It’s interesting that I feel attuned to social status in EA/EA-adjacent settings. I have been in settings before where people had more status according to the standards of the general public (eg: having political power, being extremely wealthy) and status didn’t feel like a salient thing to me in those contexts. My initial guess for what makes EA settings different is that I don’t feel particularly threatened by people’s perception of my political power or wealth being damaged but in EA settings it feels like being perceived as highly intelligent is more important and I do feel more anxious about people not thinking I’m smart. I also have status-anxiety in situations with heavily-credentialed academics but less so and I suspect that as a community cares more about credentials compared to being generally intelligent, I would have less status-anxiety in that community (even though I am at a lower percentile for credentials than intelligence) because of having less of my self-worth tied up in how credentialed people perceive me to be.
I also think it is interesting to note how noticing and subconsciously caring about social status is not a constant. I notice myself acting more status-blind when I am feeling more secure.
It’s interesting that I feel attuned to social status in EA/EA-adjacent settings. I have been in settings before where people had more status according to the standards of the general public (eg: having political power, being extremely wealthy) and status didn’t feel like a salient thing to me in those contexts. My initial guess for what makes EA settings different is that I don’t feel particularly threatened by people’s perception of my political power or wealth being damaged but in EA settings it feels like being perceived as highly intelligent is more important and I do feel more anxious about people not thinking I’m smart. I also have status-anxiety in situations with heavily-credentialed academics but less so and I suspect that as a community cares more about credentials compared to being generally intelligent, I would have less status-anxiety in that community (even though I am at a lower percentile for credentials than intelligence) because of having less of my self-worth tied up in how credentialed people perceive me to be.
I also think it is interesting to note how noticing and subconsciously caring about social status is not a constant. I notice myself acting more status-blind when I am feeling more secure.