That other kind of status

I agree: LW already has a problem because is uses too much idiosyncratic terminology. Please don't make the problem worse: many people reading "ze" in an article will just think you're batshit crazy.

Singluar they is strongly attested all up and down the language. See: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1601
and the rest of Language Log in general for wonderfully informative linguistic commentary.

Enough with the nonce pronouns.

When I read that paragraph my first reaction was "what, is this some sort of tricky joke about Yvain's own status-seeking? I'm not sure I get it."

Agree 100%.

It always derails me a bit, and then I realize it's a gender neutral singular and move on. "They" has been adopted for this purpose, and my brain is used to understanding "they" as gender neutral singular. Sure, it's overloaded, but it's not that big a deal, and it has the momentum on it's side.

Upvoted out of agreement. Could we have a top-level post for debating & voting on the house style for singular pronouns?

Either "identity" is too vague or I don't understand how you're using it. There's no explanation of what an identity is, why or how people seek an identity, or why they would seek one instead of others. "Village idiot" is an identity and "brilliant seeker of truth" is an identity, but most people, given the choice, would try to conform to the latter.

"Living up to ideals" is a very human-level thought. Where's the mental circuitry behind it? Why would people want to live up to ideals, or even have ideals? What's my motivation?

I think you're entirely right about identity, but that identity is a high-level process that emerges out of the search for status. Exactly how is a whole other post, but I think a lot of the research you mention is in the fields of contingencies of self-worth, ie how our self-esteem comes from lots of different sources. We then value or devalue those sources in order to maximize our own self-esteem. I'm pretty smart but not too strong, so I come up with a worldview in which intellect is much more important than physical strength, and my identities, like "rationalist" and "leftist with a side of libertarianism" develop partly out of what helps me affirm that story that leads to my high status and high self-worth.

I disagree about the attitude versus results thing. One of the posts I still have to make in this sequence argues that this mechanism is what drives so many people into roles that can't receive feedback. For example, you won't find many poor people priding themselves on how rich they are, or too many stupid people priding themselves on how book-smart and well-educated they are, but anyone can pride themselves on how moral they are and how correct their political beliefs are, and most people do. Likewise, the 9-11 Truther example and other conspiracies of fact tend to form around questions that are hard to resolve.

Also, although you use the example of "shaman", there weren't that many roles in the EEA, shamans are probably a pretty late development (first ceremonial burial isn't until 100,000 BC or so), and everything else came even later.

Summary: I think you're right about roles and identity, but the goal of this post is to deconstruct "identity" into moving parts.

One way to think about these ideas about identity and roles is in the context of a more general theory I want to suggest: that there is a recurring set of conditions under which of games of costly signaling of the ability to resemble prototypes of a category tend to evolve convergently.

Such a theory might be consistent with the results from experiments on attractiveness of facial symmetry and facial averageness.

It might also be consistent with some observations I make by introspecting on intuitions which predict social penalties for unusual but morally harmless behavior. (E.g. the penalties one would receive if one were to wear, without explanation, a formal business suit with details somehow precisely matching the accidents of fashion of a randomly and fairly drawn alternate history from 200 years ago, instead of a formal business suit with details precisely matching the accidents of fashion of our own local history.)

Such a theory would predict that there would be literature on a cognitive bias to prefer prototypical and central members of a category to non-prototypical and peripheral members of the category. But as far as I know, there is not very much specific literature on this question. The only specific literature I know of is work) by Jamin Halberstadt of the University of Otago (NZ) and co-authors about visual attractiveness. A summary from 2006 is "The generality and ultimate origins of the attractiveness of prototypes". "Prototypes are attractive because they are easy on the mind" is an ungated paper from 2006 that reports an experiment controlling for the effect of preference for fluently processed stimuli, because prototypical stimuli are processed more fluently. (One possible interpretation of the result is that there may be a reason to prefer stimuli which aren't confusing, because confusing stimuli may hide defects better.) "The face of fluency: Semantic coherence automatically elicits a specific pattern of facial muscle reactions" generalizes part of this effect to non-visual stimuli, and "Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation" argues that fluency experiences affect many dimensions of social judgement.

OK, this a very good statement of precisely what I was trying to convey.

Interesting, I wonder how the tendancy to split between "specializations" fits with the tendancy to split between "tribes" (as Robin said). I would naively expect that each tribe would require some of each specialization, but I know very little about anthropology. The indian castes seem to fit with both models - castes are seperate "tribes" (not necessarily in direct competition) that also have different roles.

