (again, except for the suggestion to lie). Another way would be to associate reading with passive consumption of content, and contrast it with the more virtuous acts of creating content or otherwise achieving real-world outcomes.
Make bids to increase the status of skimming books. E.g. signal-boost people who advocate for skimming books.
Demonstrate the virtues of skimming books by visibly deriving outsized benefits from your book-skimming habit. Even quicker, refer to famous productive people who habitually skim books.
If you don’t like books, don’t diss them in the presence of people who would lower your status for this. Same for not liking to read books. There’s no need to have a public opinion on every issue. (That said, I wonder how unpopular your position on books even is. It seems too popular for the 10th Dentist subreddit, for example.)
SBF-related: Probably nobody will care about your controversial statements one way or another, until you commit a crime which makes you national news. At that point any controversial statement, no matter how mild, will be held against you. This suggests a strategy of not making the controversial statements, and/or of not commiting the crime...