Luke Ford

David Pinsof writes: These are the things that generally determine what humans find interesting:

We want to fit in. We often find stuff interesting because others find it interesting. Just as people can become famous for being famous, things can become interesting for being interesting. That’s why we’re interested in sports, celebrities, and the news, even though they’re mostly useless. Everyone talks about these things, and we don’t want to be left out of the conversation.

We want attention. When people listen to us, that’s a sign that we’re high status. We like that. So we’re interested in whatever grabs people’s attention, from the titillating to the gory to the gossipy to the paradoxical…

We want to form cliques. We’re constantly on the lookout for shareable tidbits we can use to signal membership in our special subculture, like historical esoterica or highfalutin theories. For example, if we casually mention the book “Capital in the 21st Century,” some people will look confused, but cool smart likeminded people will nod their heads. This allows us to covertly figure out who’s smart and cool like us and who’s not, so we can connect with fellow members of the cognoscente, while subtly excluding dumb-dumbs who aren’t as cool as us. To pull off this strategy, though, we need to find nerd chic interesting in the first place. Not because it’s especially useful or accurate, but because it helps us hobnob with other smart, high-status people.

We want to display our superiority. The hotter the take, the fewer people believe it. So if we can convince people that the hot take is correct, then we get to look smarter than everyone else. The same thing goes for moral claims. If we can convince people that some widespread behavior is morally wrong—or some weird behavior is morally right—then we get to look holier than thou.

We want to display our group’s superiority. The more a piece of information disparages an enemy group (e.g., Republicans, “woke” people), the more we’re captivated by it. Spreading the disparaging information rallies our tribe and boosts solidarity. That’s why we’re more interested in simplistic partisan rants than nuanced policy analysis.

We want to persuade people. We want to justify our behavior, tell self-flattering stories, win debates, and rally people to our side. That’s why we’re interested in stuff that supports what we already believe or want to believe. The goal isn’t to learn anything new or better understand reality; it’s to gather ammunition for arguments.

We want to signal. Talking about scary stuff makes us look competent. Talking about complicated stuff makes us look smart. Talking about feel-good stuff makes us seem warm and cuddly. But in order to signal these traits, we have to be interested in scary, complicated, or feel-good stuff in the first place. So we’re interested in whatever helps us signal the kind of person we are—or want to be.

We want to be flattered. That’s why self-help is such a popular genre: it always involves praising the reader and telling them what wonderful people they are. The same thing applies to the groups we belong to. Any information that flatters our group, that “inspires” us and tells us how brave and virtuous we are—that’s interesting.

We want to oneup everyone else. That’s why we like cynical bullshit, including this very substack: it gives us all an opportunity to dunk on other people. If everyone else is a hypocrite, and everything else is bullshit, then guess who comes out looking good? You and me!

We want to show we’re on the same page. Working together requires coordinating our movements, which is why dancing and chanting feel good: it makes us feel like we’re a single unit (plus it strikes fear into the hearts of our enemies). But working together also requires coordinating our thinking. That’s why we like sweeping generalizations: it’s easier to mentally coordinate on false simplicity than real complexity. The ultimate mental dance is to converge on the same banal interpretation of a deepity, paradox, or jargon-laden word salad.

We want to be associated with high status people. That’s why “eloquence” is so interesting. It signals all sorts of cool characteristics in the speaker (wit, creativity, social skills), which means that the person must have lots of status or be well on their way to getting it. We want to listen to high status people, and we want to parrot whatever eloquent bullshit they’re saying, because that raises our status by association.

From a 2014 paper: The notion that striving for status is a fundamental human motivation is a largely taken-for-granted assumption across a number of literatures (e.g., anthropology, economics, evolutionary and social psychology, management, marketing, and sociology). In six studies, we show that—despite the ubiquity of status-striving in everyday life—people are reluctant to admit to such behavior. Specifically, participants consistently reported that they strive for status less than others, and this discrepancy was partially reduced only among participants who were less concerned about impression management or whose ability to engage in impression management was compromised. Although high status is clearly valuable and pursuing greater status is a basic human drive, we interpret these findings to mean that status-striving is a stigmatized behavior that people actively conceal.

Gemini: Concealment of Status-Striving:
The core finding is that people generally try to hide their desire for status from others.
Negative Perception:
The desire for status is viewed negatively by most people, making it a stigmatized behavior.
Self vs. Other:
There is a difference between how people view their own desire for status and how they perceive others’ desire for it. People may not be accurate in detecting status-seeking in others because everyone is trying to conceal their own ambitions.
Cultural Differences:
Ethnicity matters, with the research indicating that white individuals are less comfortable with the perception of being a “striver” compared to Asian individuals, who may view ambition as a virtuous pursuit.
Consequences of Openness:
Blatantly showing your status-seeking behavior is likely to undermine your goal, rather than achieve it.
Implications
Subtlety in Status Acquisition:
To gain status, individuals should focus on enhancing the apparent value they provide to their group, such as through competence, generosity, and commitment, rather than engaging in blatant self-promotion.
Prosocial Behavior:
The negative effect of a high desire for status on actual status is largely mediated by perceptions of low prosociality.
Social Dynamics:
The findings suggest a social dynamic where groups actively but imperfectly punish those perceived as having a high desire for status.

David Pinsof writes: We all want status, but we can’t admit it. Why? Because it’s uncool. Wanting status makes us look selfish, insecure, and low-status. Ew. We’re not supposed to care about petty things like money or fame; we’re supposed to care about noble things like integrity or authenticity or something. Admitting we’re desperate for status is like admitting we’re horny for a co-worker or jealous of a friend’s success: it’s not a good look. So we pretend we don’t care about status, as a way of gaining status. It’s kind of confusing.

