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muflax comments on The curse of identity - LessWrong
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For one, status-seeking is a zero sum game and only indirectly causes overall gains. The world would be a much better place if people actually cared about things like saving the world or even helping others, and put a little thought to it.
Also, mismatches between our consciously-held goals and our behavior cause plenty of frustration and unhappiness, like in the case of the person who keeps stressing out because their studies don't progress.
But if status-seeking is what you really want, as evidenced by your decisions, how can you say it's bad that you do it? Can't I just go and claim any goal you're not optimizing for as your "real" goal you "should" have? Alternatively, can't I claim that you only want us to drop status-seeking to get rid of the competition? Where's your explanatory power?
By the suffering it causes, and also by the fact that when I have realized that I'm doing it, I've stopped doing (that particular form of) it.