Decline, but the conversation would never have got that far anyway, and isn’t going to get any further. I’m not very good at maintaining a conversation, but when I deliberately put out the “please shut up and go away” vibes it has no chance. :-)
I’m not sure what this has to do with the original scenario, where the two people are still trying to assess each other. Or what status has to do with those examples.
I’m not sure what this has to do with the original scenario, where the two people are still trying to assess each other. Or what status has to do with those examples.
Ah, the confusing world of NT social games…
Basically, imagine each person P has a number X, called their “statusvalue”, and the way we respond to others is a function of the statusvalue difference between us and the person we respond to. Suppose that your number is, say, 5, and the person you are approaching is single, sought-after and attractive, and therefore has a statusvalue of 8. Therefore your body’s automatic response will be a “+3″ type response, i.e. you will defer to the person you are talking to, attempt to please them, etc.
In order to work out the correct response, you need to think what your response would be if the person asking you for the drink were a 2 on the statusvalue scale. This will be a “-3” type response, i.e. you will assert your desires over theirs, and interpret their behavior in terms of whether it meets your expectations. Then, you gradually condition yourself to always give “-3″ type responses, i.e. give off signals that you are three statusvalue points above everyone.
Imagine each person P has a number X, called their “statusvalue”, and the way we respond to others is a function of the statusvalue difference between us and the person we respond to.
The way we respond to others has a lot more to it than that. If I’m approached by someone of the wrong sexual orientation for me, then my declining their advances has nothing to do with status. The same with 15-year-old girls (the only example in the original version of your comment). My response to these people will be whatever is necessary to get them to give up on the sexual advances. This does not strike me as a useful response to someone that I would like to get together with.
Perhaps the idea you are trying to get across is that you should begin by trying to put the other person off, but (if you still want to get together with them) take care not to do so too effectively? I am familiar with the custom of ritually refusing a gift before accepting it—is this something similar?
Are you speaking from personal experience or is this something you have only worked out on paper?
If I’m approached by someone of the wrong sexual orientation for me, then my declining their advances has nothing to do with status.
That’s why I said statusvalue—i.e. something that is a combination of their overall status and their value to you.
you should begin by trying to put the other person off,
Not really—as I said, it is more abstract than that—the idea is to approach the interaction from a higher-statusvalue frame, because ultimately (in this case) that is what the other person is testing for.
Are you speaking from personal experience or is this something you have only worked out on paper?
This particular example is taken from the world of pick-up, which has been tested more extensively than you can imagine.
EDIT: though the idea of a “social coprocessor” is speculation.
You think it’s abnormal to ever show up at bars and clubs? Most young people go to either a bar or a club (or party, cafe, music gig, etc) at least, say, once a month.
I think a lot of people, when they first turn 21 (or whatever the legal drinking age is in their jurisdiction) go through a phase of going to meat-markety type places, but eventually become disillusioned with that ‘scene’ and grow out of it.
That’s why I said statusvalue—i.e. something that is a combination of their overall status and their value to you.
I would call that simply value. If their status matters to me, it is part of their value to me; if it does not, it is irrelevant.
This particular example is taken from the world of pick-up, which has been tested more extensively than you can imagine.
Tested by you? Ok, maybe that’s too personal a question, but I’m aware in general terms of the PUA stuff, and I have only a limited interest in soup of the soup.
On the first day, you have a delicious chicken. The next day you make soup with the bones and leftovers. On the third day you make soup from the leftover soup.
In other words, an exposition only indirectly connected with the source, unrefreshed by contact with real life.
I’m one of them. I’m not committed to the view that the rather crude theory Roko outlines is true, but acting as if it’s true indeed seems to be useful. I’m not a PUArtist, I’m a PUInstrumentalist.
I’ve never understood why people think that’s effective.
What good does it do to act like you’re higher status if you’re not? You can’t change your face or your income by signaling. Is everybody really so gullible?
And also—I’ve not spent a huge amount of time in bars, but I’ve never seen anyone ask a stranger for a drink.
