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Jonathan_Graehl comments on The many faces of status - Less Wrong
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Comments (107)
Individual power in society is such a broad concept as to entirely encompass status. So you must have had some more specific meaning in mind. I'd guess you meant explicit organizational authority (I'm an airline security screener; I'm an assistant to the CEO).
If that's what you meant, then what remains is less formal roles and precedents in established social groups, and in forming groups, physical attractiveness combined with (behavioral) signals of belief/confidence in a person's chance to earn consent in controlling or at least being accepted by the group.
Yep, positional power.
I don't think that individual optimization power (ability to steer the future in regions which maximally advance that individual's preferences, even when these outcomes are detrimental to other's preferences) encompasses all of what is referred to as "status" in Johnstone. It doesn't explain, for instance, why keeping your head in a fixed position while speaking should convey high status.
What do you make of the assertion that two strangers who've never met can assess each other's status?
Agreed.
The question seems ill-posed. After all, how much influence they have over each other is negotiable. What they'll be able to judge is only the observable status-bidding and status-associated signals.
Say they're simultaneously interacting with some group - then they'd start to see what each others' status is in that group only in the tautological sense that they'd see how much influence and deference they command.
You can guess the status of someone (in their own little tribe(s)) in much the same sense that you can guess their occupation, and based off comparable indicators.
Yeah, I guess I can predict a large part of it from just their physical appearance and their "out in public" mannerisms. But it's only by seeing their actions+consequences in a context that I know their status there.