generally views existing social-status games as irrelevant and damaging
This is an interesting point worth looking at closer.
Rationalist culture does often make bids to reject traditional social games. This is a feature of most cultures that seek to establish particular norms. Such cultures replace standard social status games with other social status games, and rationalists try to make these games better by groundiung them in tracking something useful to us like truth.
For example, Less Wrong karma is a rather explicit social status game, even if it isn’t intended to be. Lots of people try to ignore it or are mad about it (and sometimes they are mad because they don’t have a lot of karma and feel that unjustly places them low in the status game karma measures), but high karma does tend to correlate with a kind of status. If you know nothing else about two Less Wrong users and one has 5000 karma and one has 100 karma you should correctly infer that the 5000 karma user has more status among Less Wrong users than the 100 karma user.
The less explicit games are about, say, who most people trust to be right and have good judgement. Some rationalists have earned a lot of respect because they say and write things people find useful or convincing and believe are true. This is itself also a social status game, though it’s grounded in proving truth and one can lose status by being wrong, which is unlike a lot of social status games that are only grounded in social reality and are mostly popularity contests.
So I think it’s wrong to say social status games are irrelevant or even damaging per se because, as I see it, they are just a fact of life for humans. The interesting question is, do we create status games that benefit us all, or do we create status games that let some exploit others. I see rationalists as trying to create better status games that more benefit everyone (other than, perhaps, those who would lose status if rationalists norms became more widespread).
This is an interesting point worth looking at closer.
Rationalist culture does often make bids to reject traditional social games. This is a feature of most cultures that seek to establish particular norms. Such cultures replace standard social status games with other social status games, and rationalists try to make these games better by groundiung them in tracking something useful to us like truth.
For example, Less Wrong karma is a rather explicit social status game, even if it isn’t intended to be. Lots of people try to ignore it or are mad about it (and sometimes they are mad because they don’t have a lot of karma and feel that unjustly places them low in the status game karma measures), but high karma does tend to correlate with a kind of status. If you know nothing else about two Less Wrong users and one has 5000 karma and one has 100 karma you should correctly infer that the 5000 karma user has more status among Less Wrong users than the 100 karma user.
The less explicit games are about, say, who most people trust to be right and have good judgement. Some rationalists have earned a lot of respect because they say and write things people find useful or convincing and believe are true. This is itself also a social status game, though it’s grounded in proving truth and one can lose status by being wrong, which is unlike a lot of social status games that are only grounded in social reality and are mostly popularity contests.
So I think it’s wrong to say social status games are irrelevant or even damaging per se because, as I see it, they are just a fact of life for humans. The interesting question is, do we create status games that benefit us all, or do we create status games that let some exploit others. I see rationalists as trying to create better status games that more benefit everyone (other than, perhaps, those who would lose status if rationalists norms became more widespread).
Yes, I agree we have our own sort of respect hierarchy.