I’d go as far as to say justified pride and status-seeking is actually a virtue and a moral duty!
Why? Because status is a signal: high status people are worth imitating. That isn’t all status is, but it is a very central benefit that justifies its existence. If you are really successful, and you’re hiding that, you’re refusing to share valuable information. They might want to check what you’re dong right, and imitate that, hopefully becoming more sucessful themselves.
And why would you refuse to seek justified status? I see only three reasons.
Fear of embarassment when you reach too high.
Deliberate deception in order to benefit from asymmetric information.
Outmoded cultural traditions from back when it was hard to check someone else’s work and see whether it is actually that good.
And why would you refuse to seek justified status?
One reason would be that seeking status will lead to you having less of it, which I strongly think is true insofar as ‘seeking’ means ‘having it as the driving motivation’. Think about how many of the high-status people in the rationalist sphere are relatively status-blind. If we draw from fiction, note that this is true for Harry in hpmor, too.
It’s also not always true that high status people are worth imitiating or listening to, but I would agree if you just meant on average.
When I write a post the post will be different when it’s written to seeking truth then when it’s written to seek truth and seek justified status. While often both goals are alligned there are times when they are not aligned and one has to make a decision.
It’s even worse because given the way the human mind works those decisions are often made without thinking about them in favor of status as evolution primed us to seek status.
To not have your desire to seek status disturb your ability to hold accurate beliefs about the world it’s necessary to partly ignore status seeking impulses.
When thinking about writing a grant application it’s important to convey justified status. When writing an analysis of a topic it’s less important.
I think seeking status and pointing out you already have some are two different things. Writing an analysis, it would be quite relevant to mention what expertise or qualifications you have concerning the subject matter.
I’d go as far as to say justified pride and status-seeking is actually a virtue and a moral duty!
Why? Because status is a signal: high status people are worth imitating. That isn’t all status is, but it is a very central benefit that justifies its existence. If you are really successful, and you’re hiding that, you’re refusing to share valuable information. They might want to check what you’re dong right, and imitate that, hopefully becoming more sucessful themselves.
And why would you refuse to seek justified status? I see only three reasons.
Fear of embarassment when you reach too high.
Deliberate deception in order to benefit from asymmetric information.
Outmoded cultural traditions from back when it was hard to check someone else’s work and see whether it is actually that good.
I don’t think any of these are good reasons.
One reason would be that seeking status will lead to you having less of it, which I strongly think is true insofar as ‘seeking’ means ‘having it as the driving motivation’. Think about how many of the high-status people in the rationalist sphere are relatively status-blind. If we draw from fiction, note that this is true for Harry in hpmor, too.
It’s also not always true that high status people are worth imitiating or listening to, but I would agree if you just meant on average.
When I write a post the post will be different when it’s written to seeking truth then when it’s written to seek truth and seek justified status. While often both goals are alligned there are times when they are not aligned and one has to make a decision.
It’s even worse because given the way the human mind works those decisions are often made without thinking about them in favor of status as evolution primed us to seek status.
To not have your desire to seek status disturb your ability to hold accurate beliefs about the world it’s necessary to partly ignore status seeking impulses.
When thinking about writing a grant application it’s important to convey justified status. When writing an analysis of a topic it’s less important.
I think seeking status and pointing out you already have some are two different things. Writing an analysis, it would be quite relevant to mention what expertise or qualifications you have concerning the subject matter.