We already have a lot of that going on in our society. Is "success" measured by how much money you win? how much money you show off? how much money you save? how famous you are? how hard-working you are? How creative you are? How good-looking you are? How high in a formal hierarchy you are? How many people are under your supervision? How many women you sleep with? How few men you sleep with? How loyal to your country you are? How skillful a lover you are? How good-looking your wife is? How rich and powerful your husband is? How many people visit your website? How many people read your book? How much critics praise your book? How smart you are? How open minded you are? How compassionate you are? How sincere you are? How original you are? How many friends you have? How many levels at World of Warcraft you are? How strong you are? How good a fighter you are?

So many scales to judge people, you're bound to find one or several on which you're better than most people.

A big part of the gap between left-wing and right-wing is caused by two groups with different standards trying to establish their standard as the right one, that's the most worthy of praise.

Yes, signaling loyalty to whatever categories you belong to looks to me like a slightly stronger motivation for most people than signaling status. Related to both is signaling conformity to people's stereotypes regarding the categories you fit into, e.g. fitting in.

Relevantly, in American culture fitting in and narrow in group loyalties are denegrated by popular culture while the attempt go succeed, e.g. to gain status especially in contests, is strongly promoted. How many heroes of American stories fit in? How many succeed against all odds? Contrast to medieval or ancient stories where trying to raise one's status might be hubris or invite the evil eye.

A neat example of this point was the instantaneous display of American flags after 9/11 in most comunities. As David Foster Wallace's article at the time illustrates, the people couldn't effectively articulate why the urge to participate in this way was so strong, but the explanation of "showing you identify with and support a particular group over and above other loyalties" makes perfect sense of it all.

(Of course, once flag-displaying reaches a critical mass within a community, the pressures of conformity suffice as an explanation; but the speed with which communities ubiquitously reached that threshold has to be explained otherwise.)

Brilliant find! This and Yvain's post suggest the outlines for an analysis of trolling...

Initial reaction: "That's news?".

That said, your link seems to be dead, with no archive. Do you have it saved?

...that there was a much simpler explanation than the apologist and the revolutionary for the phenomenon discussed in that post...

You can't just say there's a simpler explanation and then not give it!

...Well, you can, but it's rather cruel.

So what did you find?

Most unpopular beliefs are false. However, if everyone subscribed to strict majoritarianism and never took up unpopular beliefs, intellectual progress would cease completely. There must come a point at which cost we pay in wasted effort because of false unpopular beliefs is worth the payoff in progress through new ideas, which of course all start off unpopular. So while I'd like 9-11 truthers to see the error of their beliefs, I'd like to achieve that through argument based on fact, rather than through simply pointing out that everyone disagrees with them.

Also, of course, strict majoritarianism is self-defeating, since it's a pretty unpopular stance in itself.

Variations on this theme have certainly come up. This site says it's about rationality, yet the local consensus is weird or deviant, what if that's being produced by the very same irrationality mechanisms that you all write about? Lots of people have posed that question.

With respect to your comparison: The idea that this will be the century of artificial intelligence is commonplace now. Silicon Valley has not quite become Singularity Valley, but it is extremely common for people who work in the computer industry, even very senior ones, to now anticipate a future that is radically science-fictional in character. It would only be a small number of your "very smart and accomplished people" who even have a considered opinion, pro or con, on Eliezer's specific philosophy, but I don't think his statement that you quote is especially unusual or anomalous for its time.

You could say something similar about the 9-11 Truthers too - that they are part of the zeitgeist - though in locating their social support base, you'll find it's identifiably different to the culture in which singularity ideas are most potent. The generalization is far from universal, but I would say that singularity believers tend to be people from technical or scientific subcultures who feel personally empowered by the rise of technology, whereas 9-11 conspiracy believers are politically and socially minded and feel disempowered by the state of the world.

I should clarify. I did not mean to insult Eliezer - I think that he's a well intentioned and very brilliant guy. I also was not attempting to advocate majoritarian epistemology. Also, I acknowledge that even if Eliezer is misguided about in his beliefs about his future, there are clearly other possible explanations besides "that other kind of status."

To refine my question: When one adopts a view which

(a) Deviates from mainstream beliefs

(b) Is flattering to oneself

(c) Is comprehensive in scope and implications

one should be vigilant about the possibility that one is being influenced by desire for "that other kind of status."

