I would like to see an explanation that is shorter rather than poetic. Seems like he is saying that some kinds of “elite groups” are good and some are bad, but where exactly is the line? Actual competence at something, vs some self-referential competence at being perceived as an important person?
But when I put it like this, the seemingly self-referential group also values competence at something specific, namely the social/political skills. So maybe the problem is when instead of recognizing it as a “group of politically savvy people” we mistake it for a group of people competent at something else? Or maybe not even mistake it for anything specific, it just seems impressive in a not specific way?
In that case, the rational reaction would be to pay the devil his due, and say “wow, these people are really good at… becoming members of an Inner Ring, which is an organization of people who are good at becoming members of the Inner Ring… so when I unpack it, these people are really good at getting to the top of arbitrary social hierarchies”. Which is an admirable skill, from certain perspective. It’s just probably not a thing I want to compete at.
And even if I decided to give it a try, the only thing I could win by getting to the Inner Ring is experimental evidence that yes I am capable of getting to the Inner Ring. A test of my social skills. The Inner Ring itself is probably worth nothing. The moment I get there, the best strategy is probably to forget about it, and go apply the social skills to some more valuable goal. Or maybe staying in the Inner Ring sends a costly signal about my social skills to other socially savvy people. But this is the only real value it provides.
It’s not that the elite groups are good or bad, it’s the desire to be in an elite group that leads to bad outcomes. Like how the root of all evil is the love of money, where money in itself isn’t bad, it’s the desire to possess it that is. Mainly because you start to focus on the means rather than the ends, and so end up in places you wouldn’t have wanted to end up in originally.
It’s about status. Being in with the cool kids etc. Elite groups aren’t inherently good or bad—they’re usually just those who are better at whatever is valued, or at least better at signaling that they are better at whatever is valued, depending on the group phase (the classic description being geeks, mops and sociopaths or Scott Alexander’s version). For many people, status is one of the most important things there are. And not just for instrumental reasons, but on a deep terminal level. You can argue that it’s an evolutionary instrumental goal, but for them status is a value in and of itself. From what I’ve read of your comments around here, I’m assuming that’s not true of you, especially as your last paragraph comes to the same conclusion as Lewis does.
People for whom status is so important are easy to manipulate by promising them status. They’re willing to sacrifice other values for status gains. Basically Moloch and moral mazes on a personal level. So the best case scenario of chasing status just for the sake of status is that you spend lots of resources chasing a mirage, as there’s always another group with higher status that you haven’t yet joined. Unfortunately, many such status seekers want to join groups that tend towards immoral/illegal/etc. actions. So to join them, you have to jeopardize yourself. The Russian Kompromat system is a good example of how this works in practice. Or blackmail schemes, where you get the target to do worse and worse things to avoid leaking the previous action. Most inner circles are not that blatant, of course. The problem is that if you value joining such inner circles more than your other values, then there will probably be points where you have to choose between the two, and too many people prefer to sacrifice their other values on Moloch’s alter.
Thank you, this explains a lot. So, kinda, status is good in itself, because it is a mechanism to direct social rewards to people who produce some kind of value, or at least display some kind of excellence. It is just bad if people think about status in a way other than the completely naive: “you need to get good at X, then status will automatically happen proportionally to how much you deserve it”.
There are also other mistakes people could make, such as sacrificing too much in order to achieve X. Such as a guy who writes a perfect book, but also his wife divorces him and his kids hate him, because sacrificed everything to the goal of writing the perfect book. But this is about the specific mistake of trying to get X-related status using means different that maximizing the X; such as befriending the right people. Like a guy who writes a book that is “good but not the best”, but he is a friend with the right people, and therefore his book gets elected as the official book of the year. And this probably requires that he reciprocates in some way—maybe he also in turn votes for their art, or helps their kids pass admissions to a prestigious university, or simply provides some financial or sexual services in turn.
