1. Humans are obsessed with signalling their position in the status hierarchy. This desire is not rational. We do not turn it on or off. We pick fairly arbitrary ideas and objects to signal status. We can’t help but do it, and we do it without realising.
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2. It’s quite hard to think your way out of it. And it causes problems for public policy. Opposition to mass immigration is, for example, a low status opinion to hold. But there are legitimate concerns about it.
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3. The problem is that anyone voicing those concerns automatically becomes low status in Western societies (e.g. Farage). It becomes difficult to see through status signals to the actual issues.
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4. This probably partially explains why people find it hard to break out of criminal gangs and similar. Their status hierarchy is configured that way. The annoying thing is that humans “just do” this without consciously knowing. So the act of separation can be very hard.
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5. In fact, the very act of writing this string of tweets is to signal to people who I think are high status that I read the same blogs, websites, and books as them and that they should consider me an equal or high status person.
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