Wow, impressive! This leads to a conundrum—say that I’m trying to acquire high status to get power to do good, but acquiring and signaling that status requires selfish behavior. It means that even a utility-maximizing strategy could be casually interpreted by many as “hypocritical”. This dilemma underscores the hypothesis that in order to achieve any semblance of generally self-consistent “good” requires a society made up of agents besides human ones, agents that can modify their status-appraisal mechanisms to a significant extent.
Wow, impressive! This leads to a conundrum—say that I’m trying to acquire high status to get power to do good, but acquiring and signaling that status requires selfish behavior. It means that even a utility-maximizing strategy could be casually interpreted by many as “hypocritical”. This dilemma underscores the hypothesis that in order to achieve any semblance of generally self-consistent “good” requires a society made up of agents besides human ones, agents that can modify their status-appraisal mechanisms to a significant extent.
Not only that, by going up in status you’re making people lower status, it’s a zero-sum gain.