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 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.