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.
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.
Definition from Wikipedia, to support the “what a specific social group thinks” aspect:
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
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.