I think this is a crucial part of a lot of psychological maladaption and social dysfunction, very salient to EAs. If you’re way more trait xyz than anyone you know for most of your life, your behavior and mindset will be massively effected, and depending on when in life / how much inertia you’ve accumulated by the time you end up in a different room where suddenly you’re average on xyz, you might lose out on a ton of opportunities for growth.
In other words, the concept of “big fish small pond” is deeply insightful and probably underrated.
Some IQ-adjacent idea is sorta the most salient to me, since my brother recently reminded me “quinn is the smartest person I know”, to which I was like, you should meet smarter people? Or I kinda did feel unusually smart before I was an EA, I can only reasonably claim to be average if you condition on EA or something similar. But this post is extremely important in terms of each of the Big 5, “grit”-adjacent things, etc.
For example, when you’re way more trait xyz than anyone around you, you form habits around adjusting for people to underperform relative to you at trait xyz. Sometimes those habits run very deep in your behavior and wordview, and sometimes they can be super ill-tuned (or at least a bit suboptimal) to becoming average. Plus, you develop a lot of “I have to pave my own way” assumptions about growth and leadership. Related to growth, you may cultivate lower standards for yourself than you otherwise might have. Related to leadership, I expect many people in leader roles at small ponds would be more productive, impactful, and happy if they had access to averageness. Pond size means they don’t get that luxury!
There’s a tightly related topic about failure to abolish meatspace / how you might think the internet corrects for this but later realize how much it doesn’t.
I’ve had the thought recently that people in our circles underrate the benefits of being a big fish in a small pond. Being a small fish in a bigger pond means fiercer competition relative to others. Being the dumbest person in the room becomes mentally taxing. It’s literally an invitation to be lower status, one of the most important commodities for an ape brain besides food. Of course there are still the benefits to associating with your equals or superiors, which probably outweigh the harms, but some nuanced balance is called for. It makes any zero sum dynamics more fierce and any positive sum dynamics more magnanimous.
My guess is that being a big fish in a small pond for most of my childhood is on net beneficial for me. If I were to hazard the effects, I’d guess the effects are something like greater overall confidence (particularly on intellectual matters), greater self-identification with intellectual matters, worse overall sociability, increased ambition in some ways and decreased ambition in others.
How are people mistreated by bellcurves?
I think this is a crucial part of a lot of psychological maladaption and social dysfunction, very salient to EAs. If you’re way more trait xyz than anyone you know for most of your life, your behavior and mindset will be massively effected, and depending on when in life / how much inertia you’ve accumulated by the time you end up in a different room where suddenly you’re average on xyz, you might lose out on a ton of opportunities for growth.
In other words, the concept of “big fish small pond” is deeply insightful and probably underrated.
Some IQ-adjacent idea is sorta the most salient to me, since my brother recently reminded me “quinn is the smartest person I know”, to which I was like, you should meet smarter people? Or I kinda did feel unusually smart before I was an EA, I can only reasonably claim to be average if you condition on EA or something similar. But this post is extremely important in terms of each of the Big 5, “grit”-adjacent things, etc.
For example, when you’re way more trait xyz than anyone around you, you form habits around adjusting for people to underperform relative to you at trait xyz. Sometimes those habits run very deep in your behavior and wordview, and sometimes they can be super ill-tuned (or at least a bit suboptimal) to becoming average. Plus, you develop a lot of “I have to pave my own way” assumptions about growth and leadership. Related to growth, you may cultivate lower standards for yourself than you otherwise might have. Related to leadership, I expect many people in leader roles at small ponds would be more productive, impactful, and happy if they had access to averageness. Pond size means they don’t get that luxury!
There’s a tightly related topic about failure to abolish meatspace / how you might think the internet corrects for this but later realize how much it doesn’t.
I’ve had the thought recently that people in our circles underrate the benefits of being a big fish in a small pond. Being a small fish in a bigger pond means fiercer competition relative to others. Being the dumbest person in the room becomes mentally taxing. It’s literally an invitation to be lower status, one of the most important commodities for an ape brain besides food. Of course there are still the benefits to associating with your equals or superiors, which probably outweigh the harms, but some nuanced balance is called for. It makes any zero sum dynamics more fierce and any positive sum dynamics more magnanimous.
this is clearly a law of opposite advice situation.
My guess is that being a big fish in a small pond for most of my childhood is on net beneficial for me. If I were to hazard the effects, I’d guess the effects are something like greater overall confidence (particularly on intellectual matters), greater self-identification with intellectual matters, worse overall sociability, increased ambition in some ways and decreased ambition in others.