I care a lot about the health of this community and think status dynamics like this can both be really damaging and require a lot of ingenuity to solve.
Maybe I’m cynical, but this is a strange sentiment to have beacuse the public parts of the Bay Area rationalist community (I personally opine) are made of status ladders.
I don’t think I know what you mean by this. Status ladders definitely play a large role in the Bay Area, as they do in almost any community, but there are arrangements of status that cause people to feel gaslit and marginalized who would otherwise have a potential to contribute valuable resources to a community, and there are arrangements that cause them to feel positively encouraged, safe and understood, even if they don’t turn out to be a good fit for the community.
The Bay Area rationality community does some things in this space very well, especially compared to the broader world, but this post is evidence that it does some things less well. Especially on the honesty level where the OP seems have gotten a sense that at least a subset of the people in the Bay Area do not have enough self awareness of the status dynamics that are going on, or might be semi-consciously deceiving people by denying that they exist, while at the same time taking advantage of them.
I am not in the camp of people who says that you should not have status hierarchies in a community. It’s hard to coordinate people, and status based thinking is so deeply embedded in people’s thinking that I expect it will inevitably play a part in any community. However, you can drastically change what things are assigned status, how transparent the system is, and to what degree the community is aware of the role that it plays. I am interested in improving those.
Also, since this is demon-thread material, I might disengage if I find myself getting too emotionally involved.
Maybe I’m cynical, but this is a strange sentiment to have beacuse the public parts of the Bay Area rationalist community (I personally opine) are made of status ladders.
I don’t think I know what you mean by this. Status ladders definitely play a large role in the Bay Area, as they do in almost any community, but there are arrangements of status that cause people to feel gaslit and marginalized who would otherwise have a potential to contribute valuable resources to a community, and there are arrangements that cause them to feel positively encouraged, safe and understood, even if they don’t turn out to be a good fit for the community.
The Bay Area rationality community does some things in this space very well, especially compared to the broader world, but this post is evidence that it does some things less well. Especially on the honesty level where the OP seems have gotten a sense that at least a subset of the people in the Bay Area do not have enough self awareness of the status dynamics that are going on, or might be semi-consciously deceiving people by denying that they exist, while at the same time taking advantage of them.
I am not in the camp of people who says that you should not have status hierarchies in a community. It’s hard to coordinate people, and status based thinking is so deeply embedded in people’s thinking that I expect it will inevitably play a part in any community. However, you can drastically change what things are assigned status, how transparent the system is, and to what degree the community is aware of the role that it plays. I am interested in improving those.
Also, since this is demon-thread material, I might disengage if I find myself getting too emotionally involved.