True, I don’t have a very good perception of social status instincts. I focus more on the quality of someone’s contributions and expertise rather than their status. I despise status games.
Also, there’s a basic inference gap between people who perceive InIn and me as being excessively self-promotional. I am trying to break the typical and very unhelpful humility characteristic of do-gooders. See more about this in my piece here.
FWIW, I read quite a bit of the self-promotional stuff as being status-gamey. I expect I’m not all that unusual in this.
That it gets read this way is a challenge here, and indeed a challenge to the general problem of trying to dial back humility re. good deeds. I think some humility about good deeds is instrumentally pretty important for sending the right signals and encouraging others to be attracted to the idea (not of course to the point of keeping them all private).
I observe that people seem to evaluate a very large number of things in terms of status. It’s actually ridiculously hard to write something that contains absolutely no status message about anybody whatsoever. If you don’t believe me, try writing something that’s both interesting or useful, but does not contain a single line or other element that can be interpreted in terms of status.
Ironically, I think it’s the people who are worst at conveying status messages who are most often accused of playing status games. Not to say that you’re accusing anyone! I can see that you are not! :)
The people who are very good at making status messages simply receive status. Part of what popular people do is to be smooth enough that most people don’t think about the fact that they’re even presenting status messages. To be unskilled with status messages is awkward, which attracts attention to the fact that status messages are present.
So, from what I have observed, it seems like the people who are best at actually playing status games are rarely called out for it (Even though their skill level suggests that they may, in fact, practice that on purpose!), while the people who are terrible at it can’t seem to avoid making status messages all together, nor manage to consistently craft smooth status messages that don’t stick out like a sore thumb.
It makes things a bit confusing for someone who doesn’t do status things the stereotypical way. Do you “stop” playing status games so people do not complain? How do you get around the major limitations on expression you’d impose onto yourself by being unable to say anything that anyone might possibly interpret as a status message? Do you just swallow the irony, dive in, and intentionally practice playing status games smoothly so that nobody complains to you about status games anymore?
Perhaps you agree about Gleb’s intentions, or have no opinion on this, but I just wanted to say that if Gleb appears to be playing status games, he probably isn’t very good at actually playing status games. This supports Gleb’s claim that he hates status games more than any claim that he is playing them. Though I do acknowledge that all you’re saying here is that he comes across as playing status games. That is not an accusation. It’s feedback. I agree with you.
What I’m curious about is what do people think Gleb should do? Should he learn to play status games smoothly and in a way that will lead people to believe an accurate view of reality? Should Gleb try to limit himself to expressions that no one will interpret as status messages? Something else?
I agree that Gleb appears to be bad at status games. I don’t have a view about whether he is deliberately engaging in them (I’d kind of expect him to be better if he conceived of himself as engaging in them, but I observe that he has generated status among some group of supporters of InIn).
I think he should take a break from EA promotion and try to learn how to do better in this domain, in a way that doesn’t take up large slices of time and attention from the EA community. It seems possible that he could come to be a productive member of the community, although I’m a bit pessimistic on the basis of the amount of feedback he has received without apparently fixing the important issues. ‘Learning to do better’ means not necessarily getting very good at status games, but getting good enough to recognise what might be construed as engaging in them, and avoiding that. I also think it’s crucial that he moves from a position of trying to avoid saying strictly-false things to trying to avoid saying things that could lead people to take away false impressions.
One of the things I’m trying to do, as I noted above, is a meta-move to change the culture of humility about good deeds. I generally have an attitude of trying to be the change that I want to see in the world and leading by example. It’s a long-term strategy that has short-term costs, clearly :-)
I understand the long-term goal. I’m claiming that this strategy is actually instrumentally bad for that long-term goal, as it is too widely read as negative (hence reinforcing cultural norms towards humility). More effective would be to embody something which is superior to current cultural norms but will still be seen as positive.
