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0 pointsbumby5y ago0 comments

Maybe, but that's not been my experience. I've found people tend to value the social standing of that "few thousand" people that make up their immediate society rather than the global collective. If anything, I've noticed a tendency to rail against the massive collective value because of it's juxtaposition to that of the value system closer to home.

As a silly example, a giant pickup is a status symbol in cattle country while a tesla is a status symbol in some parts of CA. Both sometimes look down their nose at the other. I'm not making a case as to which is correct, just that I doubt people make their value judgement in response to some global society.

Since I have little presence on social media, I may just not have a good handle on how that skews the whole dynamic but it certainly feels more locally biased to me.

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clairity5y ago· 1 in thread

i'd suggest that the subject of status schools (the takeoff point of this discussion) is itself a global appeal to status, rather than an immediate one. most people who place high status on them have no real idea why, just that they have such reputations. the very comparison of 'truck vs tesla' depends on a global, and contentious, notion of status.

this bias is especially pervasive in, and because of, the modern connected society. how do we contend with extreme interconnectedness? that, the contention (and potential resolutions) of a global social network, will be a defining feature of our times to future historians i think.

bumbyOP5y ago

>most people who place high status on them have no real idea why, just that they have such reputations.

I think this is a very good point and it reminds me of discussions during my undergrad days.

>the very comparison of 'truck vs tesla' depends on a global, and contentious, notion of status.

This is the opposite point I was making about the status of each being non-global in nature.

As I've moved around the country, I've come to realize the local effects on university status. Some schools, like those Ivy League institutions are almost universally revered. Others seem to have local reverence that doesn't translate well. I've lived in some areas where the local universities have a supremely high status for reasons that aren't valued elsewhere (athletics comes to mind -- some schools are 'great' because they have a good football team while having an almost non-existent basketball program and vice versa. It's a bit strange to me how this can confer status to students who only interact with the programs as spectators. Academics similarly; having an MIT degree confers status even if it was in liberal arts). Outside of that local bubble, people put almost no stock in said school but within that bubble it carries a lot of status if it's on your resume because of local cultural (i.e. societal) bias. And people seem to make choices more biased by their immediate social group. As you allude to, much of it seems to simply be inertia of what the herd mind reinforces. It's high status simply because everyone has agreed it's high status. But I still contend that requires a reasonably large social component biased by the local bubble.

It will be interesting to see in the coming decades if social media dilutes those local effects.

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