You have a lot more nodes that are more precise and useful in various situations, I have started enumerating them: prestige, reputation, popularity, wealth, social class, political power...
No, if you think that those concepts can be used to compensate for an artificial prohibition against ‘status’ then you do not understand either the term or a broad aspect of human behavior. If people limit themselves to those nodes because a ‘status’ node is forbidden to them then they can be expected to:
Die.
Not get laid.
Be severely handicapped in your friendships.
Get fired.
Or, at the very least, avoid all the above problems by working far harder to learn all the surface details of what works while ignoring the underlying pattern that could allow you to learn the related ‘status navigating’ skills in a general way.
Things like prestige and wealth are useful concepts in their own right but to limit your thinking to only considering each of them independently is to impair your ability to form critical inferences about general patterns of human behavior.understand They are related concepts and more importantly human intuitions and behavioral instincts are integrally tied up in that relationship. A word to represent that area in a map of reality is critical.
There is a difference between tabooing a broad concept in a specific instance for the purpose of exploring a narrow topic in more detail and just plain tabooing to whatever extent you can. The latter is an epistemic parasite that needs to be crushed mercilessly whenever it appears. The below quote is a representative example:
I have reached a point where I now suspect the mere appearance of “status” in an argument on LW is a useful heuristic to detect sloppy thinking.
What you’re quoting me as saying is markedly different from saying that I wish for an outright ban on the word “status”. (I think you’re digging yourself into a hole, and I suggest you ought to stop digging.)
I wish we’d go back to specifics, for instance where I pointed out that “institutional status” was a poor explanation for why there hasn’t been a male counterpart of the feminist movement, and offered an alternative that was at least supported by historical facts (women organizing as a movement to seek the right to vote).
What you’re quoting me as saying is markedly different from saying that I wish for an outright ban on the word “status”.
I wouldn’t say that you did and even if you did expressing that wish would be counter-productive to the goal of achieving your desired influence. What I am countering, to whatever extent possible, is the introduction of trivial social pressure that impairs the ability of participants to develop a full understanding on how status influences the behavior of social mammals, particularly humans.
I think you’re digging yourself into a hole, and I suggest you ought to stop digging.
I disagree (and mildly object) to your claim, but not to the gist of the suggestion. My goal here is not to persuade you but to present a counter a counter to (what is in my judgment an extremely mild) toxic influence on the generalized conversation. This is not served by extended wrangling in one instance but rather by persistent response whenever such influence surfaces.
I wish we’d go back to specifics, for instance where I pointed out that “institutional status” was a poor explanation for why there hasn’t been a male counterpart of the feminist movement, and offered an alternative that was at least supported by historical facts (women organizing as a movement to seek the right to vote).
I don’t recall whether I commented on the topic but I share your objection to that usage. Any given concept should be used when, and only when, it is the most appropriate explanation for the context (that is, it balances brevity, clarity and accuracy).
Misusing the concept of ‘status’ when it doesn’t really help understanding things makes it harder to usefully draw inferences on things that actually rely on human status instincts in much the same way as associating the term in general with Bad Things. In this regard our purposes are mostly in alignment.
Another possible explanation is that a lot of the disproportionate mistreatment of men is by other men, so a simple gender split can’t address the problem.
This observation is in no way a criticism of Feminism but an approximately equal amount of the relevant mistreatment of women is from other women too. I don’t believe that problems relating to sexual discrimination or gender characterizations are often best explained in terms of actions of the other sex and or gender. The problems are rather a lot deeper than that.
IIRC, the comment I was replying to mostly mentioned unequal impact on men of war, and possibly of the legal system.
Feminism seems to deal with culturally driven abuse of women by women by blaming it on men. Since men have more overt power, this is at least vaguely plausible, though I think it leaves a lot out.
I’ve heard attempts to blame man vs. man abuse on women by saying that women prefer soldiers. I think this lacks plausibility because there’s obviously so much more driving wars.
The theory of sexual selection contains two parts: intersexual selection (mate choice) and intrasexual selection (competition within each sex. The view in evolutionary psychology is that males compete more fiercely than females in polygynous species like humans. In Male, Female, David Geary says that the primary theory for greater male body strength is female sexual selection pressures causing competition between males. A history of male-male competition is written onto men’s bodies. Greater female selectivity provides not only local incentives for greater competition between males, but appears to have caused males to be adapted for this competition.