I think liberating altruists to talk about their accomplishments has potential to be really high value, but I don’t think the world is ready for it yet. I think promoting discussions about accomplishments among effective altruists is a great idea. I think if we do that enough, then effective altruists will eventually manage to present that to friends and family members effectively. This is a slow process but I really think word of mouth is the best promotional method for spreading this cultural change outside of EA, at least for now.
I totally agree with you that the world should not shut altruists down for talking about accomplishments, however we have to make a distinction between what we think people should do and what they are actually going to do.
Also, we cannot simply tell people “You shouldn’t shut down altruists for talking about accomplishments.” because it takes around 11 repetitions for them to even remember that. One cannot just post a single article and expect everyone to update. Even the most popular authors in our network don’t get that level of attention. At best, only a significant minority reads all of what is written by a given author. Only some, not all, of those readers remember all the points. Fewer choose to apply them. Only some of the people applying a thing succeed in making a habit.
Additionally, we currently have no idea how to present this idea to the outside world in a way that is persuasive yet. That part requires a bunch of testing. So, we could repeat the idea 11 times, and succeed at absolutely no change whatsoever. Or we could repeat it 11 times and be ridiculed, succeeding only at causing people to remember that we did something which, to them, made us look ridiculous.
Then, there’s the fact that the friends of the people who receive our message won’t necessarily receive the message, too. Friends of our audience members will not understand this cultural element. That makes it very hard for the people in our audience to practice. If audience members can’t consistently practice a social habit like sharing altruistic accomplishments with others, they either won’t develop the habit in the first place, or the habit will be lost to disuse.
Another thing is that there could be some unexpected obstacle or Chesterton’s fence we don’t know about yet. Sometimes when you try to change things, you run face first into something really difficult and confusing. It can take a while to figure out what the heck happened. If we ask others to do something different, we can’t be sure we aren’t causing those others to run face first into some weird obstacle… at which point they may just wonder if we have any sense at all, lol. So, this is something that takes a lot of time, and care. It takes a lot of paying close attention to look for weird, awkward details that could be a sign of some sort of obstacle. This is another great reason to keep our efforts limited to a small group for now. The small group is a lot more likely to report weird obstacles to us, giving us a chance to do something sensible about it.
Changing a culture is really, really hard. To implement such a cultural change just within a chunk of the EA movement would take a significant amount of time. To get it to spread to all of EA would take a lot of time, and to get it spreading further would take many years.
Unless we one day see good evidence that a lot of people have adopted this cultural change, it’s really best to speak for the audience that is actually present, whatever their culture happens to be. Even if we have to bend over backwards while playing contortionist to express our point of view to people, we just have to start by showing them respect no matter what they believe, and do whatever it takes to reach out across inferential distances and get through to them properly. It takes work.
I think liberating altruists to talk about their accomplishments has potential to be really high value, but I don’t think the world is ready for it yet… Another thing is that there could be some unexpected obstacle or Chesterton’s fence we don’t know about yet.
Both of these statements sound right! Most of my theater friends from university (who tended to have very good social instincts) recommend that, to understand why social conventions like this exist, people like us read the “Status” chapter of Keith Johnstone’s Impro, which contains this quote:
We soon discovered the ‘see-saw’ principle: ‘I go up and you go down’. Walk into a dressing-room and say ‘I got the part’ and everyone will congratulate you, but will feel lowered [in status]. Say ‘They said I was old’ and people commiserate, but cheer up perceptibly… The exception to this see-saw principle comes when you identify with the person being raised or lowered, when you sit on his end of the see-saw, so to speak. If you claim status because you know some famous person, then you’ll feel raised when they are: similarly, an ardent royalist won’t want to see the Queen fall off her horse. When we tell people nice things about ourselves this is usually a little like kicking them. People really want to be told things to our discredit in such a way that they don’t have to feel sympathy. Low-status players save up little tit-bits involving their own discomfiture with which to amuse and placate other people.
