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.
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.