I’m curious about your claim that low-status playing big is rarely occurring in nature, because it was far easier for me to think of low-big examples than high-small examples. What examples did you think of, if you care to share? Maybe we’re interpreting the thing slightly differently? And I definitely agree that low-big is a dangerous place to be, but it’s not obvious to me that either (a) or (b) will come into play in all or even a majority of cases.
I think a lot of low-big happens when people are relatively socially oblivious, and in those situations I think social pressure is often ineffective at pushing people back down to the low-small state. There is a common problem at rationality meetups (where people skew higher-than-average autistic) where someone takes up far more than their fair share of air in the room and doesn’t pick up on others’ signals of annoyance or discomfort.
Another situation that leads to a lot of low-big is when a person who’s used to being high status comes into a new context and erroneously expects their status to be conserved across domains. A probably-familiar example is a freshman at an elite university who was the smartest person in his hometown and therefore has been trained to think that everything he has to say is really important, who dominates class discussion despite having nothing interesting or insightful to say. In that case I guess I would naïvely expect (a) to push that person to be smaller eventually, but in practice that hasn’t been my experience.
Also, a lot of old people and tenured professors play big no matter what situation they’re in, and (a) is very unlikely to work on them, but (b) also might not work if they’re in a situation where they can’t gain status just by being big and blustery (e.g. the rationality community!).
Do you think there are other forces that act to repel people from low-big besides (a) and (b)? If not, are there other reasons why you think low-big is not a stable equilibrium? I ask because it definitely doesn’t look like a stable equilibrium, but I haven’t thought of things other than (a) or (b) that would make that the case.
I also agree that “both noticing and moving in the social game are in themselves predictive of high status,” but I don’t think it necessarily follows that “on the high status side it’s very easy to play both big and small as the situation demands.” I think there are plenty of people (probably particularly females, because of how we’re explicitly socialized to not take up space) who have definitely acquired status but play small far more often than is warranted. Imperfect examples that come to mind are Lauren Lee and Scott Alexander (and me, but you don’t know me) - although I’m concerned I might be equivocating here between ‘being small’ and ‘playing low status.’ I definitely always am both small and playing low status and trying to wrench myself out of that is painful and confusing, but I don’t know if the same is true of Lauren or Scott.
I think all I’m really saying here is that ‘being good at the social game’ implies ‘high status’, but ‘high status’ does not imply ‘being good at the social game’ - which maybe makes the axes more orthogonal than you think.
I think I tend to filter out relatively socially oblivious people from in-person interactions, so I’m probably seeing a wildly different sample from you and that accounts for the difference. I’ll make the weaker claim that low-big, unlike the three other locations on the map, is just not a good place to be in almost any situation.
I’m interpreting high-small to include many self-deprecating/minimizing behaviors made by high-status people (say good teachers and speakers) to seem more approachable/human and make everyone else more comfortable. “Holding space [for someone]” Qiaochu mentions in the other comment is an example of this. My experience is that most people “good at the status game” know how to play (exactly) high-big and high-small.
Indeed “high status” does not imply “good at the status game,” that’s a good point.
I’m curious about your claim that low-status playing big is rarely occurring in nature, because it was far easier for me to think of low-big examples than high-small examples. What examples did you think of, if you care to share? Maybe we’re interpreting the thing slightly differently? And I definitely agree that low-big is a dangerous place to be, but it’s not obvious to me that either (a) or (b) will come into play in all or even a majority of cases.
I think a lot of low-big happens when people are relatively socially oblivious, and in those situations I think social pressure is often ineffective at pushing people back down to the low-small state. There is a common problem at rationality meetups (where people skew higher-than-average autistic) where someone takes up far more than their fair share of air in the room and doesn’t pick up on others’ signals of annoyance or discomfort.
Another situation that leads to a lot of low-big is when a person who’s used to being high status comes into a new context and erroneously expects their status to be conserved across domains. A probably-familiar example is a freshman at an elite university who was the smartest person in his hometown and therefore has been trained to think that everything he has to say is really important, who dominates class discussion despite having nothing interesting or insightful to say. In that case I guess I would naïvely expect (a) to push that person to be smaller eventually, but in practice that hasn’t been my experience.
Also, a lot of old people and tenured professors play big no matter what situation they’re in, and (a) is very unlikely to work on them, but (b) also might not work if they’re in a situation where they can’t gain status just by being big and blustery (e.g. the rationality community!).
Do you think there are other forces that act to repel people from low-big besides (a) and (b)? If not, are there other reasons why you think low-big is not a stable equilibrium? I ask because it definitely doesn’t look like a stable equilibrium, but I haven’t thought of things other than (a) or (b) that would make that the case.
I also agree that “both noticing and moving in the social game are in themselves predictive of high status,” but I don’t think it necessarily follows that “on the high status side it’s very easy to play both big and small as the situation demands.” I think there are plenty of people (probably particularly females, because of how we’re explicitly socialized to not take up space) who have definitely acquired status but play small far more often than is warranted. Imperfect examples that come to mind are Lauren Lee and Scott Alexander (and me, but you don’t know me) - although I’m concerned I might be equivocating here between ‘being small’ and ‘playing low status.’ I definitely always am both small and playing low status and trying to wrench myself out of that is painful and confusing, but I don’t know if the same is true of Lauren or Scott.
I think all I’m really saying here is that ‘being good at the social game’ implies ‘high status’, but ‘high status’ does not imply ‘being good at the social game’ - which maybe makes the axes more orthogonal than you think.
I think I tend to filter out relatively socially oblivious people from in-person interactions, so I’m probably seeing a wildly different sample from you and that accounts for the difference. I’ll make the weaker claim that low-big, unlike the three other locations on the map, is just not a good place to be in almost any situation.
I’m interpreting high-small to include many self-deprecating/minimizing behaviors made by high-status people (say good teachers and speakers) to seem more approachable/human and make everyone else more comfortable. “Holding space [for someone]” Qiaochu mentions in the other comment is an example of this. My experience is that most people “good at the status game” know how to play (exactly) high-big and high-small.
Indeed “high status” does not imply “good at the status game,” that’s a good point.