Rob Henderson writes essays on psychology, social status, and culture, drawing on his academic background and his upbringing in foster care.
HN commenters describe it as insightful on human psychology and note he coined "luxury beliefs"; they link posts on status signaling and twin studies.
1. The changes you've outlined are all simplifications except the ones for non-binary, which as the Stallman essay linked above outlines, is a mess. Simultaneously more confusing, less accurate, less precise, sounds more clumsy, and takes more effort. Not a winning strategy (though calling people bigots got quite far for a while).
2. We know what a country is, we've created several.
3. We're not with the Pope and haven't been for nigh on 500 years now and won't be back.
4. Non-binary is a luxury belief[1]. It came directly out of universities and has been supported via people of a similar background in media and education sectors, so if we're wondering how the wealthy and powerful want us to speak, we need look no further than this. As the link states:
> Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.
5. There are no true human hermaphrodites as even those born with something akin to the other sex's genitalia have only been able to produce from one type, usually female. As with singular they, it is a misnomer and the medical profession prefers more accurate designation of disorder of sex development. Calling them it would seem dehumanising.
> Plenty of languages have a gender-neutral form of address: one that can be used for anyone. It serves a purpose, it fits a pattern, people are using it, and it doesn't even require extra logic in my natural language parser: I see no reason to call…
The OP has a useful framing of status being attributed in verticals but we'll still (illogically) struggle with this logic. Inwardly we'll compare the status of a doctor, lawyer, or software engineer vs. our profession like a game of Top Trumps.
Status games are fundamental evolutionary behaviours however much we want to believe otherwise.
Here are a couple of relevant pull quotes from https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/what-is-social-status:
"Research indicates that our brains spend about 50% of the time mind wandering. Researchers find that the areas of the brain that are active during mind wandering overlap with the areas of the brain that concentrate on our social lives and ourselves. Left to your own devices, with no task demanding your immediate concentration, you tend to spend a good deal of time thinking about other people—your judgments of them; their evaluations of you."
"So what did status get our human ancestors? Resources, allies, territory, mates, and, most importantly, offspring. The idea is that humans who cared a lot about status were more likely to win romantic partners and thus had children who also cared a lot about status. It’s possible that there were early humans who didn’t care much about status or reproduction. They might’ve only cared about safety, survival, and didn’t concentrate on attracting mates or having children. They didn’t reproduce. Those early humans are not our ancestors."
If this is a typical offer you should negotiate for both title and salary.
Titles are fungible and don’t cost the company. You may run up against some ego problems if you skip over the title of your supervisor but that’s about it. Taking what they offer isn’t your only choice.
The same is true of salary. They’re likely hoping you will take just a little more to join. If they won’t raise salary, seek a signing bonus, equity, or other incentives. Leverage the weak title to your advantage but emphasizing that the role is a step back and you’ll need some assurance/security/benefit beyond the small increase in salary.
here’s a good article about the status vs money tradeoff
https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-over-money-money-over-status
> And then one day someone steals one of their Teslas, and they bemoan the injustice that normal, law-abiding citizens like them face and resolve to hate the poor even more.
They hire private security for they gated community, don't have any Teslas stolen, bemoan on how poor kids that steal cars are a result of dysfunctional society and pat each other on backs for being so progressive. All while completely ignoring the fact that it's mostly other poor people, who are victims of those crimes. See [0]
[0] https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for
To me, this matches with the submission about the logic of envy [1] [2]. Accumulating knowledge doesn't help making decisions. An I is needed to make a choice. To me, this is thus an important text about procrastination.
>He characterised [the a. of the I] as a self-reverting activity, a reflection on itself, a transitioning from indeterminacy to determinacy
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32103900
[2] https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-envy
It's correct. Some people choose status over money. https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-over-money-money-over-status
"The solution, then, is to pay the low-status workers a bit more than they are worth to get them to stay. The high-status workers, in contrast, accept lower pay for the benefit of their lofty positions."
The consequence of this is job title inflation.
https://www.economist.com/business/2022/12/08/the-scourge-of-job-title-inflation