I don’t think status is a zero-sum game. Some people may play it as such, unfortunately. But some ways to increase your social standing also confer benefits to others without anyone losing out. By being being kind and considerate (as well as knowledgeable, competent, etc.) you can notice people’s good qualities and confer status to others, flattening the status hierarchy and making it more multi-dimensional (making sure different types of talents get noticed).
It also depends what kind of status you’re after. If you care more about the approval of people with depth and good character, that’s easier to achieve in ways that build others up than if you care primarily about the most shallow metrics of status.
More specifically, interpersonal interaction has both a dominance dimension (“of status, dominance, power, ambitiousness, assertiveness, or control”) and a warmth dimension (“of agreeableness, compassion, nurturant, solidarity, friendliness, warmth, affiliation or love”). Dominance is zero-sum, but warmth is not.
Cultures also vary in how much they emphasize the dominance and warmth dimensions. In more “status-flat” cultures (such as the Nordic countries), social conventions tend to de-emphasize status differences, making relative status less important and letting the warmth dimension matter more.
It seems interesting to me that I feel like I mostly encounter arguments such as “status is zero-sum so we can’t ever make everyone happy” expressed by people from non-Nordic countries. The notion always seemed unintuitive to me, and I don’t think that the reason is just “Kaj personally pays less attention to dominance status” since I do feel pretty sensitive to it. Rather, it feels like a significant part of it is Finnish culture just not caring about dominance status that much, relative to warmth, making it hard for me to see why the zero-sumness of status should necessarily be a significant problem.
Agreed. Status becomes zero sum when the dimensionality of competition gets reduced to 1 (otherwise known as a hierarchy). In an environment with specialization you wind up with a multi dimensional deference network where people are deferred to in their areas of expertise and everyone benefits from the efficiency of this. A status lattice, otherwise known as prestige.
That’s a good point, but a “global status” definitely exists. For example—Elon musk has a higher status than Joona Sotala (Which most people here never heard of) even though they are both pretty much at the top of the games they are playing. 99.999% of the people in the world will be more excited to meet Musk than Sotala.
different status games and specializations still have relative importance, which is zero-sum, a mathematical intuition could be described as: Importance of game (zero-sum) X position in-game (zero-sum)= total status The product is still a zero-sum positional game, but it creates a more equal distribution than one-dimensional hierarchy.
if the things that status are getting you are satisficing and not maximizing this doesn’t matter much. E.g. if Sotala is getting his needs met from the communities he is a part of Musk is not relevant.
That’s true only if everyone could reach this theoretical threshold of status that will make them happy, but it’s not clear that this is the case.
e.g. if you’re the best accordion player in your village it might not be enough if no one really cares about accordion skills—global status is important.
I don’t think status is a zero-sum game. Some people may play it as such, unfortunately. But some ways to increase your social standing also confer benefits to others without anyone losing out. By being being kind and considerate (as well as knowledgeable, competent, etc.) you can notice people’s good qualities and confer status to others, flattening the status hierarchy and making it more multi-dimensional (making sure different types of talents get noticed).
It also depends what kind of status you’re after. If you care more about the approval of people with depth and good character, that’s easier to achieve in ways that build others up than if you care primarily about the most shallow metrics of status.
More specifically, interpersonal interaction has both a dominance dimension (“of status, dominance, power, ambitiousness, assertiveness, or control”) and a warmth dimension (“of agreeableness, compassion, nurturant, solidarity, friendliness, warmth, affiliation or love”). Dominance is zero-sum, but warmth is not.
Cultures also vary in how much they emphasize the dominance and warmth dimensions. In more “status-flat” cultures (such as the Nordic countries), social conventions tend to de-emphasize status differences, making relative status less important and letting the warmth dimension matter more.
It seems interesting to me that I feel like I mostly encounter arguments such as “status is zero-sum so we can’t ever make everyone happy” expressed by people from non-Nordic countries. The notion always seemed unintuitive to me, and I don’t think that the reason is just “Kaj personally pays less attention to dominance status” since I do feel pretty sensitive to it. Rather, it feels like a significant part of it is Finnish culture just not caring about dominance status that much, relative to warmth, making it hard for me to see why the zero-sumness of status should necessarily be a significant problem.
Agreed. Status becomes zero sum when the dimensionality of competition gets reduced to 1 (otherwise known as a hierarchy). In an environment with specialization you wind up with a multi dimensional deference network where people are deferred to in their areas of expertise and everyone benefits from the efficiency of this. A status lattice, otherwise known as prestige.
That’s a good point, but a “global status” definitely exists. For example—Elon musk has a higher status than Joona Sotala (Which most people here never heard of) even though they are both pretty much at the top of the games they are playing. 99.999% of the people in the world will be more excited to meet Musk than Sotala.
different status games and specializations still have relative importance, which is zero-sum, a mathematical intuition could be described as:
Importance of game (zero-sum) X position in-game (zero-sum)= total status
The product is still a zero-sum positional game, but it creates a more equal distribution than one-dimensional hierarchy.
if the things that status are getting you are satisficing and not maximizing this doesn’t matter much. E.g. if Sotala is getting his needs met from the communities he is a part of Musk is not relevant.
That’s true only if everyone could reach this theoretical threshold of status that will make them happy, but it’s not clear that this is the case.
e.g. if you’re the best accordion player in your village it might not be enough if no one really cares about accordion skills—global status is important.