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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Reading most of the comments you can see people generally agree with the, say, subjective view of status. If you percieve yourself as high status, you are, then, high status.

But it's also clear to me that there is an objective dimension of status. Although everything ultimately is interpretation, it seems awkward to think that a bullied teen (or a ignored one) will continuously keep the belief that he is doing good. 

Maybe the bridge is the amount of attention you get. It's very dificult to lie to yourself about your qualities when there is nobody out there reinforcing your perception.

I always had that intuition of zero-sum game. I try not to think too much about it, because it's one of the most depressing insights I think you can get.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

This is Emerson's discourse on "compensation": http://www.bartleby.com/5/1...

The concept broadly means every benefit comes with a correspondingly offsetting negative, such as species with high birth rates typically come with low life expectancies. Emerson felt this was true at any scale: cellular, individual, groups, the planet, etc.

Like smoke and fire, if you see a positive trait, there must be a negative lurking nearby. Thinking about gain-loss psychology, there's a stronger incentive to mask the negative than there is to display the positive.

Two ways of managing negative traits:1. force yourself to the average, like a political independent.2. join a self-sustaining group (employers, service providers, marriage partners) of individuals that share your negatives, and therefore aren't prejudiced to your negatives.

As far as drawing a connection between this observation and your post? If people join groups to hide or minimize the impact of negatives, then people don't create fragmented groups to gain status, but to avoid losing status.

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