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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?

#61

Post by cpcallen »

leelin wrote: post #43

My undergrad was a super nerdy school grinding largely solo in the CS lab. Later I did an MBA program to take me completely out of my comfort zone. I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose. If it was the chess equivalent, I fall into Fool's Mate on move 2. Unfortunately, there ARE times when it helps to be able to quickly convey to new acquainta…

> I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose.

I think this is also a sort of power play, but also an amusing one that I too enjoy - e.g., it's quite fun, when questioned about what I do by someone who obviously cares about social status, to not mention my well-paid job working at a FANG company but instead talk about working as a dance teacher.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#62

Post by hashkb »

chadlavi wrote: post #60

This is a really fucking grim view of humanity! Is it not possible for someone to just want to find common positive interests hobbies and goals with a stranger so they can make a connection and be friends? Does it have to be back-stabby position jockeying and dick-measuring? We don't live in an Aaron Sorkin universe. Sometimes smalltalk is just small talk.

She's observing a common phenomenon. I don't think she's saying all human interaction is a status negotiation.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#63

Post by willemlabu »

I once attended a talk by a man who was head of a creative marketing agency. He also had a side gig of being a presentation consultant. I forget his name and agency, but I don't think I could forget what he said.

He would lead his company's pitches to new clients, and would turn up to the presentation wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops; tattoos all over his arms and neck, and thereby set the expectations of the room quite low.

He would then continue brazenly with his presentation – charming, intelligent, and confident – and by the end of the pitch would hopefully have won the prospective clients with this wit.

His logic was that everyone plays the status game, but to be remembered you need to change people's perception of your status drastically. Setting expectations low, and then making them feel foolish for misjudging you.

In his words: it had varied success.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#64

Post by yboris »

leelin wrote: post #43

My undergrad was a super nerdy school grinding largely solo in the CS lab. Later I did an MBA program to take me completely out of my comfort zone. I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose. If it was the chess equivalent, I fall into Fool's Mate on move 2. Unfortunately, there ARE times when it helps to be able to quickly convey to new acquainta…

Possibly related: Key & Peele "Code Switching"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXH5CD3O7Oc

Wikipedia: "In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation."

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#65

Post by dumbfounder »

Aardwolf wrote: post #56
mark_l_watson wrote: post #55

Status signaling is complicated and I have been thinking lately how inconsistently I signal. On one hand, I feel very happy with my career and hobbies like writing books and I signal this to people when I first meet them. I try to not be obnoxious, but human nature is human nature. On the other hand, I live in a small town and last spring when I shipped my car across the country as a gift to my granddaughter, I decid…

Not signaling is also a form of signaling.

Yes it isn't.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#67

Post by yboris »

cpcallen wrote: post #61
leelin wrote: post #43

My undergrad was a super nerdy school grinding largely solo in the CS lab. Later I did an MBA program to take me completely out of my comfort zone. I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose. If it was the chess equivalent, I fall into Fool's Mate on move 2. Unfortunately, there ARE times when it helps to be able to quickly convey to new acquainta…

> I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose. I think this is also a sort of power play, but also an amusing one that I too enjoy - e.g., it's quite fun, when questioned about what I do by someone who obviously cares about social status, to not mention my well-paid job working at a FANG company but instead talk about working as a dance teacher.

Reminds me of how in high school, there are kids that are smart and want to show it off (raise their hands, answer teacher's questions), and there are those that are on the "next level" -- they don't even need to prove to everyone else that they know the answers, so they never raise their hands.

In personal conversations some are eager to share that they are doing something amazing, but those on the "next level" don't try to impress the others :P

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#68

Post by 3dprintscanner »

This reminds me a lot of the idea of Transactional Analysis. It's a study of the Ego state of people interacting with the world around them and whether they act as a figurative Parent, Adult or Child in a certain situation and can explain why people might play a particular status game in some situations and not in others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#69

Post by jonathanstrange »

yboris wrote: post #57
jonathanstrange wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compa…

I've heard Temkin give talks attacking transitivity and I never buy it. Most of his examples involve infinity which is problematic. In the example you share, I think all it points out is that our ability to compare things (psychologically) is broken: we may think A Z. I strongly think this is a bias akin to scope insensitivity. By the time we get to Z we're likely talking about HUNDREDS OF YEARS of experience, and we…

That's a common reply. However, you can simply adopt these examples to fit whatever intuitions someone has, e.g. give Z a duration of thirty years and adjust the other intervals accordingly. Or give it a duration of 10 years and start with 30 minutes. Likewise, you can change the levels, replace well being with money or health or pleasure, and so on. Bear in mind that Temkin only needs one counter-example. I personally think we're psychologically fit to make these comparisons and that his arguments go through. It's not very surprising, if you take into account that in multicriteria decision making cases similar to these have been analysed and discussed since the 60s, e.g. by Peter C. Fishburn and by the French/Belgium tradition.

You can solve these without giving up transitivity. Technically, even just incompleteness solves the issue. My own favorite solution is lexicographic, but apparently not many reviewers like it. :(

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#70

Post by yboris »

yboris wrote: post #57
jonathanstrange wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compa…

I've heard Temkin give talks attacking transitivity and I never buy it. Most of his examples involve infinity which is problematic. In the example you share, I think all it points out is that our ability to compare things (psychologically) is broken: we may think A Z. I strongly think this is a bias akin to scope insensitivity. By the time we get to Z we're likely talking about HUNDREDS OF YEARS of experience, and we…

Re: jonathanstrange's reply to my reply

Thanks for more comments. You're right you can re-scale things to be (A) 30 minutes VS 10 years (Z) ... at which point, why would anyone prefer A > Z ???

Part of the argument relies on this very vague definition of the eventual state of things. Temkin talks about an experience "just above 'barely worth living'" (Life-Z-1) ... and that is _so_ vague, and it means something _so_ different to different people. Given that people in concentration camps chose to continue living rather than kill themselves right away might make someone think "Life-Z-1" sucks, I would take 10 minutes of pleasure over that torture. Meanwhile I'm thinking what is just above 'barely worth living' (Life-Z-2) is just great -- the kind of basic enjoyment you have day to day without too much humor or excitement.

Philosophy is hard - I don't mean to poo-poo Temkin, I just never could grasp why transitivity was what he was attacking. As he says (something akin to) "there are several balls we're juggling in the air, and we must drop at least one to make it work" and he chooses to drop transitivity. And I don't see why he chose that 'ball'.

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