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She’s a VC-backed founder who went to Yale, and her very first job was at Goldman. What she’s describing in the article is not “low status” because she hadn’t e

by e1g 1y ago

She’s a VC-backed founder who went to Yale, and her very first job was at Goldman. What she’s describing in the article is not “low status” because she hadn’t experienced that. But the feeling she describes reveals what she thinks “low status” is - embarrassment.

samdoesnothing 1y ago
It's relative, you can be low status in one group and high status in another and be the exact same person. Sounds like from the online bullying she suffered from at Yale, she was low status there.
- jagged-chisel 1y ago
  I’d like to understand the thinking of those who downvoted and flagged this comment.
  - Rexxar 1y ago
    It was "[dead]" or "[flagged]" ? If it was the first it was automatic and probably caused by previous comments, not by this one. New accounts (green name) can be auto-flagged quite fast if they have downvotes or reports on multiple comments.
    - jagged-chisel 1y ago
      At this point, I remember it as flagged. I'm reasonably confident that my memory is correct.
hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
Getting into Yale is indeed pretty good prima facie evidence that you have what it takes to be high status in the future, in quite a few domains. Persevering is great advice for most people along most trajectories who get into Yale.
- kragen 1y ago
  It's not just a question of potential. Getting into Yale directly confers high status, and it is fairly well gated by other status-related tests: honors classes and private schools nudge you to learn the kind of thinking that does well on the SAT, not the kind of thinking that keeps you out of danger, as well as pushing you to AP exam prep classes; and access to extracurricular activities is gated both implicitly (by school choice) and explicitly by disciplinary measures for low-status behaviors. Rednecks like JD Vance are a tiny minority of the Yale entering class, and lower-status groups like illegal immigrants are as far as I know completely absent. Also, I think the idea that there is something that it takes to be high status is incorrect. Social status is its own phenomenon with its own rules, and sometimes it's pretty random: you get a good job against the odds, or a good spouse, or you narrowly escape a disabling accident. You could argue that "what it takes" in such cases is luck, but graduating from Yale doesn't indicate that you will be lucky in the future, only of things that have happened before that.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    >the idea that there is something that it takes to be high status is incorrect >Getting into Yale directly confers high status Don't these two ideas contradict one another? It sure sounds like we have at least one known pathway to becoming high status, and that is getting into Yale.
    - kragen 1y ago
      No, "something that it takes to be high status" would be some characteristic (in this context, one that is stable over time) that was necessary for high status, while something that "directly confers high status" is something that is sufficient for high status. It's entirely possible for something to be sufficient and nothing to be necessary. You're making the basic logical error of confusing ∀ with ∃.
      - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
        Consider the set S of all properties which confer high status. "Got into Yale" is something we have assumed is in S, so S is nonempty. 'I have at least one property in S' seems like it would be a fine candidate for the necessary characteristic you're after, and it's not vacuous either, it can actually be achieved in reality. Therefore there is something that it takes to be high status, in your words.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
joe_the_user 1y ago
These thing aren't talked about much. But think the proper way to discuss is that "social status" exists among groups of rough peers and "social position" better describes someone's privileges of wealth, education and employment relative to society as a whole. Just as an example, a whole lot of dysfunctional dynamics happening lately seem to involve billionaires jockeying for status with other billionaires. Edit: I'd recommend Paul Fussel's book Class since it involves discussion of these two dynamics.
__turbobrew__ 1y ago
From my research the whole Alvea thing was an Effective Alturism cooked up project that only lasted 3 years and made no money, and then now they are at Astera which seems to be some rich persons plaground where they throw money at researchers to do “stuff”. What that stuff is, I don’t know. The real moral of this story is you should get rich eccentric friends from the Ivy League elite who throw money at you to do AGI. Like you really think this company of like 40 people is going to crack AGI? Man I should cross the moat and get some rich friends.
- weatherlite 1y ago
  Well yeah , being high status does not always mean you actually contribute a lot of value to society. And being medium status does not mean your value is mediocre - take a nurse or a kindergarten teacher - their value is substantial but the status they get is mediocre at best. So if you get a feeling the "game" is somewhat rigged and twisted, perhaps the feeling is correct...
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  "Alvea started in late 2021 as a moonshot to rapidly develop and deploy a room temperature-stable DNA vaccine candidate against the Omicron wave of COVID-19, and we soon became the fastest startup to take a new drug from founding to a Phase 1 clinical trial. However, we decided to discontinue our lead candidate during the follow-up period of the trial as the case for large-scale impact weakened amidst the evolving pandemic landscape." To be honest Alvea doesn't sound like a crazy idea on paper. Reducing lead times on new drugs is a really good idea that seems like it is bottlenecked more by bureaucratic concerns. A company which focused on that as its sole mission could be really profitable, if they could sell their professional services to a group that already had plenty of in house expertise on actually creating the drugs. My very low resolution guess is that they slipped up when they actually tried to make the drug themselves. That may have been a requirement to get funding from the US government at the time, I don't know.