Modern day war isn’t only only about male-male competition, of course. Though a lot of socially-harmful behavior throughout history may relate to male competition for status and resources. Female preferences create an incentive for this competition, even if women don’t actually like many of the forms that male competition ends up in (e.g. duels, video games, etc...).
To get even more speculative, I will propose that greater average male systemizing was sexually selected for. It’s probably similar to greater average male aggression: some women find it attractive, many don’t, and probably the main reason males have more of that trait is because they needed it to beat out other males.
It should go without saying that I’m not holding present-day or historical women morally responsible for the effects of their aggregate preferences on men.
Here’s a notion of mine: Knights compete for women by competing with other knights. Troubadours compete for women by getting good at things women like. When troubadours succeed, knights think it’s very unfair.
I could believe in evolutionary overshoot, where male-male competition becomes so reinforcing that it leads to less reproductive success.
These days, we’re living in an evolutionarily weird environment where higher status means fewer offspring. I’m not sure how long this has been going on.
In re upper body strength: How would you tell the difference between sexual selection by women vs. better ability to provide for and defend families?
For what it’s worth, I told my theory that war is actually a scam by older men to get their younger competition out of the way to a man, and he was shocked and annoyed. My theory had completely left out the younger men’s strongly felt motivations. Of course, even if I’m right, that wouldn’t be how things feel to the older men, either.
An alternate theory is that uninhibited young men are apt to be dangerous, and societies develop drastic methods of socializing them.
For what it’s worth, I told my theory that war is actually a scam by older men to get their younger competition out of the way to a man, and he was shocked and annoyed.
Probably not as much as a woman would be if you told her that becoming a soldier is an even worse deal for her than for young men, evolutionarily speaking.
Anyone want to take a crack at evolutionary pressures for nations, and in particular, the pressure to convince people that being soldiers is the one sure way for people without extraordinary talents to do something important with their lives?
Eh, I was asking the same thing last week. Check out the responses I got. That’s why I’m just throwing the warning flag, not saying you’ve committed the error.
I recently read Howard Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle, which heavily relies on the phenomenon you’re referring to but which was criticized for being group selectionist. (He views societies as being superorganisms that can collectively act in ways that further themselves, which results in individuals behaving very much like cells, and having the same tendencies, like gradually dying when they’re not put to use for the rest of the organism, which is how he explains suicidal tendencies.)
Probably not as much as a woman would be if you told her that becoming a soldier is an even worse deal for her than for young men, evolutionarily speaking.
Which would be even worse if you explained why, including the part that involves raping the women in the other tribe when you win and quite possibly killing the existing children.
A small difference in framing often makes a disproportionate difference in my response and I agree with everything you are saying here.
Even so, just considering the whole question of ‘blame’ feels odd to me. That’s a primarily social explanation and if it happens to have epistemic merit too that is just a bonus. Since I don’t feel personally involved in the question “blame” based thinking just doesn’t spring to mind naturally.
I expect a different experience on a question that is closer to home, that I am politically invested in. For example the meta question of the merit of blaming. When considering that topic it would undoubtedly feel natural to me to produce explanations blaming ‘blame’ for all sorts of epistemic and instrumental crimes. Mind you, these objections would for most part be accurate, valid and reasonable, but they would still be prompted by a whole different class of thought.
(Disclaimer: Posts written by me when time-since-sleeping > 30 can be expected to have far more errors in grammar and clarity of expression and slightly less intellectual merit at the level of underlying content.)
I have to proof read a lot more. Simple grammar errors slip in. Most commonly the ones you get if you change your mind about the best way to present something but end up putting half of the first version there and half of the second in a way that doesn’t really fit. I also outright type the wrong word sometimes, that part of my brain that links up concepts with labels is a real weak point. For most part I avoid the problem when writing but my vocabulary is totally abused. I can think in terms of all the words I know, I can phrase the sentences how they should flow given what I know to be words available to me, but sometimes the actual word is not accessible when I try to say/type it. Freaky stuff.
I don’t start losing the ability to program until about the 48 hour mark.
No, if you think that those concepts can be used to compensate for an artificial prohibition against ‘status’ then you do not understand either the term or a broad aspect of human behavior.
I may not understand the term then: what is the difference between “status” and “prestige” or “reputation”?
