I think the theme presented of prioritizing status as a product of quality rather than as a product of signaling mechanisms is a valid one. Though I feel as though in the example of presenting casually in an interview rather than in a suit is just another way of signaling to the interviewer that “I have the skills because I look the part of a data scientist” or “I have the skills because I am not doing level 1 signaling rather I am doing level 2 signalling”. If you were to completely avoid signaling your fashion choices would be completely determined by you in which case whether you wore a suit or not would be inconsequential because you are internally not signaling at all because you are “legit”. In the same vein I don’t think that there are hard lines between the “winners and losers bracket” as proposed. There are useful components from both levels 1 and 2 which can accommodate for both being “legit” and integrating well in society.
I agree that there are not hard lines and what another commenter said about middle management actually producing real value, but I still think there is an interesting and important dynamic being expressed and explored in this post.
I also feel signalling itself is very useful, it’s just when it becomes perverse signalling games that it becomes a problem. If you are skilled at focusing on some object level thing, you probably should care about being able to create a clean signal to indicate it, but is that taking part in status games?
I think the interplay between signalling, status focus, and object focus is pretty complicated, but worth exploring and trying to understand better.
I think the theme presented of prioritizing status as a product of quality rather than as a product of signaling mechanisms is a valid one. Though I feel as though in the example of presenting casually in an interview rather than in a suit is just another way of signaling to the interviewer that “I have the skills because I look the part of a data scientist” or “I have the skills because I am not doing level 1 signaling rather I am doing level 2 signalling”. If you were to completely avoid signaling your fashion choices would be completely determined by you in which case whether you wore a suit or not would be inconsequential because you are internally not signaling at all because you are “legit”. In the same vein I don’t think that there are hard lines between the “winners and losers bracket” as proposed. There are useful components from both levels 1 and 2 which can accommodate for both being “legit” and integrating well in society.
I agree that there are not hard lines and what another commenter said about middle management actually producing real value, but I still think there is an interesting and important dynamic being expressed and explored in this post.
I also feel signalling itself is very useful, it’s just when it becomes perverse signalling games that it becomes a problem. If you are skilled at focusing on some object level thing, you probably should care about being able to create a clean signal to indicate it, but is that taking part in status games?
I think the interplay between signalling, status focus, and object focus is pretty complicated, but worth exploring and trying to understand better.