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Andrew Smith's avatar

The funny thing about status is that you can actually get a lot more done if you have it. It's useful.

Admitting that is the first step to gaining status ethically, without shame. Reputation and status are joined at the hip, and while it's really easy to destroy one of these, it's probably very, very difficult to build them in the first place.

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Chris Blahoot's avatar

Do you have any simple way to distinguish reputation and status? I get how they are not synonyms but don't have an easy way to grasp the difference.

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David Pinsof's avatar

I view them as synonymous. Good reputation = high status. Bad reputation = low status. Feel free to substitute "reputation" for "status" if that's clearer to you. I'm referring as broadly as possible to any kind of negative or positive social judgments.

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Kevin Connors's avatar

I think they are different. One can have a reputation without a status and vice versa.

Example:

A man who is visually fit and strong usually doesn't have a *reputation* for being strong. However, being strong and fit confers strong status symbols around the ideas of health, power, safety, wealth, free time, etc.

A person could have a reputation of being good in bed but lacks any status symbol that shows this sexual expertise. You'd have to talk to someone who knows the person's reputation in order to find out that they're good in bed.

Status is something you emit, intentionally or not, and reputation is what people think about you, whether it's true or not.

In the context of most discussions, though, I cede they're pretty much the same.

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David Pinsof's avatar

Yea, good points. I think of status as the umbrella term, encompassing all forms of positive or negative social judgment. I think of reputation as a subcategory of status, that is often less conspicuous (as you note) and more determined by gossip and word of mouth. For instance, being strong and fit might boost your status (+1), but having a reputation for being bad in bed might lower your status (-1). These might cancel out when someone is deciding whether to date you. But itтАЩs stuff like whether people want to date you, follow you, hire you, befriend you, listen to you, obey you, etc. that ultimately determines your status.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I think that's pretty good, David.

I might say that there are those who have high status in our society, but a low reputation, but then again, it totally depends on who you ask!

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David Pinsof's avatar

There are certainly many nuances in the types of social esteem or opprobrium one might accrue, and how one might accrue them. But I think itтАЩs useful to zoom out and use a broad umbrella term (I use тАЬstatusтАЭ but maybe thereтАЩs a better umbrella term), because these subtypes share many commonalities, one of which is their signaling fragility and resultant weirdness.

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Barbarous EP's avatar

I agree with this.

Especially for the more aspie people who have trouble understanding status, and might need to put a bit more conscious effort into it. I think it would be a waste if they do not get to use their abilities and niche field expertise due to lack of memetic prowess and social chess elo.

I think it is also important to keep in mind that while this can be ethical, good, and shameless - it is likely to trip the creep detectors on the evolutionarily uninitiated. I don't think it's a reason for self-censorship, but it is a reason for prudence.

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MarcusOfCitium's avatar

I think explicitly thinking about social dynamics at all, especially in a detached analytical way, tends to seem creepy to most normal people. Which is a shame, because they seem inherently fascinating to me. And also because being a spectrum-adjacent sort of person, I have been repeatedly burned in the past for "not getting" things that seem just obvious to most people. My suspicion is that it's defense mechanism against dark triad types.

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Barbarous EP's avatar

When Substack sent me a notification for your reply, I got confused and thought I had written it. Couldn't agree more!

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