Emphasis mine. Of course, a large fraction of EA folks and rationalists I’ve met claim to not be bothered by others bragging about their accomplishments, so I think you’re right that promoting these sorts of discussions about accomplishments among other EAs can be a good idea.
This makes sense for spreading the message among EAs, which is why we have the Effective Altruist Accomplishments Facebook group. I’ll have to think further about the most effective ways of spreading this message more broadly, as I’m not in a good mental space to think about it right now.
True, I don’t have a very good perception of social status instincts. I focus more on the quality of someone’s contributions and expertise rather than their status. I despise status games.
Also, there’s a basic inference gap between people who perceive InIn and me as being excessively self-promotional. I am trying to break the typical and very unhelpful humility characteristic of do-gooders. See more about this in my piece here.
FWIW, I read quite a bit of the self-promotional stuff as being status-gamey. I expect I’m not all that unusual in this.
That it gets read this way is a challenge here, and indeed a challenge to the general problem of trying to dial back humility re. good deeds. I think some humility about good deeds is instrumentally pretty important for sending the right signals and encouraging others to be attracted to the idea (not of course to the point of keeping them all private).
I observe that people seem to evaluate a very large number of things in terms of status. It’s actually ridiculously hard to write something that contains absolutely no status message about anybody whatsoever. If you don’t believe me, try writing something that’s both interesting or useful, but does not contain a single line or other element that can be interpreted in terms of status.
Ironically, I think it’s the people who are worst at conveying status messages who are most often accused of playing status games. Not to say that you’re accusing anyone! I can see that you are not! :)
The people who are very good at making status messages simply receive status. Part of what popular people do is to be smooth enough that most people don’t think about the fact that they’re even presenting status messages. To be unskilled with status messages is awkward, which attracts attention to the fact that status messages are present.
So, from what I have observed, it seems like the people who are best at actually playing status games are rarely called out for it (Even though their skill level suggests that they may, in fact, practice that on purpose!), while the people who are terrible at it can’t seem to avoid making status messages all together, nor manage to consistently craft smooth status messages that don’t stick out like a sore thumb.
It makes things a bit confusing for someone who doesn’t do status things the stereotypical way. Do you “stop” playing status games so people do not complain? How do you get around the major limitations on expression you’d impose onto yourself by being unable to say anything that anyone might possibly interpret as a status message? Do you just swallow the irony, dive in, and intentionally practice playing status games smoothly so that nobody complains to you about status games anymore?
Perhaps you agree about Gleb’s intentions, or have no opinion on this, but I just wanted to say that if Gleb appears to be playing status games, he probably isn’t very good at actually playing status games. This supports Gleb’s claim that he hates status games more than any claim that he is playing them. Though I do acknowledge that all you’re saying here is that he comes across as playing status games. That is not an accusation. It’s feedback. I agree with you.
What I’m curious about is what do people think Gleb should do? Should he learn to play status games smoothly and in a way that will lead people to believe an accurate view of reality? Should Gleb try to limit himself to expressions that no one will interpret as status messages? Something else?
I agree that Gleb appears to be bad at status games. I don’t have a view about whether he is deliberately engaging in them (I’d kind of expect him to be better if he conceived of himself as engaging in them, but I observe that he has generated status among some group of supporters of InIn).
I think he should take a break from EA promotion and try to learn how to do better in this domain, in a way that doesn’t take up large slices of time and attention from the EA community. It seems possible that he could come to be a productive member of the community, although I’m a bit pessimistic on the basis of the amount of feedback he has received without apparently fixing the important issues. ‘Learning to do better’ means not necessarily getting very good at status games, but getting good enough to recognise what might be construed as engaging in them, and avoiding that. I also think it’s crucial that he moves from a position of trying to avoid saying strictly-false things to trying to avoid saying things that could lead people to take away false impressions.
(Views my own, not my employer’s.)
