Status Is The Game Of The Losers' Bracket — LessWrong
lesswrong.com · 8,516 words · saved by 3 readers
This post is written as a series of little thoughts and vignettes, all trying to gesture at the same idea. The hope is to convey the gestalt. …
x Status Is The Game Of The Losers' Bracket — LessWrong World Modeling Frontpage 94 Status Is The Game Of The Losers' Bracket by johnswentworth 18th Nov 2025 5 min read 48 94 This post is written as a series of little thoughts and vignettes, all trying to gesture at the same idea. The hope is to convey the gestalt. Consider the game of middle management, of climbing the hierarchy at a big company. The status games, the simulacrum 3/4 games , the politics, the moral mazes , all that jazz. Then, open up Forbes’ list of N richest people, and count how many of them got on that list by climbing the
saved by
related reading
- Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Don't Surround Yourself With Smarter People — Ribbonfarmribbonfarm.com
- Rule Thinkers In, Not Out — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Startups as status | Texturesrileywilson.co
- Who Wants to Play the Status Game? | The Point Magazinethepointmag.com
- Humans are not automatically strategic — LessWronglesswrong.com
- What's going on here, with this human? - Graham Duncan Bloggrahamduncan.blog
- Is Success the Enemy of Freedom? (Full) — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Underrated predictor of success: willingness to be low-statusnews.ycombinator.com
- Incentives are for losersexperimental-history.com
- Here's the exit. — LessWronglesswrong.com
- The Hypocrisy of Elites - Erik Torenbergeriktorenberg.substack.com