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All of bleen2000's Comments + Replies

Group rationality diary, 10/15/12
bleen2000100

Found out my sister got an interview for a highly paid and prestigious job, and was reminded how low paid and not prestigious my job was. Since status is relative, my sister's success threatened my feeling of self-worth. I was tempted to rationalize my sister's success away, and think of some sort of excuse as to why I have achieved less than her. But then I thought of a better strategy.

Instead of seeing my sister as a status competitor, I could affiliate with her. I can truthfully say that I come from a family of high-achievers, even if I'm not a high ac... (read more)

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Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012
bleen200020

I like my husband to be slightly dominant (his Captain Picard to my "number one"

Are you an Athol Kay fan?

Few things make a man more unattractive than being needy, either financially or emotionally.

Funny how these things can be interpreted. A rich submissive man could see giving a woman money as a submissive act ("she control's my finances!"), while a dominant man could see it as a dominant act ("I take care of her!")

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0NancyLebovitz
Gregory Bateson wrote something about the relationship between status and some behaviors being dependent on culture. For example, the Czar would be watching the peasant children dance, but the Queen of England is waving to the crowd.
0Sabiola
Yes, I read Athol's blog, and that's where I got the comparison. :-) And you're right, giving money could be either dominant or submissive. In the latter case, the guy would be emotionally needy, which would be a big turn-off.
5DaFranker
What about the other cases? Like, say, a rich humanlike perfect-decision-theoretic agent? Or simply normal people that don't think dominance or submission are inherent parts of their identities or interpersonal relationships? I know that myself and a few other of my acquaintances often utterly confuse people who attempt to judge us on a "dominance vs submissiveness" axis, simply because we disregard any notion of "dominance status" and merely act according to some other system that doesn't correlate well with either "trait", which creates high variations of "dominant" or "submissive" behaviors in situations that seem strikingly similar to the evaluator. I've been called (more than once) a very "incoherent" person on this basis.