I will not give an exhaustive list explaining the difference or attempt to define the nuances of the boundaries between them (because that is hard and I am sure someone else is better qualified to answer.) What I will do is point out some obvious differences that spring to mind, cases where to use the words interchangeably would just be wrong.
Prestige is far less broad ranging in meaning than reputation. It refers to a ranking along some scale of generalized impressiveness with which you can demand they be considered.
Reputation can refer more generally to anything that popular belief attributes to you. This will particularly apply to traits that you can be expected to display. It may be the case that you have a reputation for doing good work and that this work has also given you prestige, but the two don’t always go hand in hand. You can have a reputation of not being as prestigious but of being right more often. You can have a reputation for being lousy at securing prestige...
Status can be influenced by prestige and reputation. With prestige in particular it is hard to get prestige without getting some degree of status. But you can certainly have status without having any prestige whatsoever.
Status is an approximation of what you would get if you could ask a tribe of social animals to line themselves up in order of dominance, rank or in general awesomeness.
Someone else (or me with more time) could almost certainly provide a clearer picture of the differences but that scratches the surface somewhat.
A lot of the talk here has been about what might be called ongoing status—the moment-by-moment behaviors which cause people to be taken account of or not.
I haven’t seen much about getting positional status—the official titles and achievements which (I think) mean you don’t need to put as much work into ongoing status.
That’s a good point. I suspect I tend to neglect that status element because, well, I understood authority and official authority and achievements when I was 5 and was competent (and somewhat perfectionist) in managing such status relationships. It was at least 15 years later that I began to really understand status in terms of social power and developed at least the rudimentary skills required to manage it.
I may not understand the term then: what is the difference between “status” and “prestige” or “reputation”?
Status is about people’s purely subjective perceptions of whom they admire and wish to associate with, imitate, and/or support—or, in case of low status, the opposite of these things—because it results in good feelings. (Though of course the situation is usually complicated by the entangled instrumental implications of these acts.)
Reputation is an established record of past behavior. Status can stem from reputation, but doesn’t have to. For example, strangers among whom you have no reputation of any kind will quickly evaluate your status based on various clues as soon as they meet you.
Prestige is a more elusive term. Sometimes it’s used as a synonym for outstandingly good, high status-conferring reputation. At other times, it denotes a property of certain things or traits to signal high status by a broad social convention (e.g. a prestige club, or a prestige accent).
Status is about people’s purely subjective perceptions of whom they admire and wish to associate with, imitate, and/or support—or, in case of low status, the opposite of these things—because it results in good feelings.
So, status entirely depends on other people’s preferences? That is, a statement that person X is high status isn’t saying anything about X, but about the people around X and their opinions of X? In that case, status doesn’t seem very well defined: the exact same person, in the exact same situation and context, with the exact same behaviors could have a very different status depending on quirks of the people around.
To a large extent, yes. Status is, as Vladimir_Nesov put it, a godshatter concept. It only exists as a node in people’s brains, in their decision-making processes, so you don’t have one status-value (whatever that may consist of), you have one for every person evaluating you (including yourself).* But, as Vladimir_M details, it will often exhibit a lot of convergence across different evaluators, and in those cases we can safely just refer to “status” without too much ambiguity.
*Yes, technically this is written in a kind of silly way, but I hope it’s clear what’s meant...
So, status entirely depends on other people’s preferences? That is, a statement that person X is high status isn’t saying anything about X, but about the people around X and their opinions of X? In that case, status doesn’t seem very well defined: the exact same person, in the exact same situation and context, with the exact same behaviors could have a very different status depending on quirks of the people around.
Clearly, some particular behavior can have different status implications among different groups of people. For example, the proper way to dress to signal high status varies greatly between cultures, or even between different occasions within the same culture, and a mismatch may well have the opposite effect. Moreover, an action increasing your status in one group can simultaneously decrease it in another one that is overlapping or broader. For example, if you belong to a strict religious sect, then conspicuous devotional behaviors may raise your status within the sect, but make you look like a weirdo to other people and thus decrease your status in the broader society. I’d say this much should be obvious.
However, some status markers are a matter of near-consensus within large societies, or characteristic of significant portions of their inhabitants, or perhaps of disproportionately influential elite groups. Such considerations of status have immense importance for virtually all aspects of organized society, and they exert crucial influence on the opinions and behaviors of individuals. They are well defined within the given society and culture, though they likely won’t be invariant cross-culturally.
