= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
sixes_and_sevens comments on Delayed Solutions Game - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (52)
I have a lot of disposable income. I also have inexpensive tastes. The two facts are not entirely unrelated.
I would like to signal my wealthy status in such a way that it's apparent to people I meet without adopting genuine expensive tastes which I see as wasteful. Also, y'know, subtly, so I don't look like an arse. Polishing a monocle with a £50 note is right out.
Hmm... One way to approach this would be, instead of looking for examples of people trying to signal, try to get inside the heads of your target impressee. What would really, genuinely impress the sort of person you're trying to impress? What would impress you?
I imagine, for example, that someone who knows a lot about wine, or is conversant in the pros and cons of the driver experience in luxury cars, is clearly signalling a lot of leisure time and resources to pursue the habit, and I'd be more impressed by that person than by someone who simply brags about the expensive car or wine they just bought. Of course, that kind of approach may work on a limited range of people; you'd want to pick a domain that your impressees know enough about to recognize a real connoisseur.
What would impress me is someone more interested in personal development than signaling their status with wasteful expenditure and needless material goods. :-)
This also works on a sadly limited number of people.
I'm pretty sure there are expensive types of personal development; even expensive types of personal development that aren't "wasteful" if you don't want to count pure signaling as something worth paying for.
So another way of thinking about the problem would be "what high status training could I simply buy?" This has the added bonus of circumventing the money awkwardness at the operational end.
I don't know why, but I find the idea very funny and worth trying.
It would help to know why you want to signal your wealthy status- because if it's something like "have better success while asking people out" the answers are very different than if it's "be treated better normally."
I haven't really thought about it in terms of specific achievements I'd like to make, but more as an untapped resource. I actually find the idea of signaling wealth a little gauche and kind of distasteful, but I'm convinced there are some gains to be made with it somewhere.
This is a really important thing to think about. Remember, decisions are specializations. If you are financially autonomous and devote your excess to savings or investments or charity or status signaling, then each of those will point you in a different direction when it comes to hobbies/mates/friends/family/acquaintances.
There are two main forces I would keep in mind: the first is of water to find its level, and the second is of salmon to jump upstream. It is generally better to hang out with richer people than poorer people, but while signaling wealth makes you more attractive to others it doesn't discriminate- you're also more likely to get people approaching you because of your wealth. And so the question I would ask is, "who do you want to respect you, and what do they respect?"
One answer (this breaks the solution rule, but oh well) for pretty much everyone is "good grooming"- and so getting regular haircuts, showering frequently, attending to your nails, and so on will be a general resource. But beyond that, fashion is strikingly subjective- I personally love how suits and ties and such look, but am likely to go into a field where those are actually a handicap (The word "suit" does not have positive connotations at startups).
Signaling your wealth is likely to be socially advantageous, but may also bring with it the expectation that you will spend your money freely, which you would consider wasteful. Is it possible, even, that the status boost you are seeking is associated more with spending money than with having money?
I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head with that. Most signals of wealth are about showing how wasteful you can afford to be, rather than how much you can achieve with what you've got.
I'm not against all expensive spending habits, because they're not equally wasteful. I'm curious as to whether there are any obvious spending habits I could adopt which would get me a disproportionate status-bang for my buck. At the moment, for example, I don't scrimp on formal wear. Any situation in which I'm wearing a suit will be a situation where I want to look like I'm wearing an expensive suit.
Perhaps you could find a different problem that solves this one incidentally - i.e. since spending the money non-wastefully is important to you, you could brainstorm ways to non-wastefully spend your money, and then sort them by how much you can use them to demonstrate high status.
This sounds like it would require lots of delving into signalling literature. The prospect mildly excites me.
Here's one way to phrase the question:
What can I purchase which is in fact inexpensive, yet gives the impression of being, or is commonly thought to be, very expensive?
It seems plausible that the list of expensive-seeming things and the list of fairly inexpensive things might have some points in common. The main question would be how to figure out what they are, and which ones actually suit your taste.
I don't think that's an accurate rephrasing of the question, to be honest.
One-off expensive purchases tend to be considerably cheaper than repeat-purchase habits which add up over time. If there were a select number of individual prestigious and genuinely expensive purchases I could make, that'd be ideal.
A flashy wardrobe would be an expensive one-off purchase. A flashy car would be a purchase I'd have to keep paying for in upkeep.
Sounds like my attempt to be specific backfired. Inexpensive is probably a misleading term for the context -- you really want protection from unwise habits and ongoing costs, i.e. expenses that are higher than they seem and non-obvious. Ultimately it seems like the wardrobe gives more status per dollar than the car. I wonder if something like a really nice bike would be good?
This is the key. sixes and sevens, what you buy should be the good stuff, of whatever it is. Not profligate, but putting in the effort to obtain quality. Basically, develop taste in everything.