by e1g 1y ago

samdoesnothing 1y ago

It's relative, you can be low status in one group and high status in another and be the exact same person. Sounds like from the online bullying she suffered from at Yale, she was low status there.

jagged-chisel 1y ago
I’d like to understand the thinking of those who downvoted and flagged this comment.
- Rexxar 1y ago
  It was "[dead]" or "[flagged]" ? If it was the first it was automatic and probably caused by previous comments, not by this one. New accounts (green name) can be auto-flagged quite fast if they have downvotes or reports on multiple comments.
  - jagged-chisel 1y ago
    At this point, I remember it as flagged. I'm reasonably confident that my memory is correct.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago

Getting into Yale is indeed pretty good prima facie evidence that you have what it takes to be high status in the future, in quite a few domains. Persevering is great advice for most people along most trajectories who get into Yale.

kragen 1y ago
It's not just a question of potential. Getting into Yale directly confers high status, and it is fairly well gated by other status-related tests: honors classes and private schools nudge you to learn the kind of thinking that does well on the SAT, not the kind of thinking that keeps you out of danger, as well as pushing you to AP exam prep classes; and access to extracurricular activities is gated both implicitly (by school choice) and explicitly by disciplinary measures for low-status behaviors. Rednecks like JD Vance are a tiny minority of the Yale entering class, and lower-status groups like illegal immigrants are as far as I know completely absent. Also, I think the idea that there is something that it takes to be high status is incorrect. Social status is its own phenomenon with its own rules, and sometimes it's pretty random: you get a good job against the odds, or a good spouse, or you narrowly escape a disabling accident. You could argue that "what it takes" in such cases is luck, but graduating from Yale doesn't indicate that you will be lucky in the future, only of things that have happened before that.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  >the idea that there is something that it takes to be high status is incorrect >Getting into Yale directly confers high status Don't these two ideas contradict one another? It sure sounds like we have at least one known pathway to becoming high status, and that is getting into Yale.
  - kragen 1y ago
    No, "something that it takes to be high status" would be some characteristic (in this context, one that is stable over time) that was necessary for high status, while something that "directly confers high status" is something that is sufficient for high status. It's entirely possible for something to be sufficient and nothing to be necessary. You're making the basic logical error of confusing ∀ with ∃.
    - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
      Consider the set S of all properties which confer high status. "Got into Yale" is something we have assumed is in S, so S is nonempty. 'I have at least one property in S' seems like it would be a fine candidate for the necessary characteristic you're after, and it's not vacuous either, it can actually be achieved in reality. Therefore there is something that it takes to be high status, in your words.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

joe_the_user 1y ago

These thing aren't talked about much. But think the proper way to discuss is that "social status" exists among groups of rough peers and "social position" better describes someone's privileges of wealth, education and employment relative to society as a whole. Just as an example, a whole lot of dysfunctional dynamics happening lately seem to involve billionaires jockeying for status with other billionaires. Edit: I'd recommend Paul Fussel's book Class since it involves discussion of these two dynamics.

__turbobrew__ 1y ago

From my research the whole Alvea thing was an Effective Alturism cooked up project that only lasted 3 years and made no money, and then now they are at Astera which seems to be some rich persons plaground where they throw money at researchers to do “stuff”. What that stuff is, I don’t know. The real moral of this story is you should get rich eccentric friends from the Ivy League elite who throw money at you to do AGI. Like you really think this company of like 40 people is going to crack AGI? Man I should cross the moat and get some rich friends.

weatherlite 1y ago
Well yeah , being high status does not always mean you actually contribute a lot of value to society. And being medium status does not mean your value is mediocre - take a nurse or a kindergarten teacher - their value is substantial but the status they get is mediocre at best. So if you get a feeling the "game" is somewhat rigged and twisted, perhaps the feeling is correct...
hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
"Alvea started in late 2021 as a moonshot to rapidly develop and deploy a room temperature-stable DNA vaccine candidate against the Omicron wave of COVID-19, and we soon became the fastest startup to take a new drug from founding to a Phase 1 clinical trial. However, we decided to discontinue our lead candidate during the follow-up period of the trial as the case for large-scale impact weakened amidst the evolving pandemic landscape." To be honest Alvea doesn't sound like a crazy idea on paper. Reducing lead times on new drugs is a really good idea that seems like it is bottlenecked more by bureaucratic concerns. A company which focused on that as its sole mission could be really profitable, if they could sell their professional services to a group that already had plenty of in house expertise on actually creating the drugs. My very low resolution guess is that they slipped up when they actually tried to make the drug themselves. That may have been a requirement to get funding from the US government at the time, I don't know.