Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about riding a $10,000 bike to work?
Are there 10k commute bikes? I doubt people take 10k pro road bikes to work
There are people who do.
Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
241–250 of 651 posts
Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#242> An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car. It must be so tedious to live having internalized this perspective on people. The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when they do things, t…
> The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when they do things, they are just doing things. I've read Sutherland's "Alchemy" book and that's not how I remember him framing signaling. Long to short, while - to your point - we are not all intentionally signaling, we are as receivers of inputs are constantly looking for and translating random input into signals. The point being, whether you like it or not, y…
> His is a very counter "conventional wisdom" mindset. That appeals to me.
This is basically what I see going on here, and what I mean by "the iamverysmart crowd" (which to be clear: I am a part of). We overindex on this kind of counter conventional wisdom because it's more interesting. But I think it's more often the case that the boring conventional wisdom is closer to the mark.
Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#243Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#244> An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car. It must be so tedious to live having internalized this perspective on people. The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when they do things, t…
You find it unrelatable (and most commenters on this website will too.)
People can be broadly separated into 2 categories in terms of cognitive wiring for personality psychology. "People people" and "Things* people". (Theres a lot of overlap between interest in aesthetics and interest in ideas here too, but a separate discussion) These map rather neatly onto other things like introversion and agreeableness, but parking that for a moment. Additionally, "People people" can learn about 'Things' and "Things people" can learn about 'People'.
Things people (so lets say, your bog standard software eng.) And people people (communications director) do have one thing in common, which is assuming they understand how the other thinks. What is irritating minutae to one, is the essence of importance to the other. Talking about the superiority of UTF8, Linux or Vim might come across as repulsively "iamverysmart" to "People people".
Observing social signals as signals, and the various hierachical cues that inform and are informed by them is the essense of being interested in other people. We all adhere to varying degrees of social order. To disparage the rules is perilous and risks ostracisation (in the olden days, this meant you didnt reproduce and died).
This dichotomy is responsible for a lot of the mechanics of organisational hierachies. Not everything is a math problem.
Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#245Not going to university or dropping out of it is the most expensive countersignal of all, and it also knocks away the ladder for people who might try to follow you into your chosen endeavour.
I've been articulating this dynamic for a long time and tell anyone who thinks I am an example that it's a terrible example to follow - mostly because the countersignals become the signal, as really, if you really want to prove how smart you are, go win a Fields medal, or perhaps you have a cancer cure to help my friend, or maybe you can make something somebody else actually wants for a change - and if you aren't that smart, then maybe you should work less on seeming smart and more on demonstrating you are good at something and use the opportunities that come from the respect of your competence and ability to share it with others, instead of affecting the aura of brilliance at being a failed or frustrated genius. These admonishments are as much to myself as anyone else who resembles them.
Countersignals are vulgar artifacts of the 90s that a bunch of nouveau middle class people are just starting to figure out now, and they only fool rubes and are a way to figure out who to follow and how to climb socially, but never how to do something beautiful or great. I call them fart-connoisseurs because I know what it is like to be one. These days I use this quote a lot, which is, "Don't be so humble, you aren't that great."
When I'm great, I will be humble. Until then, check out how awesome my effort that yielded something objectively crappy is, and even though it's not above criticism, it did the job, which is more than brilliance ever did. Maybe that is knocking the ladder away too, but that ladder went nowhere anyway. :)
Big fan of Rob Hendersons newsletter. Recommend.
Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#246> An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car. It must be so tedious to live having internalized this perspective on people. The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when they do things, t…
Most of this is unconscious for the general population, the consequence of mimicry + social cues + emotional rewards. The person who shows up to Pizza Hut on a bicycle isn't thinking about social status consciously. Instead, they get slightly pitying looks from coworkers, which make them feel slightly inferior and ashamed, which makes them not do it again. The top executive who shows up on a bicycle gets no such feed…
> The person who shows up to Pizza Hut on a bicycle isn't thinking about social status consciously. Instead, they get slightly pitying looks from coworkers, which make them feel slightly inferior and ashamed, which makes them not do it again
This is not how social dynamic at Pizza Hut works.
Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#247> Humans haven’t been successful because we are innovators. Rather, we are successful because we don’t think for ourselves, and save time and energy by copying others.
This is just plain incorrect.
Humanity functions in three groups: creators, mimics and teachers.
The creators are the less cautious types that strike out and build new things, attempt to invent or innovate. Their personalities and behaviors are quite often noticeably different from everyone else.
Mimics copy, copy, copy. They're probably ~95-97% of the population. Their success depends on successfully copying other models that work.
Teachers primarily exist to train mimics, to amplify knowledge out to humanity. They're mimics with bullhorns and a desire to pass on things that have worked and knowledge acquired broadly by the species (lessons learned, etc).
This works, this is successful, initiate copy mode. And off it goes. Humans are exceptionally good at that for sure. We just got a remarkable, prominent, several decade demonstration of it at a global level in so called globalization. Creators are the ones that initiate the next things to be copied, the next things that get taught from a textbook in school, and so on (to be clear, most creators suffer terribly and never achieve much of anything; theirs is a low success rate, high reward path).
Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of this is unconscious for the general population, the consequence of mimicry + social cues + emotional rewards. The person who shows up to Pizza Hut on a bicycle isn't thinking about social status consciously. Instead, they get slightly pitying looks from coworkers, which make them feel slightly inferior and ashamed, which makes them not do it again. The top executive who shows up on a bicycle gets no such feed…
> Instead, they get slightly pitying looks from coworkers, which make them feel slightly inferior and ashamed, which makes them not do it again. No they don't! Is my point. This is almost entirely a story made up by this bizarro world of smart people who think themselves into circles (and aren't working at pizza hut). Nobody cares how someone gets themselves to their job at pizza hut; the other people working there a…
Check out the song "No Scrubs" by TLC for another angle on the same topic. It's a real phenomenon, not just something made up by nerds on substack.
Some people are blissfully checked out enough from social competition dynamics that they don't notice it.
Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#249Every moment spent contriving and derisking a plan to virtue signal to born followers is better spent talking to leaders and figuring out which calculated risks to take.
Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal
#250> An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car. It must be so tedious to live having internalized this perspective on people. The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when they do things, t…
It comes across as an obsession with image-management, rather than with skill-development or something similarly practical and useful. While there's some need for taking care of one's appearance (poor personal hygiene, for example, is unpleasant for the people around you), putting this at the top of the list of things to worry about doesn't seem very healthy.
It's also a characteristic of con artists of the SBF/Holmes etc. variety. Patrick Boyle's latest video, "Why We Trust Fraudsters!" explores this in some depth: