perhaps a concrete example will illustrate what i'm talking about. let's say you're talking with someone you just met, who maybe you like. they mention that they're interested in wine tasting. the level-1 person just says whatever. the level-2 person reveals their interest in wine tasting. the level-3 person thinks like this: "what would the other person think of me if i said i were interested in wine tasting? they'd probably conclude that my intention is to ingratiate myself to them."
it's hard for me to portray this in value-neutral terms; i tried, but it still didn't come out that way. but i think it really does mean something in terms of developmental stages; moving from not caring to realizing that other people have mental states and are affected by your actions, to realizing that other people realize that you have mental states and will infer upon them based on your actions.
so in essence, each level in this hierarchy corresponds to realizing that other people exist and operate on the next lower level. i recently crossed over from level 2 to level 3, and i'm not sure if it's a good thing. obviously i talk about this in relation to l., who i am sure the readership is bored of by now but who really is the most potent recent symbol in my life. several times over the weekend l. aced me out by revealing something about herself that i feel about myself, or revealing an attitude towards the world i strongly believe in.
in this situation, level-1 and level-2 people do the same thing: they agree. but level-3 people hold back, because they know that level-2 people would agree even if they didn't, or at least slant the truth in that direction. i misspoke in the last paragraph in search of elegance; what's really going on here is that the progression to level n+1 happens when you realize that other people are capable of comprehending level n people, of assessing people as if they were on level n. in a sense you're trying to outsmart them.
i held back. and it happened the other way once or twice, too; i beat her to a bunch of things, though, as a level-3 (or higher!) person, i didn't get the obvious revelation. but, as i always do, i was paying a ton of attention to involuntary cues, and i saw at least some.
i wonder what the extension is. while writing this i've been specifically trying to avoid thinking about what level 4 is, and i've succeeded, so what you get now really are my first thoughts on the matter. you might think it just flips back and forth, but i don't think that's quite right. if other people interpret you at level 3, they realize that you're trying to present yourself in a way so that if it were perceived as level-2, it would be good, it would give the impression of you that you're trying to give.
i can 't really come up with a conclusion here at all. i'm tempted to just conclude that level 4 is to act like a jerk, or possibly act randomly. more likely i can't comprehend it because i haven't reached it yet. possibly level 4 is the realization that this tiered system is flat-out wrong, which would be a larf. i can do better in the personal analysis -- i know that my level-3 holdback is to not seem too obsessive, to not seem too scary, since that's a problem that plagued my level-2 persona.
so let's assume that the person i'm interacting with is smart enough to figure that out. now i need to consciously figure out which level-3 persona i want to project. curiously enough, i think the level-3 persona i want to present is one of spontaneity. so how, on level 4, do i do this?
the moral of the story is that since these are developmental stages i'm unlikely to reach them consciously. i'm not even sure if i will reach level 4 ever; it seems very foreign, as foreign as i know level 2 once seemed to me.