In the brain, serotonin seems to be deeply related to social status. This is Jordan Peterson's bit about lobsters - it's so ubiquitous that even lobsters share the same mechanism.
This reminds me of a buddhist story that goes something like this: (tried to look it up but couldn't find it, chatgpt also didn't know)
There is this man and his brother is a monk. So he tells this monk "if you please the king, you don't have to live on rice and water anymore", where the monk replies: "if you learn to live on rice and water, you don't need to please the king".
That it's a false belief. One of two things happens in those cases:
1. That person is in some way sad regardless of what they profess, or
2. They have their own subgroup where they rate status according to the status rankings of the subgroup. This can include rejecting the status hierarchy of the mainstream, but this itself is a status play
With the internet this sub group can now be entirely online. But there does not exist such a thing as someone entirely insensitive to social status.
If you posit there is, can you name an example of such a person?
Yes, i could. Several coworkers. But due to their nature, they are largely invisible (they do not care about being seen, validated or represented) if you aren't seeing them in person.
I meant more of a historical or public figure, where the claim could be assessed to some degree.
Because "do not care" is internal and can only really be judged indirectly. Saying "I do not care" is one of those things where it can both genuinely be said or where it is a countersignal.
The claim is NOT however "does this person care about the esteem of their coworkers" or "does this person care to be seen". Status can be had in other ways.
For example, you work, you write on Hacker news, you have 3,000+ karma - no easy feat.
One way of measuring status would be whether you were pleased or disappointed by someone's reaction to something you did. Either in person or virtually. Whether for work, a hobby, or for fun. This truly is not an experience you have?
It's always weird to me when people cannot fathom that others think and operate differently, here we have an entire thread of people essentially insisting that social status _must_ matter to everyone.
I'm on the spectrum and growing up I worked with special needs kids with my mother as she ran a non-profit focused on specials needs community. Let me tell you, some people are simply not cognizant of social status and there's a whole swath of people who are passingly aware but find it irrelevant to their life. Solitary creatures that go their own way exist in all kinds of highly social species.
This thread feels akin to threads you occasionally see where a bunch of selfish people insist altruistic acts _cannot_ exist. Their insistent claims against the possibility of altruistic acts only reveal their internal state, they aren't high quality arguments, just assumptive assertions by people who can't imagine alternate mental states.
Some people just want to spend their lonely numbered days free.
The original claim was that some people are "not sensitive to status" and have no biochemical changes from it. It is an incredibly broad claim. I would readily agree that many people are happy on their own, go against the majority, do not care much for society, aloof from social opinion, etc.
But the claim that some people are literally immune to status strikes me as implausible. It would imply, for example, that people on the spectrum are literally unbothered by being mocked, insulted, berated, laughed at, rejected, abandoned and so on.
Is that truly what you're claiming?
I took this broad definition of status from Improv. This is the actual status one would be sensitive to or not on a biochemical level, because it addresses our feelings and actions as they exist, rather than what our title or formal status says.
"Keith Johnstone understands status as something one does, independent of the social status one has. Social status represents one's rank in a social order. At the upper end are secular and spiritual leaders (kings, priests), at the bottom end, dependents and outcasts. Social rank is approximately demonstrated through offices, titles, awards, and status symbols. Johnstone's "status", on the other hand, comes from the behavior of the characters in a specific encounter. He stresses that there is no neutral status; rather, some sort of difference is always present. A good actor is always conscious of the relative status of the portrayed characters and can playfully vary it."
> How do you explain that some people are not sensitive to social status?
You're interpretation of that question:
> The original claim was that some people are "not sensitive to status" and have no biochemical changes from it.
As a 3rd party observer I don't have confidence that the original question and your interpretation of it are equivalent, perhaps OP could provide clarity.
I think you must have been commenting on a different thread and accidentally posted your response in this one. It seems off topic or just like your reposting the same thread in reverse order without actually reading it? Very confusing.
As an observer, I'm beginning to think you two have very different meanings of the words "social status" and if you both first operationalized it you both might find you actually agree.
They write to be seen. That's why they use their real name and have a bio in their profile. And a link to a website where you can see their face and name and score.
For me its the discord that gives me pleasure. Disagreeing and teasing. To the extent that dang reprimanded me for flaming. Also I'm a nobody and i do not consider that a problem. So i'm largely selfish, not motivated by the status others attribute to me.
We write on HN for different reasons. They assumed that their reason is something universal. Just a tiny mistake.
Yeah, I'm using the definition of status from improv, which I think actually captures how people act and feel. The discussion started based on what people feel biochemically and that's based on our daily actions and actual status, rather than our formal social rank.
I would be surprised to learn anyone is truly immune from status in this sense.
"Keith Johnstone understands status as something one does, independent of the social status one has. Social status represents one's rank in a social order. At the upper end are secular and spiritual leaders (kings, priests), at the bottom end, dependents and outcasts. Social rank is approximately demonstrated through offices, titles, awards, and status symbols. Johnstone's "status", on the other hand, comes from the behavior of the characters in a specific encounter. He stresses that there is no neutral status; rather, some sort of difference is always present. A good actor is always conscious of the relative status of the portrayed characters and can playfully vary it."
> Several coworkers. But due to their nature, they are largely invisible (they do not care about being seen, validated or represented) if you aren't seeing them in person.
They might be getting their share of social status validation on groups/subgroups outside work. They can also think that by saying they don't care, this makes them above the rest - which is a social validation
Maybe it's not the case of your co-workers, but it's an example.
And I've seem groups where 'not-conforming to the norm' was seem as being superior, so people would say they don't care about social status, but as a way to feel superior and connect to those people that also say they don't care about social status. Positioning themselves as not being a 'normie'
It might be that they truly don't care, but on the other hand, for someone that don't care, they put too much importance on not-caring which is... odd.
we can override our primitive impulses with rationality, i don't believe there is anyone who doesn't see social status at all, i just think that they have such control over their faculties that they can override their default instinct.
Plausible explanation, and i can add a reason why people would want to override it: It opens up new dimensions of freedoms in terms of lifestyle. You can make more extreme decisions if you don't need to impress others.
i agree, to be a truly independent thinker means your ideas won't be acknowledged for a period of time if ever, to not care what other people think seem to be the hall mark for truly creative people.
Why would people try to explain something that hasn't been shown?
Find a study or do a study that detects (and defines) variations in sensitivity to social status, and if they have detected some people that are completely immune, examine those people for differences from the people that are not. But as it is, it sounds like "but how can you explain that Jesus rose from the dead?"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01378-2
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.94.11.5939