Alain de Botton speaks about Status Anxiety
There is nowhere where I've witnessed (and felt) more status anxiety expressed and talked about than in Lesswrong. I tried to partly dispel the mith at least as it regards sexuality.
People talk about status in all its forms and shapes a lot here. Which made me wonder, what do you think of Alain de Botton's opinions on "status addiction" in western societies?
Really? I think status anxiety is probably everywhere and I have no reason to expect that LWers are more status anxious than most people. Are you sure you aren't just noticing that people talk about status more on LW that in other places? I notice way more status anxiety among, say, high school kids. They just don't have a language for talking about it.
By "witnessed" I meant: Read and heard.
Usually I do not witness the internal experience of other people.
I had no intention of making the claim that it is felt by people here more than people elsewhere. And surely, as mentioned by you and shminux and lukeprog, it isn't. That seemed too obvious to be stated, it is just that the topic arises to the surface of speech here, whereas it remains under the confusion armor elsewhere.
But hey, as Dan Gilbert would have it, if someone thinks your text is confusing, it is, by definition, confusing. So I'll edit it as " more status anxiety expressed and talked about than in Lesswrong"