So if you want to have a group that does X, you associate with people who give social status to people working on X
You are glossing over the practice of giving social status. In real life, as you said, it is basically public displays of admiration (friendship is a bit different). So you are going to build a community with the inclusion criterion of being willing to publicly admire a particular set of people. Presumably if you stop admiring, you are no longer welcome in the community. That doesn’t strike me as a way to build a healthy community—there are obvious failure modes looming.
with the inclusion criterion of being willing to publicly admire a particular set of people
That isn’t quite what Viliam is proposing. He says (emphasis mine):
you associate with people who give social status to people working on X
so what membership in this community commits you to is not admiring specific people but admiring people who do specific things, whoever those people are.
This still seems kinda dangerous, but I don’t think it has the same failure modes.
commits you to is not admiring specific people but admiring people who do specific things, whoever those people are.
I suspect that distinction is not going to be as clear-cut when you are dealing with a bunch of actual humans.
“Bob is an asshole but he did the specific thing X so I’m supposed to publicly praise him? I’ll pass.”
“Alice is such a great person, so what that she skipped the specific thing X this time, she’s the best and I’m going to sing hosannas to her really loudly”.
You are glossing over the practice of giving social status. In real life, as you said, it is basically public displays of admiration (friendship is a bit different). So you are going to build a community with the inclusion criterion of being willing to publicly admire a particular set of people. Presumably if you stop admiring, you are no longer welcome in the community. That doesn’t strike me as a way to build a healthy community—there are obvious failure modes looming.
That isn’t quite what Viliam is proposing. He says (emphasis mine):
so what membership in this community commits you to is not admiring specific people but admiring people who do specific things, whoever those people are.
This still seems kinda dangerous, but I don’t think it has the same failure modes.
I suspect that distinction is not going to be as clear-cut when you are dealing with a bunch of actual humans.
“Bob is an asshole but he did the specific thing X so I’m supposed to publicly praise him? I’ll pass.”
“Alice is such a great person, so what that she skipped the specific thing X this time, she’s the best and I’m going to sing hosannas to her really loudly”.