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Lumifer comments on Open Thread August 31 - September 6 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Elo 30 August 2015 09:26PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 01 September 2015 08:34:59PM -1 points [-]

More importantly: What images do you think -other- people would conjure, when they imagine these two people?

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.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 01 September 2015 08:58:18PM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: Lumifer 01 September 2015 09:08:50PM 0 points [-]

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?