Status-Regulating Emotions

I think that either you or Justin have misunderstood what Eliezer meant by the status-regulation emotion. Of course if a rando starts bossing me, I will get angry. Being commanded by someone is a thing that even most autists would resent. This could hardly surprise anyone.

But people get angry over "inappropriate" things that are nothing like that. Imagine a situation like this:

Someone writes a book of fiction. The book sells many copies. Many readers fall in love with the book, and then say this is the best thing they have read in years.

The author is young. This is the first book he wrote. He never published anything before; not even a short story. His name is completely unknown to literary critics. He never studied literature. He never attended a writing workshop. He is just some random guy. He never asked anyone (e.g. a high-school teacher) whether it is okay for him to write a book. He never asked anyone whether the book is good enough to be published. He just wrote the book, and then used some publishing service.

For some people, such as me (and, I assume, Eliezer), there is absolutely no issue with this. So, the guy succeeded to write a great book -- good for him! The prior probability of someone accomplishing this feat successfully is low -- but he did it, we already have the evidence of success, so the usual predictors (opinions of the high-school teachers, literary critics, and publishers; effort spent; previous experience) became irrelevant now. Looking forward to read another book! Nothing more to say about this, except perhaps ask him for some writing advice.

However, there are people whose blood would boil with rage after observing this situation in real life. This is not how things are supposed to be done; how dares he! The proper way is to start humble: write an essay, listen to your teacher's feedback, write another essay, and when your teacher is finally satisfied, write a short story and send it to a respected literary magazine, get rejected, read the review carefully and memorize it, attend a writing workshop, listen to experts, keep following their advice until they are happy, then send to the literary magazine again, maybe get published, do the same thing again and again until the critics become familiar with your name, and only after they approve of your talent, only then your trembling hand should start writing your first book; and of course you need to get your manuscript reviewed and update it until your editor is happy, and only then it goes to press; and it's still faux pas if your readers praise you more than the experts... Avoiding this process entirely, that is cheating, and deserves to be punished. No one has the right to be successful, without first spending a lot of time as a humble apprentice! If the angry observer is a literary critic, expect a scathing review; otherwise, expect your Wikipedia page to be vandalized repeatedly. If your identity is known, expect to find your tires slashed.

This is a reaction that is difficult for me to empathize with, and it took me a lot of time to learn that this is how many people function. They perceive "undeserved" success as a personal affront, and volunteer to punish it. Where "undeserved" can be rationalized as "did not spend appropriate effort", but it actually means "does not have sufficient status". (In this example, learning that the author spent last 10 years working on the book 3 hours a day, and rewrote it 5 times from scratch, would not diminish the anger. He still avoided the proper channels!)

OMG, this explains SO MUCH of my childhood!!

I just had a fully hour-long conversation with my household about this. Apparently the only other person who didn't know about it was the preschooler. The others helped me explore how status regulation is probably a huge contributor to the persistence of racism, classism, and that thing where communities tend to strongly distrust "blowins".

Mind blown; thanks for that!

In MBTI terms, you may have an Se blindspot.  Se, or "External Sensation" is just what is right in front of you, what you see.  People with high Se tend to be pretty good at status symbols, both reading them and communicating in them (and they also often fall pray to "what you see is all there is" illusions/delusions, as well as "X resembles y enough that x=y, and I'm done with any need for further information.").

Se Blindspot can make people basically fail to grok social status cues at all, and "Your strongpoint is your weakpoint" applies here.

>It bothers me when someone attempts to selfishly seize power.

I think this is what Eliezer is talking about. If someone tried to tell you what to do without justification, would you resent it? If so, that's the emotion. We accept being told what to do by hierarchical superiors because we believe that is what is best for the larger whole, whether that's the CEO setting direction for the company or your mom deciding what is served for dinner. People who tell others what to do outside an accepted hierarchy are perceived as acting selfishly and disruptively.