Jim talks with Erik Torenberg about the ideas in his Substack series on navigating the status games of today. They discuss status as reputation allocation, cyclical change in status mobility over time, status in the world of social media, beliefs as fashions, the status games of adolescent girls, therapy as a status signal, status games around changes of gender, the metaphysics of trauma, luxury beliefs, college as the biggest differentiator in belief, universalism & the ban on cousin marriage, the U.S.'s anomalously high religious population, the arms race for crazy ideas, the societal value of status mobility, sincere irony, the Israeli kibbutz system, cryptocurrency initiatives in GameB, the religion that's not a religion, money & beauty, heretics vs apostates, cancel culture as a status pump-and-dump scheme, the peak & coming decline of wokism, Trump as a boon for wokism, and much more.

Episode Transcript

Game B, Liquid Democracy, and Complex Systems with Jim Rutt - Village Global's Venture Stories

"Status, Vulnerability, and Status Vulnerability," by Erik Torenberg (Substack)

"Beliefs are Fashions," by Erik Torenberg (Substack)

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Joseph Henrich

JRS EP104 - Joe Henrich on WEIRD People

Erik Torenberg is the Founder and the Co-founder/General Partner at Village Global. Before building On Deck, Erik was a member of the founding team at Product Hunt and the Founder of rapt.fm.