Finally, some status markers are arguably a human universal, though they may be concealed by slightly different ways in which they are expressed in different cultures. The role of such status markers in human social behaviors, and especially mating behaviors, is, for me at least, a fascinating topic.
In that case, status doesn’t seem very well defined: the exact same person, in the exact same situation and context, with the exact same behaviors could have a very different status depending on quirks of the people around.
That isn’t a reason to consider ‘status’ poorly defined. It just notes that it is (objectively) subjective. In fact, the very objection you are presenting here cuts to near the heart of what ‘status’ is a helpful shortcut to understanding.
As an exercise, substitute ‘rude’ into the above quote, replacing status. The two terms are quite similar in the way they have an objective meaning that depends on the subjective nature of other people in the environment.
No, if you think that those concepts can be used to compensate for an artificial prohibition against ‘status’ then you do not understand either the term or a broad aspect of human behavior. If people limit themselves to those nodes because a ‘status’ node is forbidden to them then they can be expected to:
Die.
Not get laid.
Be severely handicapped in your friendships.
Get fired.
Or, at the very least, avoid all the above problems by working far harder to learn all the surface details of what works while ignoring the underlying pattern that could allow you to learn the related ‘status navigating’ skills in a general way.
Things like prestige and wealth are useful concepts in their own right but to limit your thinking to only considering each of them independently is to impair your ability to form critical inferences about general patterns of human behavior.understand They are related concepts and more importantly human intuitions and behavioral instincts are integrally tied up in that relationship. A word to represent that area in a map of reality is critical.
There is a difference between tabooing a broad concept in a specific instance for the purpose of exploring a narrow topic in more detail and just plain tabooing to whatever extent you can. The latter is an epistemic parasite that needs to be crushed mercilessly whenever it appears. The below quote is a representative example:
What you’re quoting me as saying is markedly different from saying that I wish for an outright ban on the word “status”. (I think you’re digging yourself into a hole, and I suggest you ought to stop digging.)
I wish we’d go back to specifics, for instance where I pointed out that “institutional status” was a poor explanation for why there hasn’t been a male counterpart of the feminist movement, and offered an alternative that was at least supported by historical facts (women organizing as a movement to seek the right to vote).
I wouldn’t say that you did and even if you did expressing that wish would be counter-productive to the goal of achieving your desired influence. What I am countering, to whatever extent possible, is the introduction of trivial social pressure that impairs the ability of participants to develop a full understanding on how status influences the behavior of social mammals, particularly humans.
I disagree (and mildly object) to your claim, but not to the gist of the suggestion. My goal here is not to persuade you but to present a counter a counter to (what is in my judgment an extremely mild) toxic influence on the generalized conversation. This is not served by extended wrangling in one instance but rather by persistent response whenever such influence surfaces.
I don’t recall whether I commented on the topic but I share your objection to that usage. Any given concept should be used when, and only when, it is the most appropriate explanation for the context (that is, it balances brevity, clarity and accuracy).
Misusing the concept of ‘status’ when it doesn’t really help understanding things makes it harder to usefully draw inferences on things that actually rely on human status instincts in much the same way as associating the term in general with Bad Things. In this regard our purposes are mostly in alignment.
Another possible explanation is that a lot of the disproportionate mistreatment of men is by other men, so a simple gender split can’t address the problem.
This observation is in no way a criticism of Feminism but an approximately equal amount of the relevant mistreatment of women is from other women too. I don’t believe that problems relating to sexual discrimination or gender characterizations are often best explained in terms of actions of the other sex and or gender. The problems are rather a lot deeper than that.
IIRC, the comment I was replying to mostly mentioned unequal impact on men of war, and possibly of the legal system.
Feminism seems to deal with culturally driven abuse of women by women by blaming it on men. Since men have more overt power, this is at least vaguely plausible, though I think it leaves a lot out.
I’ve heard attempts to blame man vs. man abuse on women by saying that women prefer soldiers. I think this lacks plausibility because there’s obviously so much more driving wars.
The theory of sexual selection contains two parts: intersexual selection (mate choice) and intrasexual selection (competition within each sex. The view in evolutionary psychology is that males compete more fiercely than females in polygynous species like humans. In Male, Female, David Geary says that the primary theory for greater male body strength is female sexual selection pressures causing competition between males. A history of male-male competition is written onto men’s bodies. Greater female selectivity provides not only local incentives for greater competition between males, but appears to have caused males to be adapted for this competition.
