It’s not just improving your skills when you’re already an adult that’s a status loss. Nobody faults a top 100 professional tennis player for trying to get better...
Yes, the exact rules are a bit more complex. Seems to me like it’s OK to practice if you already have much better results. The good results are high-status… and whetever else the person does is colored by the halo effect. If they work diligently, we should praise them for their work. But I guess that even if they would do nothing and yet deliver superior results, we should praise them for their talent. Whatever a cool person does, it automatically becomes cool, although the same thing might become uncool if someone else would do that (and the corresponding rationalization would be: no, it’s not really the same thing; you are doing it wrong).
On the other hand the image of “working hard” could be better than image of “just having luck” because it reduces envy. The envy-reducing factor could be also something else than hard work, for example “being crazy”. Something that says that these people are superior to the average Joe, but for some reason Joe probably wouldn’t want too much to be in their place. Or maybe this is not a counter-example to status loss… maybe it actually is a small status sacrifice designed to reduce the envy of the less successful people. Status games are complicated: if you get too much status, someone could get angry and kill you (either literally, or just work hard to ruin your carreer).
It could be interesting to find out whether top players get status loss among their peers if they practice visibly more than their peers but don’t deliver better results (yet).
And by the way, laughing at people who are trying to learn something also makes good sense as a zero-sum-game strategy. By threatening status loss you eliminate a future competition. If someone is already far ahead of you, it’s too late to stop them, but you can still stop people at your level from improving and leaving you behind. This sounds horrible, but it can be done unconsciously, like you really feel they don’t have a chance and are only making themselves funny, so you have to give them a helpful feedback.
Also there are some exceptional situations where adult learning from zero does not cause status loss. For example when the personal computers were new, older people did not lose status for learning the basics; they actually gained status even for minimum knowledge, because they were obviously superior in their age group.. and nobody expected them to really compete against 20-years olds (trying that seriously they would become very low-status).
Generally, if something is known to be new (not necessarily new technology, but also new fashion, for example Zumba dancing in my country), then even being a beginner increases your status among people who are at zero level. Probably because the zero level is percieved as average, so by being above-zero you automatically become elite.
Yes, the exact rules are a bit more complex. Seems to me like it’s OK to practice if you already have much better results. The good results are high-status… and whetever else the person does is colored by the halo effect. If they work diligently, we should praise them for their work. But I guess that even if they would do nothing and yet deliver superior results, we should praise them for their talent. Whatever a cool person does, it automatically becomes cool, although the same thing might become uncool if someone else would do that (and the corresponding rationalization would be: no, it’s not really the same thing; you are doing it wrong).
On the other hand the image of “working hard” could be better than image of “just having luck” because it reduces envy. The envy-reducing factor could be also something else than hard work, for example “being crazy”. Something that says that these people are superior to the average Joe, but for some reason Joe probably wouldn’t want too much to be in their place. Or maybe this is not a counter-example to status loss… maybe it actually is a small status sacrifice designed to reduce the envy of the less successful people. Status games are complicated: if you get too much status, someone could get angry and kill you (either literally, or just work hard to ruin your carreer).
It could be interesting to find out whether top players get status loss among their peers if they practice visibly more than their peers but don’t deliver better results (yet).
And by the way, laughing at people who are trying to learn something also makes good sense as a zero-sum-game strategy. By threatening status loss you eliminate a future competition. If someone is already far ahead of you, it’s too late to stop them, but you can still stop people at your level from improving and leaving you behind. This sounds horrible, but it can be done unconsciously, like you really feel they don’t have a chance and are only making themselves funny, so you have to give them a helpful feedback.
Also there are some exceptional situations where adult learning from zero does not cause status loss. For example when the personal computers were new, older people did not lose status for learning the basics; they actually gained status even for minimum knowledge, because they were obviously superior in their age group.. and nobody expected them to really compete against 20-years olds (trying that seriously they would become very low-status).
Generally, if something is known to be new (not necessarily new technology, but also new fashion, for example Zumba dancing in my country), then even being a beginner increases your status among people who are at zero level. Probably because the zero level is percieved as average, so by being above-zero you automatically become elite.