Good point, I did summarize a bit fast.

There's two issues at hand, one asserting that you're doing something that's high status within your community, and asserting that your community's goals are more important (and higher status) than the goals of the listener's community.

If there's a large inferential distance in justifying your claims of importance, but the importance is clear, then it's difficult to distinguish you from say, cranks and conspiracy theorists.

(The dialogues are fairly unrealistic, but trying to gesture at the pattern)

A within culture issue:

"I do rocket surgery"

"I'm working on hard Brain Science problem X"

"Doesn't Charlie work on X?"

"Yeah."

"Are you working with Charlie on X?"

"No."

"Isn't Charlie really smart though?"

"Yep."

"Are you saying that you're really smart too?"

"No."

"Why bother?"

Between cultures:

"I do Rocket Surgery".

"That's pretty cool. I'm trying to destroy the One Ring".

"Huh?"

"Basically, I'm trying to destroy the power source for the dark forces that threaten everything anyone holds dear".

"Shouldn't Rocket Brain Surgery Science be able to solve that"?

"No. that's a fundamentally flawed approach on this problem -- the One Ring doesn't have a brain, and you carry it around. If you look at --"

"So you're looking for a MacGuffin?"

"No."

I can imagine that if you talk to someone at a party it is more impressive to say that you work in rocket surgery than it is to say that you work as a carpenter.

It depends on which (sub)culture the people at the party are in.