What good does it do to act like you’re higher status if you’re not? You can’t change your face or your income by signaling. Is everybody really so gullible?
Income and looks are only one component of status. Other components are determined by signaling and other forms of implicit communication in actual interactions. So, merely acting like you are high status will go a long way to convince people that you are, as long as you aren’t giving off contradictory low status signals also.
One of the reason that people play status games (of which “buy me a drink” often is), is because there is a margin of error in status perception, and poking the other person with a status ploy is a way to confirm or disconfirm your initial impression of their status. If you believe that you are higher status that someone, and you attempt a successful status grab that they submit to, then it confirms that you are higher status.
As I’ve hypothesized, the way normal people tend to interact (or at least, a typical mode for certain types of extraverts to interact) is to constantly bump up against each other socially in mini-dominance battles and figure out the pecking order by seeing who can away with what against who.
This form of interaction used to be rather alien to me, and I would interpret it as an affront (which is how RichardKennaway seems to interpret it), but Ben Kovitz’s weird psychology wiki gave me some ideas to help understand it.
From an extraverted perspective, you see everything that someone does as an attempt to negotiate with others.
From an introverted perspective, negotiation has nothing to do with it. What is good is good, and that’s why you do it.
So, for example, extraverts (people for whom an extraverted perspective is their “home base”) typically interact by putting something on the table for others to react to, whether they like it or not.
Introverts (people for whom an introverted perspective is their “home base”) typically interact by first asking permission to enter another person’s space. You view each person as trying to understand and practice the good in his own way, and this process is not something to interfere with lightly.
A deep principle of negotiation is that it’s a process of discovery, not simply a process of getting your way. You can find out how much someone is willing to bend only by pushing them that far. You take what’s takable, not what you’ve decided is proper by some kind of a priori criteria.
Negotiation is forcing a choice. You take a position; the other party must accept, refuse, or counteroffer.
Status is partly a process of empirical discovery. It is decided through negotiation. People with different phenotypes approach this negotiation in different ways. Some people negotiate by acting lower in status to everyone. Some people negotiate by acting equal in status to everyone. Some people (such as neurotypical extraverts) negotiate by acting higher in status to everyone. Non-neurotypicals are simply unaware of this negotiation.
To people like us, neurotypical socially-dominant extraverts will seem annoying with their constant status grabs. But they aren’t necessarily trying to be jerks, they are just interacting the only way they know how. They are attempting to negotiate with you, they just begin the negotiation by driving a hard bargain. They may assume that you are like them, and expect you to stand up for yourself and give them a counter-offer back of a different status relationship, where instead of them being on top, you two are equals, or you are on top. They may even want you prove that you are higher status, and their test is an opportunity for you to do so. They will expect you to negotiate yourself, by either submitting, or attempting to fight back; what they won’t be able to understand is someone who doesn’t even participate in this sort of negotiation in the first place.
They will expect you to negotiate yourself, by either submitting, or attempting to fight back; what they won’t be able to understand is someone who doesn’t even participate in this sort of negotiation in the first place.
Yep. And depending on the way you opt out of the negotiation, you may be perceived as either very low self-esteem, or as an arrogant bastard.
The latter category (which I personally have been categorized as a lot) tends to happen when you assume that all people are supposed to be equal, dammit, and refuse to give ground to anything that isn’t Right with a capital R. This results in the problem of causing others to have to lose face when you win… and people don’t like it.
(Later in life, I’ve realized that it generally works better to arrange things so that other people can receive status strokes by siding with you, and they then tend to return the strokes.)
So, for example, extraverts (people for whom an extraverted perspective is their “home base”) typically interact by putting something on the table for others to react to, whether they like it or not.
Introverts (people for whom an introverted perspective is their “home base”) typically interact by first asking permission to enter another person’s space. You view each person as trying to understand and practice the good in his own way, and this process is not something to interfere with lightly.
To people like us, neurotypical socially-dominant extraverts will seem annoying with their constant status grabs. But they aren’t necessarily trying to be jerks, they are just interacting the only way they know how. They are attempting to negotiate with you, they just begin the negotiation by driving a hard bargain.
