Thank you, anonym. I did try to modify my posts and style, the last attempts being a little too bold. I have written a reasonable amount, and my comprehension of the human condition departs quite considerably from accepted norms. I liked the name of the site, and appreciated the attempts made in posts to bring more accuracy to the subject matter. I am happy with my ability to communicate, at least in person, and hope one day I may, as you say, participate productively. Thank you for your consideration of my parting suggestion. Be well!
I am sorry to hear that. I am not enough of an academic to adopt the nomenclature accurately enough. I do apologise.
Since you are to delete this post, may I suggest
Automate the process so that if a comment receives eg -2 points, it is deleted. This may avoid the uncomfortable feelings I had upon reading your comment, as well as the feelings you must have had in writing it.
You make posting etiquette a little clearer in the ABOUT section.
Although I am disheartened that my enthusiasm got the better of me in that I contributed before knowing the lay of the land, I will still look forward to reading posts. Perhaps one day I shall be able to contribute something useful. Be well.
Does this mean that every well-known person that impinges upon my/your reality must have been exercising self-promotion? Given the second-order subtlety of Yvain's original post, namely "seeking a state of affairs that allows them to believe they have status", the emphasis seems to be on creating conditions that enable a status-engagement with others. That is, it is not self-orientated but condition-enabling. (But I may be departing from Yvain's distinctions and model here. I might then also flag the word "seeking".)
hmmm... this seems shallow... i still look forward to the development of your model :)
I prefer to abstract the dynamic to "oppositional state" rather than personify into a "contrarian". That is, a contrarian is someone who places themselves in an oppositional state to another.
i came to this dormant thread from the future: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1k4/the_contrarian_status_catch22/1ckj.
Seems to me there is a mismapping of multiple worlds wrt quantum physics and the multiple worlds we create subjectively. I personally steer clear of physics and concern myself more with the subjective realities we create. This seems to me to be more congruent with the material that eliezer presents here, ie wrt logic and occam's razor, and what he presents in the article linked above, ie wrt contrarian dynamics and feelings of satisfaction et al.
Nice post, thanks.
"In this model, people aren't just seeking status, they're (also? instead?) seeking a state of affairs that allows them to believe they have status."
Replace also or instead with rather. That is, the default state of mind is that individuals believe they have status. This might be through the regular strategy of seeking social wealth (icons, respect, position, possessions), as well as through invisibles (A Big Idea, the truth, The Secret). The status is always self-assigned; think of those who do do not accept the status conferred upon them. Which leads to...
I am specifically interested in individuals who are not playing the status game, who consider themselves end-nodes, nobody's, or self-less. Consider Mother Teresa as an example perhaps. How does your model deal with this? (This line of thinking might parallel altruistic behaviour, which might be a useful space to connect up.)
More needs to be said about relative scale, that is cultures and subcultures, families and tribes. There are multiple superimposed groupings going on in any specific individual's life (daughter, sister, wife, mother, colleague, friend, consumer, etc), and I look forward to reading this.
I like this, actually. I think this is very much the model: fractal at different levels of scale. A more integrated person has alignment of the master-slave decisioning at all levels, whereas a discontinuous person may have confusion at different levels which might be expressed as eg unco-ordinated. This applies to the physical, emotional, and other levels of the human condition.
Thank you, LauraABJ. My language is not precise enough to match the level of eg Eliezer. My experience has mostly been with children. My experience justifies a rather extreme position: objectification of conscious experience, especially in the form of writing, is inherently misleading if our objective is to comprehend the human condition. That is, although I respect linguistic control, there are strict limits that prevent words from carrying the levels of comprehension we are seeking. Hence, the adoption of maths. I was so enthused by the articles here, I got carried away...
Thank you, Eliezer; in the balance between writing and thinking, my writing is worse. I do apologise, but in the same way I have been premature with my commentary to the LW site, you may have been premature with your judgement of my thinking. I have thought and rethought my words here, and the best I can come up with is this. This community, and especially you, have had the time to explore your ideas and develop a system of thinking. This is clearly very powerful, and it attracts bright minds (even as non-verbal as my own). I have also developed a system of thinking, and it mostly relies on dynamics that are not based entirely on the mechanics of words -- hence my disadvantage here. There is an overlap, thankfully: mathematics. With further reading into the application of bayes' theorem on this site, I hope to contribute something useful, in a manner acceptable, such that our goals are brought closer.