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Kingreaper comments on Polyhacking - Less Wrong
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To me; it would, in principle, be nonsensical. However, in actuality, for this problem to be proposed, there must exist at least one person who knows of both island 1 and island 2, and it is that persons ranking that is being referred to. So they rank the people of island 1 higher than those of island 2. Perhaps because there's more mutual respect on island 1.
Those are entirely understandable in a zero-sum model. Put simply: those people are co-operating to increase their status, yes, but by doing so they are decreasing the status of those they overtake.
Note that I'm not sure which description of status is more useful yet, I just thought I'd chime in with some "thoughts so far"
Are those responses epicycles, or are they really part of your original model?
The first half is part of my original model. Status only ever exists relative to a particular community.
Imagine the two islands, island 1 and island 2 came into contact; but the people of each island were extremely patriotic.
On island 1, the people of island 2 would be low status. BUT on island 2, the people of island 1 would be low status.
In the same way one can lose status in one community (ie. a church-based community) while gaining it in another (ie. the rationalist community) through a single action (ie. abandoning their past religious faith)
The second part (explaining how a zero-sum model can justify behaviour that isn't LOCALLY zero-sum) is, quite simply, obvious to me; because it is so analogous to the zero-sum nature of energy in physics (energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but there are plenty of ways for you to get your hands on more of it)