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lessdazed comments on Open Thread: September 2011 - LessWrong
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Edit: Original version moved to karma sink to hide it away and leave it available for reference. New version:
Is what we refer to as "status" always best thought of as relative? Is a person's status like shares in a corporation or money in an economy, where the production of more diminishes what they have and does not create wealth? Is it an ability to compel others and resist compulsion? Or is it more like widgets, where if I happen to lose out from you getting more widgets, it is only because of secondary effects like your ability to out-compete me with your widgets?
I am not trying to find a really true definition of "status". To some, it seems right to answer the question "Is status all relative or is status not all relative?" with "It depends on which reasonable meaning of status you mean." Everyone (?) agrees that a valid way of discussing status is to talk about something like what portion of the total (subcategory of) status a person has.
Not everyone agrees that there is a reasonable meaning by which one might speak of non-relative status, other than the one that is shorthand for ignoring small or infinitesimal losses by others. In the same way we may say "The government printed one million dollars and gave it to an agency, no one else lost or gained anything." It's fine to say that, but only because: a) the inflation caused by printing a million dollars is miniscule, b) we can count on the listener to infer that increasing money does not increase wealth in that way.
So if one's answer is "It depends," then one thinks it is more than just linguistically valid to think about status in terms of an absolute that can be increased or decreased, but literally, logically, true. Not everyone agrees with that, and the poll is to get a general feel for how many here think each way.
So, as a hypothetical: A person in a room magically becomes awesome - say a guy has knowing kung fu downloaded into his brain, and he tells everyone, and they believe him. Does it make any sense at all to say that the status of others has not changed, other than in a way susceptible to a money/inflation/wealth (simple truth sheep/rock) metaphor?
Poll:
Status all is relative
Status is not all relative
Could someone please explain the response to this comment? What I'm most curious about are the responses to the attached poll replies. Multiple people have downvoted each entry in the poll without comment. This ruins the poll for the participants, as one can no longer tell how many people have voted for each option. Do not do this on polls until either LW shows more than net votes, or there is a better way to poll.
I also don't understand downvoting this comment without criticizing it and helping me fix its problems. I have discussed this topic with several LW participants and have gotten each of the two types of responses multiple times, and I think a previously undiscussed issue that gets divergent intuitions from people who theretofore have believed themselves having very similar philosophies is potentially interesting. If I am not criticized, I do not know how to improve. It is currently sitting at -2 but it has been upvoted several times as well, five or more people have downvoted without comment.
I'm not shy about posting things in discussion if I think they merit it, but I didn't think this topic did, so I posted it in the open thread. If this issue is not appropriate for an open thread, where is it appropriate for?
I've not downvoted you, nor participated in the poll, but...
...your question about how relative 'status' is, reminds me of debates about whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound. Depends how one defines the word. You don't seem to have an option in your poll for "Depends how one defines 'status' ".
...also you seem to be first posing a detailed specific scenario with a concrete question about what happens with the fires on the first and second islands -- but then the polls don't offer that specific, concrete question, they offer the vague "status is relative/not all relative" questions instead. Which seems you want to jumble different questions together, or making people seem to support one thing by answering another. Or something.
In short it all seems a bit muddled. Mind you, as I said, I wasn't among the people downvoting this, so I don't know their own reasoning behind their votes.
Thank you for your feedback!
I am not used to making up intuition pumps. I will try to become better at writing them.
This is a legitimate response, and I certainly didn't intend to debate or try and discover the true meaning of a word. However, it consists of the claim that for somewhat reasonable definitions of "status", "status is all relative" is true, and for others, "status is not all relative" is true. I consider that equivalent to "status is not all relative" - something I will make clear. By "status is all relative" I mean something like: "for no reasonable (to me, though this is something I expect others can guess at with good accuracy) definition of status is status anything but relative".
Part of the difficult expressing this is part of why I resorted to examples, and I do take to heart that difficulty expressing an idea is often a sign it isn't coherent.
I edit the post to try again.
One user upvoted "Status is not all relative", two users upvoted "Status is all relative", those three users downvoted the karma sink, and three other users downvoted all three comments.
Thank you very much!