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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I’m proud of a few blue items

Isn't pride about status? (am I belaboring the obvious? - I don't know)

If status-seeking is as inescapable as breathing, then why not simply embrace it as a natural part of us? The poor repute of status-seeking - which seems to be an undercurrent of much discussion about it - was explained, I believe on this blog, as nothing other than itself a product of status-seeking. That is, if you are known to be seeking status, then that betrays your own status insecurity and therefore lowers your status. So the problem with status-seeking is that it's low-status. So the negative assessment of status-seeking is itself a product of status-seeking.

I’d like to think I don’t that much care about my status

Naturally, since it is high-status not to care. The securely high-status can dispense altogether with status-seeking, since there is no danger of losing status, and this lack of concern in turn demonstrates (and helps to secure) high status.

It's interesting, though, that the very existence of the "status moves" mentioned demonstrate that the actual situation is more complex than that everyone is seeking (higher) status. On the contrary, it demonstrates that people are continually signaling both lower status and higher status. So it simplifies matters to suppose that everyone is constantly seeking to raise his status. In fact, if the conversational status signals are to be interpreted as signs of intent, then as often as not people seek to place themselves at a lower status than those around them.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Since you can't avoid making status moves, I think the best is to just be cognizant of it. Not that you should monitor every single piece of communication, but that you become aware of the underlying motivations when argumentation becomes heated.

Say you become annoyed by a comment and consider replying to the comment. If you are still annoyed when you are writing the comment, you probably will try to lower the commenter's status. It could perhaps be useful in these situations to take a step back and try to analyze why one got annoyed in the first place and to notice one's own motivations in the said situations.

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