"Status" can be corrosive; here's how I handle it

A related stream of thoughts related to status in EA that I had the other day:

I had the vague impression that some EAs I know feel like they get too little validation from the broader and more local EA communities, like too little appreciation and acknowledgement for their work and for them being part of broader EA project. And I felt like that's pretty sad because making people feel more socially valued seems not very costly at current margins:

• Tell people more often you appreciate their work/engagement.
  • This doesn't mean you think the work is particularly impactful, or the best that this person could be doing. Just feel and express some gratitude that somebody is trying to do something good in the world, and tries to be thoughtful about how to do as much as they can.
  • E.g. just saying "Thanks for thinking about this, I think that's an important issue." before giving critical feedback on a forum post would probably make people feel appreciated, while I expect just voicing the criticism can often feel dismissive.
  • Just reacting somehow to people's output often feels like a helpful and validating gesture, like saying "Interesting post!" or reacting with some Emoji to a Slack post.
• Have more spaces where people can find friends and form small sub-communities, e.g. local EA retreats seem good for that, local EA groups, online spaces of sub-communities.
• Maybe? some people in EA could look out a bit more for people who might not naturally receive much social validation for random reasons, such as being shy, new to a group, not having as much to contribute to work on important problems (yet), etc.

Thanks, I was just thinking about the topic of status and found this stimulating! :) Some quick random direct reactions to your sections:

When reading the "Is status the true bottleneck?" section, I felt like it would be useful to spend more time making clear what exactly "status" is referring to. In that particular section, it felt more appropriate to replace the broader "status" concept with the partially overlapping and correlated  "trust of funders that you implement a given project competently and in line with the funders' values".

The section "The status equation" made me feel like it'd be useful to emphasize that social status is relative to a community. I wasn't sure if this equation was meant to be descriptive of how (some subset of) the EA community assigns status, or if it was aspirational for a community, or if it was how that person individually wants to/feels like they personally respect people differently according to.

Status = Goodness of your thinking + Goodness of your actions + Something About Your Vibes™

Definition from Wikipedia, to support the "what a specific social group thinks" aspect:

Social status is the level of social value a person is considered to possess.^[1][2] More specifically, it refers to the relative level of respect, honour, assumed competence, and deference accorded to people, groups, and organizations in a society. Status is based in widely shared beliefs about who members of a society think holds comparatively more or less social value, in other words, who they believe is better in terms of competence or moral traits.

FWIW, I think the equation does not capture everything that I perceive from how the EA community differently values individuals, though goodness of vibes can maybe cover anything? :D 

• association with other people and orgs that have high status
• responsibilities/rank at an org/seniority
• wealth
• beauty and fashionable looks

Sometimes, the community is going to make mistakes when conferring status.

Maybe worth mentioning that social status is probably not a single variable out there but made up of a different things and also fairly fluid. E.g. there are a lot of subcommunities in EA with their own fuzzy social status assignments, there are a lot of EAs who don't know you who might quickly hold you in very high regard if you'd move to their city and get to know them, etc.

https://twitter.com/QualyThe/status/1617806572281028609 

Thanks for this Akash. I like this  post and like these examples. 

One thing I find has been helpful for me here is to stop talking and thinking about "status" so much and focus more on acknowledging my own emotional experience. e.g. the bullets at the start of this post for example are all example of someone feeling shame. 

Shame can be a useful signal about how it would be best for you to act in any given situation, but often isn't particularly accurate in its predictions. Focusing on concepts like "status" instead of the emotions that are informing the concept has, at times, pushed me towards seeing status as way more real than it actually is. 

This isn't to say that status is not a useful model in general. I'm just skeptical its anywhere near as useful for understanding your own experience as it is to analyzing the behavior of groups  more objectively.

Totally agree with everything in here!

I also like the framing: Status-focused thinking was likely very highly selected for in the ancestral environment, and so when your brain comes up with status-focused justifications for various plans, you should be pretty skeptical about whether it is actually focusing on status as an instrumental goal toward your intrinsic goals, or as an intrinsic goal in itself. Similar to how you would be skeptical of your brain for coming up with justifications in favor of why its actually a really good idea to hire that really sexy girl/guy interviewing for a position who analyzed objectively is a doofus.