I think politics is a good word here, because status and politics are not quite the same.

It was apparent to me long ago that there was a social competition going on, much of which I had no interest in and found annoying, but I've seen that it has effects on me that I shouldn't ignore. It's a zero sum social war, but the bullets are real.

I'd rather spend time with people who competed for status by production of some good or excellence in truth, as opposed to disinformation and in group jockeying used to tear people down. How do I better arrange that?

It means everything I'd pieced together about people is utterly, utterly wrong, because it assumed that they all valued truth, and understanding - the pursuits of intelligence when you don't have the political trait.

No, people don't all value that. And the news gets worse - it appears to me that people who believe in epistemic truth lose to people who believe in social truth; that not surprisingly, people who believe in social truth have a social advantage.