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Who wants to play the status game?

thepointmag.com

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Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#21

Post by dmos62 »

stared wrote: post #11
zxcmx wrote: post #9

Thank goodness for status ambiguity. It's possible to be rich, yet a terrific bore; a talented golfer who is a mean drunk; a world class programmer who can't weld for beans; or a respected judge who nonetheless commits a faux pas at a society event. We can all be switching statuses all the time and (to an extent) we get to choose which ones, if any, matter to us. I think this makes life immensely more rich and tolera…

It is closely related to the "scalar fallacy" (see http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2011/01/scalar... ; the quotation from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8132525 ): > The scalar fallacy is the false but pervasive assumption that real-world things (hotels, sandwiches, people, mutual funds, chemo drugs, whatever) have some single-dimension ordering of "goodness". > When you project a multi-dimensiona…

Single dimension fallacy might be a good alternative name.

I'd add that often things don't have a single ordering of goodness at all. Like a tomato sauce: some people like it thick, others watery, others chunky; so it actually has at least 3 orderings.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#23

Post by mapcars »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #15
yunusabd wrote: post #10

I love how the author casually puts herself up there with Kant, Aristotle and Nietzsche. I guess she's playing the importance game too :) "And no philosopher — not Kant, not Aristotle, not Nietzsche, not I — has yet figured out how to construct a moral theory that allows us to say both of those things."

Also like how they completely ignore Marx/philosophers who actually study societial inequality, with those who studied logic. Also the whole Ubermensch thing is basically a solution to this, by essentially fixing the whole system with an ideal person.

>fixing the whole system with an ideal person.

How can non-ideal persons define what an ideas person is? This is just a mental game.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#24

Post by moron4hire »

dmos62 wrote: post #21
stared wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is closely related to the "scalar fallacy" (see http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2011/01/scalar... ; the quotation from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8132525 ): > The scalar fallacy is the false but pervasive assumption that real-world things (hotels, sandwiches, people, mutual funds, chemo drugs, whatever) have some single-dimension ordering of "goodness". > When you project a multi-dimensiona…

Single dimension fallacy might be a good alternative name. I'd add that often things don't have a single ordering of goodness at all. Like a tomato sauce: some people like it thick, others watery, others chunky; so it actually has at least 3 orderings.

A scalar is a single dimension

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#26

Post by jonathanstrange »

dmos62 wrote: post #21
stared wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is closely related to the "scalar fallacy" (see http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2011/01/scalar... ; the quotation from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8132525 ): > The scalar fallacy is the false but pervasive assumption that real-world things (hotels, sandwiches, people, mutual funds, chemo drugs, whatever) have some single-dimension ordering of "goodness". > When you project a multi-dimensiona…

Single dimension fallacy might be a good alternative name. I'd add that often things don't have a single ordering of goodness at all. Like a tomato sauce: some people like it thick, others watery, others chunky; so it actually has at least 3 orderings.

Well, the general solution of economists is to assume that every person has their own ordering. This doesn't work for Spectrum Arguments by Larry Temkin, though. A typical argument goes like this: Suppose alternative A gives you an extremely high level of well-being for a month. B brings a little bit less well-being than A for two months. C a little bit less well-being for four months, and so forth. In pairwise comparisons you judge that B is better than A, C is better than B, and so on. Yet at some point, say, Z you will consider A better than Z if you compare A to Z, but you will continue to consider Z better than Y. Therefore, "better than" is not transitive.

People have written a lot of articles on how to solve these types of puzzles, which can be formulated many different evaluative domains. They always involve two or more criteria.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#27

Post by chrisweekly »

afpx wrote: post #19

Another "more advanced game" is the collaboration game. In this game, the players determine their common ground. The players evaluate each other and think, "Hey this person seems to be good at X and knows a lot about Y. I know a lot about Z. Maybe we can join forces." They then identify common goals that they can work on together. I don't know about most people, but I'm definitely more interested in playing the colla…

Great points!

Tangent: I wish more games were explicitly collaborative. Some competitive games can easily be adjusted, others not so much. Games like "Forbidden Island" represent, for many, a completely foreign paradigm where everyone's in it together. Shame that's not more common.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#28

Post by bernawil »

stared wrote: post #11
zxcmx wrote: post #9

Thank goodness for status ambiguity. It's possible to be rich, yet a terrific bore; a talented golfer who is a mean drunk; a world class programmer who can't weld for beans; or a respected judge who nonetheless commits a faux pas at a society event. We can all be switching statuses all the time and (to an extent) we get to choose which ones, if any, matter to us. I think this makes life immensely more rich and tolera…

It is closely related to the "scalar fallacy" (see http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2011/01/scalar... ; the quotation from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8132525 ): > The scalar fallacy is the false but pervasive assumption that real-world things (hotels, sandwiches, people, mutual funds, chemo drugs, whatever) have some single-dimension ordering of "goodness". > When you project a multi-dimensiona…

I don't get it. Is it related to rankings, star systems, etc?

> pervasive assumption

I think whenever "rating" anything people are aware that it's a subjective and probably useless number meant for convenience than accuracy.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#29

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

yunusabd wrote: post #10

I love how the author casually puts herself up there with Kant, Aristotle and Nietzsche. I guess she's playing the importance game too :) "And no philosopher — not Kant, not Aristotle, not Nietzsche, not I — has yet figured out how to construct a moral theory that allows us to say both of those things."

I assumed she was winking at the reader here.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#30

Post by werber »

This feels so empty, what the article thinks is the status game just sounds like normal meeting new people stuff. Obviously there are always status indicators tied to interests, but I feel like I’m playing the make a new friend game not some philosophical keeping up with the Joneses
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