we should be trying to identify where we might be inadvertently blaring high-status

I continue to think this post should not be in the sequences recommended to beginners. I found the status-blaring repulsive and nearly gave up on Less Wrong in my first week or so.

I didn't get the impression of the comments being defensive, so much as just pointing out caveats that are worth noting to start with.

Why do I feel that the LW community is getting defensive about these things by trying to discredit the post by attacking it indirectly? (e.g. proposing that high status isn't all that great, saying that it's plagiarized, accusing it of being fictional evidence) I find them to be, for the most part, quite correct.

High status isn't all that great, relative to how it is occasionally portrait. I mean, it's damn handy but also comes with down sides. (I don't support any complaints about plagiarirism or fiction. Those are all fairly straightforward.)

We should instead be investigating /why/ it might be that each of these items is high/low status

Most of them seem rather straightforward - they represent implications about the ability of one party to control the behavior of or outcomes for another. We could go (and at times have gone) into details more thoroughly. We could even try to trace the why back to stories about sex, killing and apes.

or perhaps thinking about how we can subtly use these items in real life.

Don't most of us - even most people - do this constantly? If we didn't we'd have enormous problems socializing and living our everyday lives! We'd probably get fired for a start.

For example, the perception of arrogance arises when a person tries to be higher status than he actually is.

Higher status than the observer perceives them to be. The difference is critical. Sometimes we wish may wish to signal that we have status of approximately the level a particular individual or group desires but sometimes their approval is of little instrumental benefit.

If LW as a community offends newcomers by seeming arrogant, then we should be trying to identify where we might be inadvertently blaring high-status.

It's useful to know and occasionally even worth changing.

Compare the defensiveness in response to Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People. Rather than, e.g., trying it out.