Modern day war isn’t only only about male-male competition, of course. Though a lot of socially-harmful behavior throughout history may relate to male competition for status and resources. Female preferences create an incentive for this competition, even if women don’t actually like many of the forms that male competition ends up in (e.g. duels, video games, etc...).
To get even more speculative, I will propose that greater average male systemizing was sexually selected for. It’s probably similar to greater average male aggression: some women find it attractive, many don’t, and probably the main reason males have more of that trait is because they needed it to beat out other males.
It should go without saying that I’m not holding present-day or historical women morally responsible for the effects of their aggregate preferences on men.
Here’s a notion of mine: Knights compete for women by competing with other knights. Troubadours compete for women by getting good at things women like. When troubadours succeed, knights think it’s very unfair.
I could believe in evolutionary overshoot, where male-male competition becomes so reinforcing that it leads to less reproductive success.
These days, we’re living in an evolutionarily weird environment where higher status means fewer offspring. I’m not sure how long this has been going on.
In re upper body strength: How would you tell the difference between sexual selection by women vs. better ability to provide for and defend families?
For what it’s worth, I told my theory that war is actually a scam by older men to get their younger competition out of the way to a man, and he was shocked and annoyed. My theory had completely left out the younger men’s strongly felt motivations. Of course, even if I’m right, that wouldn’t be how things feel to the older men, either.
An alternate theory is that uninhibited young men are apt to be dangerous, and societies develop drastic methods of socializing them.
Probably not as much as a woman would be if you told her that becoming a soldier is an even worse deal for her than for young men, evolutionarily speaking.
Anyone want to take a crack at evolutionary pressures for nations, and in particular, the pressure to convince people that being soldiers is the one sure way for people without extraordinary talents to do something important with their lives?
*throws group selection warning flag*
Is group selection problematic when it’s for memes?
Eh, I was asking the same thing last week. Check out the responses I got. That’s why I’m just throwing the warning flag, not saying you’ve committed the error.
I recently read Howard Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle, which heavily relies on the phenomenon you’re referring to but which was criticized for being group selectionist. (He views societies as being superorganisms that can collectively act in ways that further themselves, which results in individuals behaving very much like cells, and having the same tendencies, like gradually dying when they’re not put to use for the rest of the organism, which is how he explains suicidal tendencies.)
Which would be even worse if you explained why, including the part that involves raping the women in the other tribe when you win and quite possibly killing the existing children.
A small difference in framing often makes a disproportionate difference in my response and I agree with everything you are saying here.
Even so, just considering the whole question of ‘blame’ feels odd to me. That’s a primarily social explanation and if it happens to have epistemic merit too that is just a bonus. Since I don’t feel personally involved in the question “blame” based thinking just doesn’t spring to mind naturally.
I expect a different experience on a question that is closer to home, that I am politically invested in. For example the meta question of the merit of blaming. When considering that topic it would undoubtedly feel natural to me to produce explanations blaming ‘blame’ for all sorts of epistemic and instrumental crimes. Mind you, these objections would for most part be accurate, valid and reasonable, but they would still be prompted by a whole different class of thought.
(Disclaimer: Posts written by me when time-since-sleeping > 30 can be expected to have far more errors in grammar and clarity of expression and slightly less intellectual merit at the level of underlying content.)
30 hours? Really? And you can still manage to type and spell?
I have to proof read a lot more. Simple grammar errors slip in. Most commonly the ones you get if you change your mind about the best way to present something but end up putting half of the first version there and half of the second in a way that doesn’t really fit. I also outright type the wrong word sometimes, that part of my brain that links up concepts with labels is a real weak point. For most part I avoid the problem when writing but my vocabulary is totally abused. I can think in terms of all the words I know, I can phrase the sentences how they should flow given what I know to be words available to me, but sometimes the actual word is not accessible when I try to say/type it. Freaky stuff.
I don’t start losing the ability to program until about the 48 hour mark.
I may not understand the term then: what is the difference between “status” and “prestige” or “reputation”?
I will not give an exhaustive list explaining the difference or attempt to define the nuances of the boundaries between them (because that is hard and I am sure someone else is better qualified to answer.) What I will do is point out some obvious differences that spring to mind, cases where to use the words interchangeably would just be wrong.
Prestige is far less broad ranging in meaning than reputation. It refers to a ranking along some scale of generalized impressiveness with which you can demand they be considered.