Lewis was a writer, so I suspect he might have seen something similar among writers, but also noticed that this is a more general thing. (The first example that comes to my mind is publishing scientific papers.) I am not a professional artist myself, but I have seen enough to be disappointed. I have also seen people who refused to play this game and succeeded anyway; such as writers who have never won a book award, but their books sell better because they are good; and maybe if they keep being obviously good, even the critics will be one day shamed into giving them some award.
So… I guess the most vulnerable are the people who are “almost good”; who stand on the line between “mediocre” and “good” and could be plausibly rounded up in either direction. And this cannot be dismissed by mere “don’t worry about what they think, the art is either good or bad regardless”, because the decision will have a real impact: emotional, but also as an advertisement. An almost-good artist getting an award will be encouraged to try harder (because it seems that the hard work is rewarded), and will find it easier to get money on Patreon or Kickstarter, or to find a publisher for a book. An almost-good author ignored may give up (because the hard work done so far seems to be useless), and will get less external support. So the recognition can make a difference—I assume that if you took 20 such almost-good authors of the same quality, and randomly gave awards to 10 of them, statistically those 10 would have more success ten years later than the 10 you did not choose.
The problem is that trying to get to the inner circle also has its costs, both emotional (not only the award received by cheating will not encourage you, but now that you know how things work, even the possible future awards will motivate you less) and in time and energy (the effort spent on getting to the inner circle is an effort not spent on getting better).
As a toy model, imagine 3 wannabe artists, all of the starting at the same almost-good quality: artist X gets an award from the inner circle because their parents are in the inner circle (i.e. X didn’t spend any energy on the inner circle, probably is not even aware that the inner circle exists); Y doesn’t get the award; and Z works hard to get into the inner circle, ultimately succeeds and gets the award… ten years later, I would expect X to be more successful than Y, but Y more successful than Z. That’s because X received an unconditional support, but Z got a part-time job that distracts them from the art. And the thing is, unless you have the inner circle “naturally” on your side, your choice is not between X and Y, but between Y and Z, and there Y is the better choice.
I would like to see an explanation that is shorter rather than poetic. Seems like he is saying that some kinds of “elite groups” are good and some are bad, but where exactly is the line? Actual competence at something, vs some self-referential competence at being perceived as an important person?
But when I put it like this, the seemingly self-referential group also values competence at something specific, namely the social/political skills. So maybe the problem is when instead of recognizing it as a “group of politically savvy people” we mistake it for a group of people competent at something else? Or maybe not even mistake it for anything specific, it just seems impressive in a not specific way?
In that case, the rational reaction would be to pay the devil his due, and say “wow, these people are really good at… becoming members of an Inner Ring, which is an organization of people who are good at becoming members of the Inner Ring… so when I unpack it, these people are really good at getting to the top of arbitrary social hierarchies”. Which is an admirable skill, from certain perspective. It’s just probably not a thing I want to compete at.
And even if I decided to give it a try, the only thing I could win by getting to the Inner Ring is experimental evidence that yes I am capable of getting to the Inner Ring. A test of my social skills. The Inner Ring itself is probably worth nothing. The moment I get there, the best strategy is probably to forget about it, and go apply the social skills to some more valuable goal. Or maybe staying in the Inner Ring sends a costly signal about my social skills to other socially savvy people. But this is the only real value it provides.
It’s not that the elite groups are good or bad, it’s the desire to be in an elite group that leads to bad outcomes. Like how the root of all evil is the love of money, where money in itself isn’t bad, it’s the desire to possess it that is. Mainly because you start to focus on the means rather than the ends, and so end up in places you wouldn’t have wanted to end up in originally.
It’s about status. Being in with the cool kids etc. Elite groups aren’t inherently good or bad—they’re usually just those who are better at whatever is valued, or at least better at signaling that they are better at whatever is valued, depending on the group phase (the classic description being geeks, mops and sociopaths or Scott Alexander’s version). For many people, status is one of the most important things there are. And not just for instrumental reasons, but on a deep terminal level. You can argue that it’s an evolutionary instrumental goal, but for them status is a value in and of itself. From what I’ve read of your comments around here, I’m assuming that’s not true of you, especially as your last paragraph comes to the same conclusion as Lewis does.
