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Lumifer comments on Open Thread August 31 - September 6 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The original issue was whether buying sex marks a man as low-status. I continue to think that it depends: in some contexts it does and in some contexts it does not.
An example where it does not: a high-roller in a Vegas casino orders half a dozen hookers to his room.
How many of the people who engage in that behavior do you think would like it if it would be public knowledge? In many cases I don't think that those high-rollers want publicity for the action which suggests that their general status doesn't benefit from it.
If a dude's ordering half a dozen hookers to his room, he doesn't mind publicity for it.
Calibration error. It's still a low-status signal, there are just other high-status signals embedded in the sentence that make up for it for low-status individuals who couldn't afford that.
Consider, by comparison, the status signal given by a high-roller in a Vegas casino being accompanied by half a dozen women to his room without having to pay for their services (directly). Or a high-roller in a Vegas casino buying a night of drinks for a bar (or equivalent conspicuous consumption purchase to six hookers).
No, I don't think so. The thing is, many status signals flip the sign depending on whether you're low-signaling-medium or high-signaling-veryhigh. A usual (though maybe a bit outdated) example is a Blackberry: if you're a low-level office drone, possession of a Blackberry signifies high(er) status. But if you're a captain of industry, you won't carry a Blackberry because you have minions for that.
With buying sex it's a bit more complicated because you have culture/religion messing up the status messages. But let's look at the margins: does a high-roller in Vegas lower his status by ordering girls to his room? I don't think so. And, of course, culture/context matters a lot: what's fine for a hip-hop mogul would be unthinkable for a Boston brahmin.
You're introducing too many variables to consider. Take this out of rationality, and into intuition, because that's where status evaluations are made anyways. Pause for a second and picture the person who is hiring six prostitutes.
Does he -look- high status? Is he short, or tall? Is he wearing nice well-tailored clothes, or are they alcohol-stained and rumply? Is he lean, or overweight? Is his arm over the shoulder of one or two of the prostitutes, or at their waists? Are his teeth clean and white, or plaque-colored? How obviously drunk is he?
Now picture the guy who is engaging in another form of conspicuous consumption, buying a night of drinks for a bar. What does he look like?
More importantly: What images do you think -other- people would conjure, when they imagine these two people?
Given only the information that he's rich and hired six prostitutes, most people aren't going to picture a well-groomed businessman. You leap to a lower-status class of rich - hip-hop mogul - where hiring six prostitutes might be acceptable, without apparently realizing you're shifting to a lower-status class of rich. (But even among hip-hop moguls, however, buying six women suggests you can't seduce them.) I'd leap to rock star, another form of lower-status rich.
I don't know and neither do you. I think different people would conjure different images.
And status is (at least) a two-variable function: you think that a hip-hop mogul is a "lower-status class of rich", presumably lower than a Boston brahmin -- or, more generically, a rich New England WASP with lineage stretching to the Mayflower or thereabouts -- but that's not a universal. In some sub-cultures it is lower, in some sub-cultures it is higher.
Not only do I know, the vast majority of people know; it is this shared knowledge which makes status signaling possible in the first place.
And sure. And the rich New England WASP and hip-hop mogul are both lower-status than almost anybody at a convention of physicists. And at an imaginary convention of johns, the guy who buys thirty is the highest status. That's not the context which matters for the purpose of law and advocacy, however.
You are confused between being sufficiently socially clueful to understand status signaling and having the same mental imagery in response to a short description.
But I'm not quite sure what are we arguing about :-) Is there any falsifiable notion in play?
Is it really a matter of sign-flipping, or is it just that the same status level can seem low or high depending on what you're comparing with? If a Blackberry signifies (or signified) middle-to-senior-manager status, then it's a high-status signal for a minion and a low-status signal for the big-company CEO. If inviting six hookers up to your room in Las Vegas signifies not-very-classy-high-roller status, then again it's a high-status or low-status signal depending on the starting point. Nothing needs to flip; it's the same status in either case; but the reference point (set by other characteristics of the person or situation) can be lower or higher.
Flip the sign :-) What status does the lack of a Blackberry signify?
It signifies a set of possible statuses; more precisely, either the presence or the absence of a Blackberry actually signifies something more like a probability distribution over statuses. (More precisely still, they're likelihoods rather than probabilities, and needn't sum to 1.) The absence-of-Blackberry distribution is like a notch filter; learning that someone doesn't have one makes it (or did, a few years back) much less likely that someone occupies the middle-to-senior-manager niche.
This (I take it this is your point) can produce more counterintuitive updates than a more "unimodal" signal like the presence of a Blackberry. Learning that someone has no Blackberry will tend to make your assessment of their ( corporate) status more "extreme". You can call that a sign flip if you like; I'm not convinced that's a helpful way to look at it.