Yeah this is a good analysis. Important for more rational/AS people is to realize that more emotion-driven NTs run their social interaction in hardware ==> they do things like little status grabs almost without thinking about it.
As long as we’re piling on anecdotes, I’ve asked folks for drinks on numerous occasions. And the bartender at a club I frequented back in the day used to give me my drinks for free.
imagine each person P has a number X, called their “statusvalue”, and the way we respond to others is a function of the statusvalue difference between us
I completely understand the general idea here, I just think the drink-buying thing is a bad example. In my experience, refusal to buy a drink for someone who’s flirting with you doesn’t send the signal “you’re X statusvalue lower than me”, it sends the signal “I’m not interested in playing this game at all”
Decline, but the conversation would never have got that far anyway, and isn’t going to get any further. I’m not very good at maintaining a conversation, but when I deliberately put out the “please shut up and go away” vibes it has no chance. :-)
I’m not sure what this has to do with the original scenario, where the two people are still trying to assess each other. Or what status has to do with those examples.
Ah, the confusing world of NT social games…
Basically, imagine each person P has a number X, called their “statusvalue”, and the way we respond to others is a function of the statusvalue difference between us and the person we respond to. Suppose that your number is, say, 5, and the person you are approaching is single, sought-after and attractive, and therefore has a statusvalue of 8. Therefore your body’s automatic response will be a “+3″ type response, i.e. you will defer to the person you are talking to, attempt to please them, etc.
In order to work out the correct response, you need to think what your response would be if the person asking you for the drink were a 2 on the statusvalue scale. This will be a “-3” type response, i.e. you will assert your desires over theirs, and interpret their behavior in terms of whether it meets your expectations. Then, you gradually condition yourself to always give “-3″ type responses, i.e. give off signals that you are three statusvalue points above everyone.
The way we respond to others has a lot more to it than that. If I’m approached by someone of the wrong sexual orientation for me, then my declining their advances has nothing to do with status. The same with 15-year-old girls (the only example in the original version of your comment). My response to these people will be whatever is necessary to get them to give up on the sexual advances. This does not strike me as a useful response to someone that I would like to get together with.
Perhaps the idea you are trying to get across is that you should begin by trying to put the other person off, but (if you still want to get together with them) take care not to do so too effectively? I am familiar with the custom of ritually refusing a gift before accepting it—is this something similar?
Are you speaking from personal experience or is this something you have only worked out on paper?
That’s why I said statusvalue—i.e. something that is a combination of their overall status and their value to you.
Not really—as I said, it is more abstract than that—the idea is to approach the interaction from a higher-statusvalue frame, because ultimately (in this case) that is what the other person is testing for.
This particular example is taken from the world of pick-up, which has been tested more extensively than you can imagine.
EDIT: though the idea of a “social coprocessor” is speculation.
On a very narrow and self-selecting sample, i.e. people who show up at bars and clubs with the express intention of getting “picked up”
You think it’s abnormal to ever show up at bars and clubs? Most young people go to either a bar or a club (or party, cafe, music gig, etc) at least, say, once a month.
I think a lot of people, when they first turn 21 (or whatever the legal drinking age is in their jurisdiction) go through a phase of going to meat-markety type places, but eventually become disillusioned with that ‘scene’ and grow out of it.
I would call that simply value. If their status matters to me, it is part of their value to me; if it does not, it is irrelevant.
Tested by you? Ok, maybe that’s too personal a question, but I’m aware in general terms of the PUA stuff, and I have only a limited interest in soup of the soup.
soup of the soup?
On the first day, you have a delicious chicken. The next day you make soup with the bones and leftovers. On the third day you make soup from the leftover soup.
In other words, an exposition only indirectly connected with the source, unrefreshed by contact with real life.
This is a legitimate concern—but there are plenty of people here who have used such methods successfully.
I’m one of them. I’m not committed to the view that the rather crude theory Roko outlines is true, but acting as if it’s true indeed seems to be useful. I’m not a PUArtist, I’m a PUInstrumentalist.
