Ideally status could be replaced by domain specific estimates of competence, reliability, trustworthiness etc. But in practice nobody has the time. We have to summarize.
For humans, social status is much more than just an aggregate estimate of competence/reliability/trustworthiness. It motivates us, distorts our thinking, plays a key role in our politics, etc. To take just one example, I suspect that the main reason it's so hard for most people to change their mind is because they don't know how to do it in a way that preserves their status. For many people and social groups, admitting you're wrong means losing face, and most people don't like to lose face, so they resist publicly changing their mind.
(This is another re...
Thus spake Eliezer:
It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.
So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.