25 Comments

Well, this formulation is quite categorical:

>Both dominance and prestige are expressions of power. ... with prestige, the power is indirect, enforced via a local mob.

A formulation allowing for other functions would be to say that prestige is *sometimes* about or influenced by power, and *sometimes* enforced via a local mob.

In any case, my main point wasn't that you explicitly claimed no other functions, but rather that you seemed to understate other functions.

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I never said there is only one function of prestige.

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Fully agree on that, but that still doesn't address the final point I made above: the existence of private prestige giving clearly shows other functions of prestige. Not just about mob-enforced dominance.

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The kids friends may reward or punish the kid for granting prestige to the wrong e-sports star, in their opinion. Not just about deviance.

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Another thing I feel would have been worth highlighting, and which follows quite directly from your picture here, is how prestige granting can be a way to signal loyalty to your group. That is, even in the absence of any overt enforcement, you may still show your allegiance by giving prestige to the right people.

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This post is a nice contribution to our understanding of prestige!

That said, it seems that both you and Simler understate the many functions of prestige. It probably _is_ motivated by learning (as Henrich emphasizes), by the wish to affiliate with the high-status themselves (as Zahavi, Dessalles, and Simler emphasize), *and* it is often subject to outside pressures, as you emphasize.

Yet this latter pressure only seems relevant in a subset of cases, such as when your granting prestige to someone can make your affiliates look bad. For example, whether a ten-year-old grants prestige to a certain star in e-sports over another is probably irrelevant to non-gamer audiences. It's only if the kid grants prestige to someone who's unacceptably deviant that there's a problem for outside audiences (e.g. adults). This is often not the case, and so it seems that *some* prestige choices will be quite untouched by external enforcement.

In those cases where the prestige granting is immaterial to others, learning and affiliating with the prestigious themselves probably do serve as the primary explanations. After all, we can now grant prestige both privately and/or anonymously, such as through gamer accounts, which removes outside pressures and allows other functions of prestige to prevail.

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I just meant that given all the other shit that I've seen going on in academia lately it's exactly what I would have predicted. Indeed, being in economics probably shields him from some of the worst of it.

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This reminds me of an article that I read years ago that contended that people significantly more aggressive than average rise in a organization but would stall out at some level because at some point people would not trust them to be higher up and block them.

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Only in the formal world of printed texts written by bluepilled intellectuals is dominance a bad thing. In the informal real interpersonal world people very often like it, because it is reassuring, sounds like someone who can protect you, or someone who takes responsibility so you don't have to, or someone who enforces cooperation.

I mean in my in-laws little village they keep reelecting an old lady for mayor. Mostly they are happy with her. One problem with her is that she is weak, she has good ideas, but every time there is resistance, she backs off. They are basically asking her to be more dominant. We elected you to do X, you wanna do X, you have the democratic legitimacy to do X, don't be afraid that there is a minority, really just a few loudmouths criticizing it. Just do it.

She lacks dominance, and they want dominance. Precisely to enforce cooperation. Her deputy is a strong man and everybody wishes they would switch places, but the man just does not like doing paperwork. We tell him they can switch places and he can leave the paperwork to her as the deputy, but does not really believe it. Because he has to sign them papers meaning he has to read them etc. etc. But that would be ideal.

People like dominance. Whenever they form a group and most of them agree about doing something, and some people keep blocking it, they want a dominant leader to shut those up or kick them out.

Intellectuals do not like dominance because they got bullied by the jocks. But everybody else does.

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Well, maybe someone in the IEEE would not find it shocking. I was not speaking literally! :). Good luck, we all need it.

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In most science fields you can't blind because people have research programs, not individual papers. Just read the bibliography and the most cited person is the the author of the paper or the advisor. A lot of this is maximizing publication count by disassembling papers into "minimal publishable units," but some of it is the reasonable consequence of research programs that existed a century ago.

This is much less true in the humanities, one way in which academic humanities is healthier than academic science. The unique way in which it is healthier?

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I'm not saying they are trying to influence what counts for status or who gets it. I might be saying their actions are having an effect there.

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I think that the key point is that most dominance is labeled as prestige. Cancelling takes away all your dominance, so you can't speak at conferences, but you still have prestige, so they apologize. The prestige discussed in your last post was all actually dominance. Or maybe there are three things and we need a third label.

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I think you are exactly right to point out the inconsistency and harm in people failing to recognize prestige as just as abuseable or potentially unjust as money.

Indeed, I think many of the proposals to try to remove money from politics aren't taking seriously the question of what might replace it. I suspect that in many cases it's more unjust when prestige gates access and influence (outsiders can't even just go earn money and become insiders) and since, unlike money, prestige can be eroded merely by failing to maintain it people are much more intense about snaking down attempts to raise one's prestige.

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I’m not sure those firms are really reacting to some notion of how prestige ought to be assigned. Quite plausibly they are reacting to the set of features that is best able to part the idle rich with their money. I mean if you're looking to generate excess profit the last thing you want is to approach people who aren't going to let their emotions override cold cost/benefit calcs since those will move to the best deal.

But I also feel like I’m missing your point to some degree.

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Appalling yes. Shocking, sadly no.

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