Reputation can refer more generally to anything that popular belief attributes to you. This will particularly apply to traits that you can be expected to display. It may be the case that you have a reputation for doing good work and that this work has also given you prestige, but the two don’t always go hand in hand. You can have a reputation of not being as prestigious but of being right more often. You can have a reputation for being lousy at securing prestige...
Status can be influenced by prestige and reputation. With prestige in particular it is hard to get prestige without getting some degree of status. But you can certainly have status without having any prestige whatsoever.
Status is an approximation of what you would get if you could ask a tribe of social animals to line themselves up in order of dominance, rank or in general awesomeness.
Someone else (or me with more time) could almost certainly provide a clearer picture of the differences but that scratches the surface somewhat.
A lot of the talk here has been about what might be called ongoing status—the moment-by-moment behaviors which cause people to be taken account of or not.
I haven’t seen much about getting positional status—the official titles and achievements which (I think) mean you don’t need to put as much work into ongoing status.
That’s a good point. I suspect I tend to neglect that status element because, well, I understood authority and official authority and achievements when I was 5 and was competent (and somewhat perfectionist) in managing such status relationships. It was at least 15 years later that I began to really understand status in terms of social power and developed at least the rudimentary skills required to manage it.
Blueberry:
Status is about people’s purely subjective perceptions of whom they admire and wish to associate with, imitate, and/or support—or, in case of low status, the opposite of these things—because it results in good feelings. (Though of course the situation is usually complicated by the entangled instrumental implications of these acts.)
Reputation is an established record of past behavior. Status can stem from reputation, but doesn’t have to. For example, strangers among whom you have no reputation of any kind will quickly evaluate your status based on various clues as soon as they meet you.
Prestige is a more elusive term. Sometimes it’s used as a synonym for outstandingly good, high status-conferring reputation. At other times, it denotes a property of certain things or traits to signal high status by a broad social convention (e.g. a prestige club, or a prestige accent).
Thanks for the explanation.
So, status entirely depends on other people’s preferences? That is, a statement that person X is high status isn’t saying anything about X, but about the people around X and their opinions of X? In that case, status doesn’t seem very well defined: the exact same person, in the exact same situation and context, with the exact same behaviors could have a very different status depending on quirks of the people around.
To a large extent, yes. Status is, as Vladimir_Nesov put it, a godshatter concept. It only exists as a node in people’s brains, in their decision-making processes, so you don’t have one status-value (whatever that may consist of), you have one for every person evaluating you (including yourself).* But, as Vladimir_M details, it will often exhibit a lot of convergence across different evaluators, and in those cases we can safely just refer to “status” without too much ambiguity.
*Yes, technically this is written in a kind of silly way, but I hope it’s clear what’s meant...
Edit: Oops, I got the Vladimirs mixed up...
Blueberry:
Clearly, some particular behavior can have different status implications among different groups of people. For example, the proper way to dress to signal high status varies greatly between cultures, or even between different occasions within the same culture, and a mismatch may well have the opposite effect. Moreover, an action increasing your status in one group can simultaneously decrease it in another one that is overlapping or broader. For example, if you belong to a strict religious sect, then conspicuous devotional behaviors may raise your status within the sect, but make you look like a weirdo to other people and thus decrease your status in the broader society. I’d say this much should be obvious.
However, some status markers are a matter of near-consensus within large societies, or characteristic of significant portions of their inhabitants, or perhaps of disproportionately influential elite groups. Such considerations of status have immense importance for virtually all aspects of organized society, and they exert crucial influence on the opinions and behaviors of individuals. They are well defined within the given society and culture, though they likely won’t be invariant cross-culturally.
Finally, some status markers are arguably a human universal, though they may be concealed by slightly different ways in which they are expressed in different cultures. The role of such status markers in human social behaviors, and especially mating behaviors, is, for me at least, a fascinating topic.
That isn’t a reason to consider ‘status’ poorly defined. It just notes that it is (objectively) subjective. In fact, the very objection you are presenting here cuts to near the heart of what ‘status’ is a helpful shortcut to understanding.
As an exercise, substitute ‘rude’ into the above quote, replacing status. The two terms are quite similar in the way they have an objective meaning that depends on the subjective nature of other people in the environment.
You said so in the grandparent. But repeated assertion does not constitute argument. (Or, if it does, it is argument of a relatively weak kind.)