People for whom status is so important are easy to manipulate by promising them status. They’re willing to sacrifice other values for status gains. Basically Moloch and moral mazes on a personal level. So the best case scenario of chasing status just for the sake of status is that you spend lots of resources chasing a mirage, as there’s always another group with higher status that you haven’t yet joined. Unfortunately, many such status seekers want to join groups that tend towards immoral/illegal/etc. actions. So to join them, you have to jeopardize yourself. The Russian Kompromat system is a good example of how this works in practice. Or blackmail schemes, where you get the target to do worse and worse things to avoid leaking the previous action. Most inner circles are not that blatant, of course. The problem is that if you value joining such inner circles more than your other values, then there will probably be points where you have to choose between the two, and too many people prefer to sacrifice their other values on Moloch’s alter.
Thank you, this explains a lot. So, kinda, status is good in itself, because it is a mechanism to direct social rewards to people who produce some kind of value, or at least display some kind of excellence. It is just bad if people think about status in a way other than the completely naive: “you need to get good at X, then status will automatically happen proportionally to how much you deserve it”.
There are also other mistakes people could make, such as sacrificing too much in order to achieve X. Such as a guy who writes a perfect book, but also his wife divorces him and his kids hate him, because sacrificed everything to the goal of writing the perfect book. But this is about the specific mistake of trying to get X-related status using means different that maximizing the X; such as befriending the right people. Like a guy who writes a book that is “good but not the best”, but he is a friend with the right people, and therefore his book gets elected as the official book of the year. And this probably requires that he reciprocates in some way—maybe he also in turn votes for their art, or helps their kids pass admissions to a prestigious university, or simply provides some financial or sexual services in turn.
Lewis was a writer, so I suspect he might have seen something similar among writers, but also noticed that this is a more general thing. (The first example that comes to my mind is publishing scientific papers.) I am not a professional artist myself, but I have seen enough to be disappointed. I have also seen people who refused to play this game and succeeded anyway; such as writers who have never won a book award, but their books sell better because they are good; and maybe if they keep being obviously good, even the critics will be one day shamed into giving them some award.
So… I guess the most vulnerable are the people who are “almost good”; who stand on the line between “mediocre” and “good” and could be plausibly rounded up in either direction. And this cannot be dismissed by mere “don’t worry about what they think, the art is either good or bad regardless”, because the decision will have a real impact: emotional, but also as an advertisement. An almost-good artist getting an award will be encouraged to try harder (because it seems that the hard work is rewarded), and will find it easier to get money on Patreon or Kickstarter, or to find a publisher for a book. An almost-good author ignored may give up (because the hard work done so far seems to be useless), and will get less external support. So the recognition can make a difference—I assume that if you took 20 such almost-good authors of the same quality, and randomly gave awards to 10 of them, statistically those 10 would have more success ten years later than the 10 you did not choose.
The problem is that trying to get to the inner circle also has its costs, both emotional (not only the award received by cheating will not encourage you, but now that you know how things work, even the possible future awards will motivate you less) and in time and energy (the effort spent on getting to the inner circle is an effort not spent on getting better).
As a toy model, imagine 3 wannabe artists, all of the starting at the same almost-good quality: artist X gets an award from the inner circle because their parents are in the inner circle (i.e. X didn’t spend any energy on the inner circle, probably is not even aware that the inner circle exists); Y doesn’t get the award; and Z works hard to get into the inner circle, ultimately succeeds and gets the award… ten years later, I would expect X to be more successful than Y, but Y more successful than Z. That’s because X received an unconditional support, but Z got a part-time job that distracts them from the art. And the thing is, unless you have the inner circle “naturally” on your side, your choice is not between X and Y, but between Y and Z, and there Y is the better choice.
...or maybe I am over-analyzing this.