That means status games—i.e., the mutually-agreed-upon rules for winning and losing status—are fragile. We can only play a status game if we lack awareness that it’s a status game. As soon as we become aware of the game we’re playing, we stop getting status for playing it. In fact, we lose status: we look selfish, insecure, and low-status. Ew. So virtue signalers cannot know they’re virtue signaling, and neither can the people who award them virtue. “Brave” truth-tellers cannot know they’re seeking praise from their political tribe, and neither can the tribe who praises them. “Rebellious” nonconformists cannot know they’re conforming to the norms of their subculture, and neither can their subculture. Status games must never be emblazoned with a neon sign that says “STATUS GAME,” or else they’ll disintegrate in the light like vampires….

The game collapses. People stop playing, for fear of looking uncool. Instead, they start playing an anti-status game to show how cool and not-interested-in-status they are. The point of an anti-status game is to show that you care about more important things than status, like integrity or authenticity or something. Anti-status games emerge in opposition to a collapsing status game, and they often take the opposite form. If people are showing off their immaculately coiffed hair, for example, anti-status-seekers might wear their hair artfully tussled.

In other words, anti-status games are just another kind of status game. We could remove the “anti” if we wanted to, but it’s useful to keep it there to get a handle on what’s going on, so we can see why these games are so weird. Status games are constantly collapsing and re-emerging in antithetical forms. They give rise to anti-status games, then anti-anti-status games, and so on. Different cultures split off as status symbols twirl in fractal, quasi-cyclical patterns…

So if there’s a status game you dislike, expose it. Tell satirical stories about its vainglorious players. Translate the covert signals into a lingua franca. Attack the game’s supposed values and reveal its hypocrisy. If you succeed, the game will collapse. That’s what happened to dueling, foot binding, powdered wigs, and all the other defunct status games throughout history, and it’s sure to happen to many of the status games we’re currently playing, like educational credentialism and performative wokeness.

On the other hand, if there’s a status game you like, shield it from criticism. Hide the fact that it has anything to do with status, and angrily defend any accusations that it’s more narcissistic than it appears. This kind of angry defensiveness has been common throughout history, as people sought to protect their fragile status games from collapse. “How dare you mock dueling! It’s a noble tradition of manly honor!”

When we defend our status games, we usually appeal to “sacred” values, like manly honor, beauty, faith, knowledge, equality, integrity, or authenticity or something. We have to pretend these values are intrinsically important and worth upholding for their own sake, independent of any status we get for upholding them. We create sacred narratives about how none of us are vain or self-centered at all; we’re just noble souls who are impartially motivated by an abstract love of truth or beauty or self-expression or whatever. If anyone questions our sacred narrative or mocks us for being uncool status-seekers, it might cause our fragile status game to collapse, and that would be terrible—we’d lose all our accumulated status. That’s why questioning sacred values is taboo.

Unfortunately, when deciding which status games to attack or defend, we’re biased. If we’re losing a status game, we attack it: it’s toxic and irrational and ruining everything. If we’re winning a status game, we defend it: it’s noble and pure and aimed at the betterment of humankind. That is what culture wars are all about. We say they’re about clashing values, but really they’re just power struggles between rival subcultures—attempts to shift the rules of the reigning status game in their favor. People naturally accuse their rivals of being uncool status-seekers (e.g. “you’re just virtue signaling” or “you just don’t want to give up your privilege”), while pretending that they themselves aren’t interested in status. No, they’re interested in more important things, like social justice or free speech or something…

So if you still haven’t found the right status game to play, please: choose wisely. Consider joining my anti-bullshit, (anti-)status game, which is the only way to understand how our status games really work.

David Pinsof writes: We all care what people think—deeply, desperately. Some of us just act like we don’t care what people think, in order to make people think that we don’t care what they think. We signal we’re not signaling.

I once saw a tweet about how good it feels to not tweet: “Had the urge to tweet something a few hours ago. Resisted the urge. Feels good.” The tweeter was patting himself on the back for not tweeting, oblivious to the fact that he was, in fact, tweeting.

Or consider this article in New York Magazine, in which the author proudly declared she had “abandoned the notion of ambition.” The author was tired of writing pat thinkpieces for likes and retweets, which she wrote in a pat thinkpiece that got lots of likes and retweets.

Politics is full of this chicanery, like the complaint that everything is politicized. “You just had to go and make things political, didn’t you, David?” Unfortunately, complaining that everything is politicized is just a way of politicizing complaints that everything is politicized. Sighing about political “tribalism” is, likewise, a signal of loyalty to the centrist/libertarian tribe that sighs about political tribalism.

We are too naïve about signaling games. We think we can escape them. We think there is an “opt out” button we can press at any time. But that button does not exist. We have no choice but to signal. In a judgy species like ours, every little thing we do gets noticed, including the things we don’t do—or the things we say we don’t do while we do them.

…we bravely defy social norms so that people will praise us, we poke fun of ourselves for being uncool to prove we’re cool, we rebel against conformity in the same way as everyone else, and most of all: we desperately want people to know that we don’t care what they think. It’s the mother of all social paradoxes.

The only escape is to admit there’s no escape. Give in. Play the game. Send the signals you want to send to the people you want to receive them, and—who knows?—you might just feel a glimmer of happiness.