Eliezer's views about the expected value of SIAI's activities seem to meet each of criteria (a), (b) and (c) fairly strongly. This does not mean that his views are wrong, but it does make me reluctant to take them very seriously without evidence that he (and others who hold such views) have exhibited a high level of vigilance about being influenced for desire for "that other kind of status" in connection with these views.

Is there anywhere where I can find evidence that Eliezer and others who share his views have exhibited such a high level of vigilance toward possibility of being influenced by a desire for "that other kind of status" in connection with their views about the expected value of SIAI's activities?

[Edited for formatting.]

Eliezer may well be off on the time scale. I would guess he's an order of magnitude off. But an incorrect guess about the timescale of a future event does not give rise to a strong possibility that he's deluded, like the 9-11 Truthers, for ego reasons. Downvoted, because this reads more like an insult than a reasoned question.

And what was the motivation for that prior conception?

I haven't read any literature on this issue specifically, but I suggest that most such literature would have a high tendency to be biased by societal pressures.

My experience is that women in certain kinds of overtly female-centric social situations (e.g. feminism communities, fat acceptance communities, some subsections of the disability community) are just as concerned with status as men are in normal circumstances. Women in mixed-gender social situations seem to tend to automatically assume that they're considered outsiders, and react to that by defending each other and deferring to authority. They also seem to assume that attempting to gain status in such situations is futile, or can only be achieved by playing to the stereotypes of how women are supposed to behave, depending on the situation. (These assumptions may, in fact, be correct in most situations.) That assumption of outsider-ness seems to me like it would also manifest as a heightened awareness of identity, as identity is an important part of the situation at hand.

I had delusions of relative mediocrity for years, though I don't see them as mental illness, just morality tinged former belief, my equivalent of having been a theist perhaps. OTOH, it might be more accurate to say that such delusions also have an element of laziness and of desire to avoid responsibility. Arguably I didn't think that I was less capable than I was. More like I didn't see the opportunities to take risks, work harder, seek diverse experiences, challenge assumptions and take on more responsibility, etc that I now do see and which lead to more ability growth.

Nick Bostrom, seems to me to still be held back by similar delusions, and I see them as his major weakness.

It is a sad fact about this world that most people are mediocre and obscure, so how can they be deluded about that?

If a person has delusions of mediocrity or obscurity, how would we know? Most people aren't Extremely Impressive, and someone who actually is Extremely Impressive but insists otherwise is "just being modest".

More specifically, we're evolved to seek experiences that correlate with going up in status.

Trolling might be a junkfood equivalent of seeking status.

Does real status have to include material rewards, or is just making other people feel bad enough?

Actually, that could explain the junkfood nature of trolling. In most of human experience, being able to hurt people without risk of retaliation is proof of status.

Ah, the perils of partial editing. Thanks and fixed.

Mother Teresa had lots of status as a consequence of successful and effective self-promotion, which is precisely why she came to mind as an example of a non-status seeking person rather than failing to come to mind becaus you had never heard of her.

Mother Teresa isn't hard to explain on this model. She could be gaining normal status covertly, like Michael Vassar says. She could be feeling good about herself and her status because she thinks that her altruism makes her a better person than others. Or she could feel good about herself and her status because she's serving God, which makes her a better person than others.

Moving away from a hot pan is a reflex action. You're not seeking anything, it's done before "you" even enter the picture. But in the general case, it's a combination of consciously avoiding bodily damage (you don't want your skin burnt off), and avoiding pain, which is a correlate of bodily damage.

Avoiding pain is probably the stronger motive, since lower animals who can't think far enough to worry about long-term bodily damage will do the same and since something that causes pain but not damage (that Bene Gesserit box in Dune Paul had to stick his hand in, for example) will cause the same effect.

The buck-stopping problem is a confusion of levels. On the conscious, human level, goal is to minimize pain (the human doesn't even know there's such a thing as pain receptors unless ze knows some neuroscience). On the unconscious inhuman level, "goal" is meaningless, and it would be better to talk about transmitters moving down electrochemical gradients and such.

I like this, actually. I think this is very much the model: fractal at different levels of scale. A more integrated person has alignment of the master-slave decisioning at all levels, whereas a discontinuous person may have confusion at different levels which might be expressed as eg unco-ordinated. This applies to the physical, emotional, and other levels of the human condition.