Before you posted that I’d have said it was a pretty obvious idea. Can you develop your objection more?
The reason it seems obvious to me is that status is measured relative to the rest of the tribe. If you climb up the social ladder, that means someone got bumped down. Zero net change.
Imagine two islands, each with some tiny population—let’s say, 10 each. Nobody ever interacts with anyone off-island, and the resources and living standards are the same. Now if I told you that people on island 1 are higher-status than people on island 2, does that strike you as a nonsensical statement? To me, it does not; it means that there is more mutual respect on island 1. I think that parsing that as “status” is justified, because it’s not synonymous with how nice they are to each other, how much they like each other, or any other such variable (though of course it would tend to correlate with those).
You may disagree, but you should consider whether a definition of status which is tautologically zero-sum is likely to be blinding you to positive-sum interactions that are best interpreted as status-related (as opposed to friendship- or kindness-related).
“Mutual respect” could stand to be more rigorously defined.
Here’s how I would imagine it: island 1 has specialists who divide the tasks of survival among themselves according to comparative advantage; everyone can say “I’m the best there is (on the island) at what I do” and does what they’re best at most of the time. Island 2 has a king and nine cringing slaves.
To me; it would, in principle, be nonsensical. However, in actuality, for this problem to be proposed, there must exist at least one person who knows of both island 1 and island 2, and it is that persons ranking that is being referred to. So they rank the people of island 1 higher than those of island 2. Perhaps because there’s more mutual respect on island 1.
You may disagree, but you should consider whether a definition of status which is tautologically zero-sum is likely to be blinding you to positive-sum interactions that are best interpreted as status-related (as opposed to friendship- or kindness-related).
Those are entirely understandable in a zero-sum model. Put simply: those people are co-operating to increase their status, yes, but by doing so they are decreasing the status of those they overtake.
Note that I’m not sure which description of status is more useful yet, I just thought I’d chime in with some “thoughts so far”
The first half is part of my original model. Status only ever exists relative to a particular community.
Imagine the two islands, island 1 and island 2 came into contact; but the people of each island were extremely patriotic.
On island 1, the people of island 2 would be low status. BUT on island 2, the people of island 1 would be low status.
In the same way one can lose status in one community (ie. a church-based community) while gaining it in another (ie. the rationalist community) through a single action (ie. abandoning their past religious faith)
The second part (explaining how a zero-sum model can justify behaviour that isn’t LOCALLY zero-sum) is, quite simply, obvious to me; because it is so analogous to the zero-sum nature of energy in physics (energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but there are plenty of ways for you to get your hands on more of it)
Yup, good point. I have no idea what “should” count as the “gold standard” for status.
If it had been the case that status was “really” a ranking, and therefore inherently zero sum,
then it could produce one of those cases where people would be better off if they were
consistently wrong about their actual status—if they consistently overestimated it.
However, since status is a vastly fuzzier thing than, for instance, height or weight,
it isn’t at all clear what counts as correctly estimating one’s status.
The main thing that comes to mind is that status is not a one-dimensional variable. Somebody may have high status among LW posters, low status among goths, and moderate status among window-cleaners. If you could arbitrarily construct social groups and assign people to them, as well as deciding everyone’s status in each group, you could construct such a set of social groups that every human belonged to at least one group where he was high-status.
Of course, in practice you can’t do that, especially since people typically prefer hanging out in the social groups where they’re high-status and avoid the groups where they’re low-status.
Before you posted that I’d have said it was a pretty obvious idea. Can you develop your objection more?
The reason it seems obvious to me is that status is measured relative to the rest of the tribe. If you climb up the social ladder, that means someone got bumped down. Zero net change.
Imagine two islands, each with some tiny population—let’s say, 10 each. Nobody ever interacts with anyone off-island, and the resources and living standards are the same. Now if I told you that people on island 1 are higher-status than people on island 2, does that strike you as a nonsensical statement? To me, it does not; it means that there is more mutual respect on island 1. I think that parsing that as “status” is justified, because it’s not synonymous with how nice they are to each other, how much they like each other, or any other such variable (though of course it would tend to correlate with those).
You may disagree, but you should consider whether a definition of status which is tautologically zero-sum is likely to be blinding you to positive-sum interactions that are best interpreted as status-related (as opposed to friendship- or kindness-related).
“Mutual respect” could stand to be more rigorously defined.
Here’s how I would imagine it: island 1 has specialists who divide the tasks of survival among themselves according to comparative advantage; everyone can say “I’m the best there is (on the island) at what I do” and does what they’re best at most of the time. Island 2 has a king and nine cringing slaves.
To me; it would, in principle, be nonsensical. However, in actuality, for this problem to be proposed, there must exist at least one person who knows of both island 1 and island 2, and it is that persons ranking that is being referred to. So they rank the people of island 1 higher than those of island 2. Perhaps because there’s more mutual respect on island 1.
Those are entirely understandable in a zero-sum model. Put simply: those people are co-operating to increase their status, yes, but by doing so they are decreasing the status of those they overtake.
Note that I’m not sure which description of status is more useful yet, I just thought I’d chime in with some “thoughts so far”
Are those responses epicycles, or are they really part of your original model?
The first half is part of my original model. Status only ever exists relative to a particular community.
Imagine the two islands, island 1 and island 2 came into contact; but the people of each island were extremely patriotic.
On island 1, the people of island 2 would be low status. BUT on island 2, the people of island 1 would be low status.
In the same way one can lose status in one community (ie. a church-based community) while gaining it in another (ie. the rationalist community) through a single action (ie. abandoning their past religious faith)
The second part (explaining how a zero-sum model can justify behaviour that isn’t LOCALLY zero-sum) is, quite simply, obvious to me; because it is so analogous to the zero-sum nature of energy in physics (energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but there are plenty of ways for you to get your hands on more of it)
Yup, good point. I have no idea what “should” count as the “gold standard” for status. If it had been the case that status was “really” a ranking, and therefore inherently zero sum, then it could produce one of those cases where people would be better off if they were consistently wrong about their actual status—if they consistently overestimated it. However, since status is a vastly fuzzier thing than, for instance, height or weight, it isn’t at all clear what counts as correctly estimating one’s status.
The main thing that comes to mind is that status is not a one-dimensional variable. Somebody may have high status among LW posters, low status among goths, and moderate status among window-cleaners. If you could arbitrarily construct social groups and assign people to them, as well as deciding everyone’s status in each group, you could construct such a set of social groups that every human belonged to at least one group where he was high-status.
Of course, in practice you can’t do that, especially since people typically prefer hanging out in the social groups where they’re high-status and avoid the groups where they’re low-status.