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Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 7, 2023

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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Looking for reading recommendations on social status and group formation.

Some claims along the lines of what I'm looking for (arguments or evidence for or against these claims):

  1. Social status basically is a person's value to a group.

  2. Different groups can value someone differently, so there's not necessarily a notion of 'true' or global social status.

  3. It's forbidden (or at least, low-status) to talk about status explicitly.

  4. People can prove their high status by being magnanimous towards lowly people. Someone of lower status faces more of a threat from the next rung down so they can't safely praise lowly people.

  5. People who are more productive (in ways the group cares about) have higher status.

  6. People whose roles relate to the sacred (doctors for example, who save lives, which are sacred) have higher status.

  7. The sacred is a big part of what forms group identity, differentiates in-group vs. out-group members, and helps groups persist over time.

I'm particularly looking for books or essays that frame these things in terms of game theory or economics. "Sociology for systematizers" if you will.

You might want to read this paper on Reverse Dominance Hierarchy: https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/boehm.pdf

I got to it from https://meltingasphalt.com/tears/ which you might want to read first, as an aperitif of sorts.

Totally different but I have this on order at my local bookstore after reading this interview with the author. He seems to be talking primarily about fashion, but of course fashion can mean anything from how a pair of pants is cut to what books we read to what Gods we pray to and what political opinions we hold.

His argument seems to be that status is created in fashion by distinctiveness, and that fashionistas are constantly contrarians trying to create change, but that in order for a change to really take hold it has to have a story behind it that people believe in. Something of a fashion version of Friedman's dictate that

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

W David Marx is great, I used to read his blog neomarxisme years ago. I didn't realize he had a new book out. Thanks for posting.

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