Apparently my word-space is so constructed that attractiveness of a man to a woman basically equates to status.
There’s your problem right there!
I’m usually not a big fan of the “look it up on Wikipedia” approach to amending skewed perception (it has the failure mode of encouraging an excessively topical, definition-driven understanding of a term), but if you perceive status and attractiveness to others as basically synonymous, or even largely so, then you’re viewing the world through a seriously-distorted lens and should really start at the ground level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_status
I’m usually not a big fan of the “look it up on Wikipedia” approach to amending skewed perception (it has the failure mode of encouraging an excessively topical, definition-driven understanding of a term), but if you perceive status and attractiveness to others as basically synonymous, or even largely so, then you’re viewing the world through a seriously-distorted lens and should really start at the ground level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_status
Synonymous—clearly not. “Largely so” is more of an exaggeration than a fundamental incomprehension.
Huh. Ok. What do you call the ape status-instinct then? That’s thing that you get by cleverly body-language and verbally sparring with people. I’ve managed to end up on top of a number of authority figures doing that.
Edit: the human version of the behaviour that Wikipedia describes as “dominance hierarchies”.
Double edit: would it make more sense to distinguish the terms as system-1-status and system-2-status?
I...think you’re confused. I didn’t say social status doesn’t exist; I also didn’t say that “social status” was a bad term for it. What I said was that you have an extremely nonstandard set of word associations here, such that what you mean when you’re saying “social status” is...well, not intuitive from the more usual use of that word.
I’m not saying instincts for status don’t exist; I’m saying that “attractiveness of a man to a woman basically equates to status” is a baffling definition of “status” (reinforcing my point by linking to a general overview of the concept and the things the word applies to). It would be like meaning only “penguins” whenever you say “birds”, and then trying to generalize that use whenever someone else talks about ornithology.
I think you’re misinterpreting my point again, and I also think it’s more of a “what do you mean by “melon”″ issue (ever order a melon smoothie from a place without pictures on the menu and been surprised?) than a “penguin” issue, but the definitions themselves have been adequately dissolved in this thread so there’s no point in continuing to pursue something off-topic.
There’s your problem right there!
I’m usually not a big fan of the “look it up on Wikipedia” approach to amending skewed perception (it has the failure mode of encouraging an excessively topical, definition-driven understanding of a term), but if you perceive status and attractiveness to others as basically synonymous, or even largely so, then you’re viewing the world through a seriously-distorted lens and should really start at the ground level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_status
Synonymous—clearly not. “Largely so” is more of an exaggeration than a fundamental incomprehension.
Huh. Ok. What do you call the ape status-instinct then? That’s thing that you get by cleverly body-language and verbally sparring with people. I’ve managed to end up on top of a number of authority figures doing that.
Edit: the human version of the behaviour that Wikipedia describes as “dominance hierarchies”.
Double edit: would it make more sense to distinguish the terms as system-1-status and system-2-status?
I...think you’re confused. I didn’t say social status doesn’t exist; I also didn’t say that “social status” was a bad term for it. What I said was that you have an extremely nonstandard set of word associations here, such that what you mean when you’re saying “social status” is...well, not intuitive from the more usual use of that word.
I’m not saying instincts for status don’t exist; I’m saying that “attractiveness of a man to a woman basically equates to status” is a baffling definition of “status” (reinforcing my point by linking to a general overview of the concept and the things the word applies to). It would be like meaning only “penguins” whenever you say “birds”, and then trying to generalize that use whenever someone else talks about ornithology.
I think you’re misinterpreting my point again, and I also think it’s more of a “what do you mean by “melon”″ issue (ever order a melon smoothie from a place without pictures on the menu and been surprised?) than a “penguin” issue, but the definitions themselves have been adequately dissolved in this thread so there’s no point in continuing to pursue something off-topic.