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RichardKennaway comments on Open Thread: July 2010 - Less Wrong
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Agreed about utilitarianism.
FRP = fantasy role-playing, i.e. Dungeons & Dragons and the like. A character sheet is a list of the attributes of the character you're playing, things like Strength=10, Wisdom=8, Charisma=16, etc. (each number obtained by rolling three dice and adding them together). There are rules about what these attributes mean (e.g. on attempting some task requiring especial Charisma, roll a 20-sided die and if the number is less than your Charisma you succeed). Then there are circumstances that will give you additional points for an attribute or take them away, e.g. wearing a certain enchanted ring might give you +2 to Charisma.
Discussions of "status" here and on OB sometimes sound like D&D geeks arguing about the rules for a Status attribute.
RichardKennaway:
Sometimes, yes. However, in many situations, the mere recognition that status considerations play an important role -- even if stated in the crudest possible character-sheet sort of way -- can be a tremendous first step in dispelling widespread, deeply entrenched naive and misguided views of human behavior and institutions.
Unfortunately, since a precise technical terminology for discussing the details of human status dynamic doesn't (yet?) exist, often it's very difficult to do any better.
Could you expand on how those discussions of status here and on OB are different from what you'd see as a more realistic discussion of status?
I never replied to this, but this is an example of what I think is a more realistic discussion.