If you are not playing status games, your status is irrelevant and you should act accordingly.
Even when you are not playing status games, other people notice your status, and it influences how they react on you. So unless your goal is completely independent on other people, you should pay some attention to your status.
For example, let’s say that my goal is to find new people to join our local rationalist group. If I appear completely low status, most people won’t even listen to me. And if they will, they will most likely associate LW as “something low-status people care about”, so they will avoid it. Maybe one person in thousand will look at LW anyway, overcome the association with low status, and join. Yes, it is possible… but I made it needlessly difficult. You don’t get extra points for getting the same result in a more difficult way.
On the other hand, if I appear high status, people are more likely to listen to me, more likely to remember what I said (until they get home and start their computers), and more likely to overcome the initial obstacles (e.g. to read a few articles from the Sequences). Then of course, some people will stay and most of them will leave. But the results will be much better than in the first situation, because more people who “have a chance to become a rationalist” really got the information, looked at the website, and didn’t give up at the first obstacle.
People are like that. You should know it, and you should include this information in your plans. Even in rebel groups, there are high-status rebels and low-status rebels, and the high-status rebels have more say about the shape of the rebellion. Even the self-image is kind of a status of oneself in one’s own eyes.
The true part is that if you optimize for something else and only use status instrumentally, at some points you sacrifice some additional status for more gains in the area you care about. Which will result is less status than if you optimized for status instead.
To use my previous example, I wouldn’t want to make myself (and by proxy, the rationalist community) appear so high status that people interacting with me would be too shy to join. Even the fact that I am inviting people to join is not status-maximizing. (A status-maximizing step would be to tell them they are not worthy to join.) Therefore I am not trying to maximize my status… but I need to keep it high enough to get the message through.
Now that I think about it, I interchangably used “identity” and “status” in the post while the two are actually very distinct things. Identity is “I am” statements. If you’re optimizing for identity you’re trying to get as many people as possible to agree with the statement “I am __”, where in the blank goes “a goth”, “a nice guy”, “intelligent”, “rational”, “a Democrat”, etc. Whereas status is a consequence of at least two cognitive algorithms in our brain left over from tribal times, one which instantly assigns a status value to the people we interact with, and another that constantly maintains a status value for ourselves (self-esteem). If you’re optimizing for status, you’re trying to get other people’s brains to assign you high status.
I would argue that optimizing for identity is mostly useless unless you’re Boring Bob, or you need to fit in with a certain group of people who hate outsiders. Optimizing for status, on the other hand, is probably almost always useful, although you can of course be low-status and have healthy and satisfying social and romantic relationships.
If you’re optimizing for identity you’re trying to get as many people as possible to agree with the statement “I am __”, where in the blank goes “a goth”, “a nice guy”, “intelligent”, “rational”, “a Democrat”, etc.
I do not concur and I think this statement shows we are talking about different things.
Identity is the territory which informs “I am __” maps. Optimizing for identity doesn’t mean convincing other people that their map of you is consistent with your map of you, it means at most making your map of yourself as accurate as possible.
For example, let’s say that my goal is to find new people to join our local rationalist group. If I appear completely low status, most people won’t even listen to me. And if they will, they will most likely associate LW as “something low-status people care about”, so they will avoid it.
That means that playing the status game is instrumentally useful. Play the status game when it is instrumentally useful. If playing the status game is inherently useful, play the status game. If neither is true, do not play the status game.
If your identity includes “Effective Recruiter for meetups”, then maintaining an appropriate status better be part of being yourself.
Even when you are not playing status games, other people notice your status, and it influences how they react on you. So unless your goal is completely independent on other people, you should pay some attention to your status.
For example, let’s say that my goal is to find new people to join our local rationalist group. If I appear completely low status, most people won’t even listen to me. And if they will, they will most likely associate LW as “something low-status people care about”, so they will avoid it. Maybe one person in thousand will look at LW anyway, overcome the association with low status, and join. Yes, it is possible… but I made it needlessly difficult. You don’t get extra points for getting the same result in a more difficult way.
On the other hand, if I appear high status, people are more likely to listen to me, more likely to remember what I said (until they get home and start their computers), and more likely to overcome the initial obstacles (e.g. to read a few articles from the Sequences). Then of course, some people will stay and most of them will leave. But the results will be much better than in the first situation, because more people who “have a chance to become a rationalist” really got the information, looked at the website, and didn’t give up at the first obstacle.
People are like that. You should know it, and you should include this information in your plans. Even in rebel groups, there are high-status rebels and low-status rebels, and the high-status rebels have more say about the shape of the rebellion. Even the self-image is kind of a status of oneself in one’s own eyes.
The true part is that if you optimize for something else and only use status instrumentally, at some points you sacrifice some additional status for more gains in the area you care about. Which will result is less status than if you optimized for status instead.
To use my previous example, I wouldn’t want to make myself (and by proxy, the rationalist community) appear so high status that people interacting with me would be too shy to join. Even the fact that I am inviting people to join is not status-maximizing. (A status-maximizing step would be to tell them they are not worthy to join.) Therefore I am not trying to maximize my status… but I need to keep it high enough to get the message through.
Now that I think about it, I interchangably used “identity” and “status” in the post while the two are actually very distinct things. Identity is “I am” statements. If you’re optimizing for identity you’re trying to get as many people as possible to agree with the statement “I am __”, where in the blank goes “a goth”, “a nice guy”, “intelligent”, “rational”, “a Democrat”, etc. Whereas status is a consequence of at least two cognitive algorithms in our brain left over from tribal times, one which instantly assigns a status value to the people we interact with, and another that constantly maintains a status value for ourselves (self-esteem). If you’re optimizing for status, you’re trying to get other people’s brains to assign you high status.
I would argue that optimizing for identity is mostly useless unless you’re Boring Bob, or you need to fit in with a certain group of people who hate outsiders. Optimizing for status, on the other hand, is probably almost always useful, although you can of course be low-status and have healthy and satisfying social and romantic relationships.
I might edit the post to make this clearer.
I do not concur and I think this statement shows we are talking about different things.
Identity is the territory which informs “I am __” maps. Optimizing for identity doesn’t mean convincing other people that their map of you is consistent with your map of you, it means at most making your map of yourself as accurate as possible.
That means that playing the status game is instrumentally useful. Play the status game when it is instrumentally useful. If playing the status game is inherently useful, play the status game. If neither is true, do not play the status game.
If your identity includes “Effective Recruiter for meetups”, then maintaining an appropriate status better be part of being yourself.