Indeed the instrumentality of certain worldviews is an interesting topic in rationality…
Sure—though the two are very strongly linked, value is really the key.
Sorry, what is “NT”? I read this blog often enough that I feel like I should know, but I don’t.
“Neurotypical”—in context, not being significantly autistic.
Thank you.
I’ve never understood why people think that’s effective.
What good does it do to act like you’re higher status if you’re not? You can’t change your face or your income by signaling. Is everybody really so gullible?
And also—I’ve not spent a huge amount of time in bars, but I’ve never seen anyone ask a stranger for a drink.
Income and looks are only one component of status. Other components are determined by signaling and other forms of implicit communication in actual interactions. So, merely acting like you are high status will go a long way to convince people that you are, as long as you aren’t giving off contradictory low status signals also.
One of the reason that people play status games (of which “buy me a drink” often is), is because there is a margin of error in status perception, and poking the other person with a status ploy is a way to confirm or disconfirm your initial impression of their status. If you believe that you are higher status that someone, and you attempt a successful status grab that they submit to, then it confirms that you are higher status.
As I’ve hypothesized, the way normal people tend to interact (or at least, a typical mode for certain types of extraverts to interact) is to constantly bump up against each other socially in mini-dominance battles and figure out the pecking order by seeing who can away with what against who.
This form of interaction used to be rather alien to me, and I would interpret it as an affront (which is how RichardKennaway seems to interpret it), but Ben Kovitz’s weird psychology wiki gave me some ideas to help understand it.
From an article on negotiation:
From another negotation article:
Status is partly a process of empirical discovery. It is decided through negotiation. People with different phenotypes approach this negotiation in different ways. Some people negotiate by acting lower in status to everyone. Some people negotiate by acting equal in status to everyone. Some people (such as neurotypical extraverts) negotiate by acting higher in status to everyone. Non-neurotypicals are simply unaware of this negotiation.
To people like us, neurotypical socially-dominant extraverts will seem annoying with their constant status grabs. But they aren’t necessarily trying to be jerks, they are just interacting the only way they know how. They are attempting to negotiate with you, they just begin the negotiation by driving a hard bargain. They may assume that you are like them, and expect you to stand up for yourself and give them a counter-offer back of a different status relationship, where instead of them being on top, you two are equals, or you are on top. They may even want you prove that you are higher status, and their test is an opportunity for you to do so. They will expect you to negotiate yourself, by either submitting, or attempting to fight back; what they won’t be able to understand is someone who doesn’t even participate in this sort of negotiation in the first place.
Yep. And depending on the way you opt out of the negotiation, you may be perceived as either very low self-esteem, or as an arrogant bastard.
The latter category (which I personally have been categorized as a lot) tends to happen when you assume that all people are supposed to be equal, dammit, and refuse to give ground to anything that isn’t Right with a capital R. This results in the problem of causing others to have to lose face when you win… and people don’t like it.
(Later in life, I’ve realized that it generally works better to arrange things so that other people can receive status strokes by siding with you, and they then tend to return the strokes.)
I’ve heard this before, but framed as ‘Ask Culture meets Guess Culture’.
Even guess cultures have that distinction; look up the etymology of otaku sometime.
Yeah this is a good analysis. Important for more rational/AS people is to realize that more emotion-driven NTs run their social interaction in hardware ==> they do things like little status grabs almost without thinking about it.
No, people are godshatter , they value signals of status in and of themselves.
Status isn’t something you have, it’s something you do.
As long as we’re piling on anecdotes, I’ve asked folks for drinks on numerous occasions. And the bartender at a club I frequented back in the day used to give me my drinks for free.
I completely understand the general idea here, I just think the drink-buying thing is a bad example. In my experience, refusal to buy a drink for someone who’s flirting with you doesn’t send the signal “you’re X statusvalue lower than me”, it sends the signal “I’m not interested in playing this game at all”
I think you’re misunderstanding the “refusal.” It’s not a “No, go away,” it’s more like “you buy me one first, I’m cuter” said playfully.