We should heavily discount negative feelings related to criticism, instead of taking them at face value (as showing that something is wrong and should be fixed, e.g. by getting rid of the source of the criticism). I think this can often manifest not as “I hate this criticism” but more like “This person is so annoying and lack basic social skills.”
There’s probably an effect where the less criticism we hear, the more sensitive we become to the remaining criticism, suggesting a slippery slope towards being surrounded by yes-men.
Remember that most CEOs had to work their way up to that position, and have seen sycophancy from the bottom and understand that it’s bad, but still fall prey to this problem.
The status “jab” is itself a valuable signal. Here’s a pastiche of the model I’m developing integrating the insights I’ve gained from researching LLM-Induced Psychosis (and rereading Keith Johnstone).
Status is the coordination signal, in the same way that pain is the survival signal. If you don’t care about coordinating with others then it’s fine to ignore it.
For everyone else, we correctly need to maintain a baseline level of status. Despite everything, this still represents the amount of coordination you can actually muster pretty well.
Almost every social interaction has a status valence associated with it. Actually, it’s not quite a spectrum like “valence” suggests: it’s a square… raise mine, lower mine, raise yours, lower yours. The extra dimension arises from the fact that this is relative to our coordination context. If I give you a compliment, it signals that I think you are an asset in the current context relative to what we had both understood to be the case. If I self-deprecate, it signals that I think I am not as helpful relative to our mutual understanding. This still feels good, because your model of the coordination context correctly (if I’m not lying) gives you status, as you are now more of an asset to the coordination group than was previously understood. But only to a point… eventually I may successfully self-deprecate to the point where it is common knowledge that I am a drag on the context-group’s ability to coordinate, and it will no longer feel good to hear me drive that point home even more. (“Haha, sorry I’m late guys… you know me lolol!”)
But actually, it’s more nuanced than this! Within a single coordination context (e.g. among friends) it works like this, but there are lots of different coordination contexts! This makes coordination-potential (not status) a resource, in that there’s a finite amount to be shared (in the moment, it’s not zero-sum more broadly… trade still works!). So the ‘raise yours’ signal additionally allocates coordination-potential to you, while the ‘lower mine’ deallocates coordination-potential belonging to me. This is why you still like me when I self-deprecate (as long as I’m not too obnoxious about it). And why someone who’s too helpful isn’t “high status”. Technically, this should be a separate signal, but I think evolution has only hardwired two-dimensions of the signal.
Now what about the “jabs”, those sure don’t feel good do they? And of course not, it sucks to update towards reduced ability to coordinate! That’s straightforwardly just a bad thing …mostly. Because not every coordination context is a good context for you even if it is yours. If you have an idea, and I think it’s a bad idea, then the honest thing for me to do is to signal that I will not coordinate with you in the context of that idea. And that feels bad, a dig at your status as it inherently is—as long as I signal that clearly. If I couch my words carefully, then I can tell you honestly that I think your idea is bad while still leaving you with the impression that I am still cooperative w.r.t. it to some extent. A typical “friendly” way to do this is for me to “agree to disagree”, which means that I won’t get in the way of your collecting coordination-potential towards it. That’s a fine outcome to the extent we have different goals and values, but becomes more of a disservice the more that we have an explicitly shared purpose.
With this lens, we can see that many of the pathologies of status are really just people wanting stupid things and/or Goodharting the signals of course. For example, our CEO wants to coordinate against people who don’t want to cooperate with his ideas (i.e. coordination contexts). This means that he’s no longer receiving feedback about which of his ideas are worth cooperating with… which could be fine if he only has good ideas (as if). He’s still susceptible to this despite having seen it, because he foolishly believes that his ideas are actually always good (why else would he have them?). Made worse by the fact that his earlier good ideas are more likely the ones that got coordinated with, meaning that his ideas have always worked out “if you would just give them a chance”. And he probably has this idea of suppressing dissent in the first place as a way of avoiding the pain of the status jabs, i.e. Goodharting.
In sum, the epistemic role of status is thus: it is the signal by which your friends tell you which of your ideas, values, projects, goals, are worth coordinating with.
The status “jab” is itself a valuable signal. Here’s a pastiche of the model I’m developing integrating the insights I’ve gained from researching LLM-Induced Psychosis (and rereading Keith Johnstone).
Status is the coordination signal, in the same way that pain is the survival signal. If you don’t care about coordinating with others then it’s fine to ignore it.
For everyone else, we correctly need to maintain a baseline level of status. Despite everything, this still represents the amount of coordination you can actually muster pretty well.
Almost every social interaction has a status valence associated with it. Actually, it’s not quite a spectrum like “valence” suggests: it’s a square… raise mine, lower mine, raise yours, lower yours. The extra dimension arises from the fact that this is relative to our coordination context. If I give you a compliment, it signals that I think you are an asset in the current context relative to what we had both understood to be the case. If I self-deprecate, it signals that I think I am not as helpful relative to our mutual understanding. This still feels good, because your model of the coordination context correctly (if I’m not lying) gives you status, as you are now more of an asset to the coordination group than was previously understood. But only to a point… eventually I may successfully self-deprecate to the point where it is common knowledge that I am a drag on the context-group’s ability to coordinate, and it will no longer feel good to hear me drive that point home even more. (“Haha, sorry I’m late guys… you know me lolol!”)
But actually, it’s more nuanced than this! Within a single coordination context (e.g. among friends) it works like this, but there are lots of different coordination contexts! This makes coordination-potential (not status) a resource, in that there’s a finite amount to be shared (in the moment, it’s not zero-sum more broadly… trade still works!). So the ‘raise yours’ signal additionally allocates coordination-potential to you, while the ‘lower mine’ deallocates coordination-potential belonging to me. This is why you still like me when I self-deprecate (as long as I’m not too obnoxious about it). And why someone who’s too helpful isn’t “high status”. Technically, this should be a separate signal, but I think evolution has only hardwired two-dimensions of the signal.
Now what about the “jabs”, those sure don’t feel good do they? And of course not, it sucks to update towards reduced ability to coordinate! That’s straightforwardly just a bad thing …mostly. Because not every coordination context is a good context for you even if it is yours. If you have an idea, and I think it’s a bad idea, then the honest thing for me to do is to signal that I will not coordinate with you in the context of that idea. And that feels bad, a dig at your status as it inherently is—as long as I signal that clearly. If I couch my words carefully, then I can tell you honestly that I think your idea is bad while still leaving you with the impression that I am still cooperative w.r.t. it to some extent. A typical “friendly” way to do this is for me to “agree to disagree”, which means that I won’t get in the way of your collecting coordination-potential towards it. That’s a fine outcome to the extent we have different goals and values, but becomes more of a disservice the more that we have an explicitly shared purpose.
With this lens, we can see that many of the pathologies of status are really just people wanting stupid things and/or Goodharting the signals of course. For example, our CEO wants to coordinate against people who don’t want to cooperate with his ideas (i.e. coordination contexts). This means that he’s no longer receiving feedback about which of his ideas are worth cooperating with… which could be fine if he only has good ideas (as if). He’s still susceptible to this despite having seen it, because he foolishly believes that his ideas are actually always good (why else would he have them?). Made worse by the fact that his earlier good ideas are more likely the ones that got coordinated with, meaning that his ideas have always worked out “if you would just give them a chance”. And he probably has this idea of suppressing dissent in the first place as a way of avoiding the pain of the status jabs, i.e. Goodharting.
In sum, the epistemic role of status is thus: it is the signal by which your friends tell you which of your ideas, values, projects, goals, are worth coordinating with.