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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2890 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Yeah, thinking about it more, I think it's status uncertainty for both genders. It's just that female status is complicated.

Women are attracted to the top men in male status hierarchies.

Men are attracted to beautiful women, largely ignoring female status hierarchies.

So women have more opportunities for conflict based on status uncertainty. "I'm the best opera singer, but all the boys want to date her instead. It's not fair! Girls, let's sit somewhere else for lunch today".

Women have twin status hierarchies, one based on physical beauty and one based on merit. Men just have one.

Well, there's something in that especially in a school type scenario where attractiveness and status are perhaps most correlated, but I dunno if status is ever really simple. Venkatesh Rao has great material on this and the idea of keeping status deliberately illegible among a group:

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/10/14/the-gervais-principle-iv-wonderful-human-beings/

I think rao is wrong.

This seems like the wrong way around. Supposedly, status comes from other people appreciating/having use for/wanting to be allied with you, and then that is aggregated over the other people to get a status-point-total. But then, its obvious why this would break down when zoomed in: the reality are just various instances of people wanting stuff from each other, so maybe in my current situation, the „lower-status“ person really is more important to me.

But venkat starts out with the total ranking of status, and anything going against it must be some sort of collective delusion. Its like starting out with market prices, and concluding that no transaction can ever be mutually beneficial.

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