One of the things I’m trying to do, as I noted above, is a meta-move to change the culture of humility about good deeds. I generally have an attitude of trying to be the change that I want to see in the world and leading by example. It’s a long-term strategy that has short-term costs, clearly :-)
I understand the long-term goal. I’m claiming that this strategy is actually instrumentally bad for that long-term goal, as it is too widely read as negative (hence reinforcing cultural norms towards humility). More effective would be to embody something which is superior to current cultural norms but will still be seen as positive.
I will think about this further, as I am not in a good space mentally to give this the consideration it deserves
I think liberating altruists to talk about their accomplishments has potential to be really high value, but I don’t think the world is ready for it yet. I think promoting discussions about accomplishments among effective altruists is a great idea. I think if we do that enough, then effective altruists will eventually manage to present that to friends and family members effectively. This is a slow process but I really think word of mouth is the best promotional method for spreading this cultural change outside of EA, at least for now.
I totally agree with you that the world should not shut altruists down for talking about accomplishments, however we have to make a distinction between what we think people should do and what they are actually going to do.
Also, we cannot simply tell people “You shouldn’t shut down altruists for talking about accomplishments.” because it takes around 11 repetitions for them to even remember that. One cannot just post a single article and expect everyone to update. Even the most popular authors in our network don’t get that level of attention. At best, only a significant minority reads all of what is written by a given author. Only some, not all, of those readers remember all the points. Fewer choose to apply them. Only some of the people applying a thing succeed in making a habit.
Additionally, we currently have no idea how to present this idea to the outside world in a way that is persuasive yet. That part requires a bunch of testing. So, we could repeat the idea 11 times, and succeed at absolutely no change whatsoever. Or we could repeat it 11 times and be ridiculed, succeeding only at causing people to remember that we did something which, to them, made us look ridiculous.
Then, there’s the fact that the friends of the people who receive our message won’t necessarily receive the message, too. Friends of our audience members will not understand this cultural element. That makes it very hard for the people in our audience to practice. If audience members can’t consistently practice a social habit like sharing altruistic accomplishments with others, they either won’t develop the habit in the first place, or the habit will be lost to disuse.
Another thing is that there could be some unexpected obstacle or Chesterton’s fence we don’t know about yet. Sometimes when you try to change things, you run face first into something really difficult and confusing. It can take a while to figure out what the heck happened. If we ask others to do something different, we can’t be sure we aren’t causing those others to run face first into some weird obstacle… at which point they may just wonder if we have any sense at all, lol. So, this is something that takes a lot of time, and care. It takes a lot of paying close attention to look for weird, awkward details that could be a sign of some sort of obstacle. This is another great reason to keep our efforts limited to a small group for now. The small group is a lot more likely to report weird obstacles to us, giving us a chance to do something sensible about it.
Changing a culture is really, really hard. To implement such a cultural change just within a chunk of the EA movement would take a significant amount of time. To get it to spread to all of EA would take a lot of time, and to get it spreading further would take many years.
Unless we one day see good evidence that a lot of people have adopted this cultural change, it’s really best to speak for the audience that is actually present, whatever their culture happens to be. Even if we have to bend over backwards while playing contortionist to express our point of view to people, we just have to start by showing them respect no matter what they believe, and do whatever it takes to reach out across inferential distances and get through to them properly. It takes work.
Both of these statements sound right! Most of my theater friends from university (who tended to have very good social instincts) recommend that, to understand why social conventions like this exist, people like us read the “Status” chapter of Keith Johnstone’s Impro, which contains this quote:
Emphasis mine. Of course, a large fraction of EA folks and rationalists I’ve met claim to not be bothered by others bragging about their accomplishments, so I think you’re right that promoting these sorts of discussions about accomplishments among other EAs can be a good idea.
This makes sense for spreading the message among EAs, which is why we have the Effective Altruist Accomplishments Facebook group. I’ll have to think further about the most effective ways of spreading this message more broadly, as I’m not in a good mental space to think about it right now.
I don’t believe you.