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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3634 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

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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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