2025-01-14# Elite social normsI have been raised in upper-middle class India whi
ch means I have internalised many of the social norms of the middle (knowledge)
class and am blind to many of the social norms of the upper (elite) and lower (l
abour) classes. I am very sympathetic to perspectives such as [this analysis by
siderea](https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1237182.html) on why social class is mor
e important than economic class, and this helps explain why I am blind.This enti
re post is therefore a bunch of guesswork from someone who does not have enough
first-hand data. Everything here is to be read with the understanding that it co
uld be completely incorrect with significant probability.If you are an elite, pl
ease correct the incorrect parts. It'll mean a lot to me if you do.#### Disclaim
erPublishing this article in public makes me nervous for a couple of reasons. -
I am still in a knowledge-gathering phase of my life. I want to spend more time
interacting with people outside my class and learn more about what life is like
for them. I'm worried I will get reduced opportunities to do that if people know
I'm going to publish some of my learnings on my blog. - This is especially tr
ue if what I publish includes criticism, and isn't just descriptive of the facts
. - This is especially true if I publish includes incorrect guesses of what it
's like in other classes. People could think I'm naive and overconfident, and no
t be willing to correct me. (If you think I'm naive and overconfident, please co
rrect me, I will appreciate more for this than if you keep quiet. If I don't acc
ept your criticism that's okay, I'll still appreciate the attempt.) - In gener
al, if I have published anything that you don't like, please let me know. I'll u
sually be willing to take it down or atleast rewrite it in a way it no longer fe
els like it is criticising you specifically. - (There may be exceptions. Maybe
you've done something especially immoral from my perspective, and I want to cal
l you out publicly and pick a fight with you. But this is rare, I don't usually
start conflicts with other just because their values are different from mine. If
you are afraid that something you say to me will end up on this blog against yo
ur wishes, please ask me first.) - If I had a magic wish, I would love to be par
t of the elite class instead of my current socioeconomic class. I think there's
a lot of good that can be done in the world only by elites (or by people of my c
lass who join the elite class). - However some of my current behaviours and ac
tions in the world are already indicating my membership of the knowledge class,
and my potential lack of eligibility to other classes. - For instance my ideal
attitude to criticism is a lot closer to people of my class than the elite, whe
never I hold back on offering criticism I feel like I am betraying my inner idea
ls for instrumental gain. In practice yes I often hold back on offering criticis
m for various reasons, but I hate the fact that I have to do this. (Yes, all 3 c
lasses withold criticism, but elite class does this the most IMO, atleast for pu
blic criticism not private.) - If I choose to give up on my ambition of becomi
ng an elite, I could still have significant influence, for example by influencin
g and advising existing elites. But this influence will still be reduced (by how
much??) if I refuse to adopt any of the social norms of the elite class myself.
**I still remain unsure whether this article should stay published. If you think
I would have a better life if I took this article down, please let me know.**##
Elite social norms that differ from knowledge class' social normsA bunch of the
social norms seem explainable just through incentives. I probably don't actuall
y have to spend 10 years living as an elite myself to figure it out.If I have to
summarise this entire post in two lines it's probably the following: - Elite so
cial circles are a small world, there's a small number of people like you. Your
entire life - personal and professional - depends on allying with some subset of
this set of people. - In labour class, others can destroy you so you must be ca
reful how you behave. In elite class, you can destroy others so you must be care
ful how you behave. It's only the knowledge class that lives in this fictitious
zone of "equality".Now that the summary is over, I'll talk about details. - My g
uess is elites can get away with a lot more weird or even immoral behaviour in p
rivate, compared to people of other classes. - My guess is elites on average h
ave a stronger demarcation between their private and public life than people of
other classes. (Although yes ofcourse all 3 classes maintain this demarcation.)
- Elites can get away with a lot more things in private simply because of the
power they wield. If an elite ever got into a conflict with someone of the knowl
edge class, they are likely to "win" in many ways. - This includes self-expres
sion that would be punished in other classes. If an elite wants to architect the
ir house in a 16th century style, or consume a range of non-FDA-approved supplem
ents, or go live in a monastery for a year, or have multiple partners, it's easi
er for them to do that. Many people of other classes would love this level of fr
eedom and self-expression, but get restricted by their immediate social circle.
- [Trigger Warning: Rape] This also extends to immoral actions. For example, i
t's a lot easier for an elite to get away with rape than someone of other classe
s. I also think the number of men of other classes who would rape others if they
could get away with it is surprisingly high (atleast 5%, global average), but e
lites get to act on it instead of just thinking it in the privacy of their minds
. There are 3000 billionaires today, I'm pretty sure atleast 150 of them are rap
ists (I'm not including paid sex work here, and I'm not including edge cases lik
e a 50-year old sleeping with an 18-year old here). - Disclaimer: Prediction
s shape reality. Please don't turn my prediction into reality. It would be nice
if I was wrong, and this number was a lot less than 5%. - My guess is elites are
on average more lonely. - It is a small world at the top, there's less than 1
0000 elites globally. For the knowledge class it's easier to do something weird
and trust that you eventually find a find people who are not just tolerant but a
ctively supportive of anything weird you want to do. For example, if you want to
suddenly convert from hinduism to christianity, you can probably find an existi
ng community of hindus-converted-to-christianity of your class. If you are a Nep
ali immigrant to the US, you can probably find other nepali immigrants to the US
, of your class. As an elite it's a lot harder to find another elite who shares
your unique set of life experiences. (Also it takes a lot of time and effort to
forge social bonds outside your class that are based on honest foundations, see
my next point.) - As an elite you're basically 24x7 exposed to non-elites who
are engaging in varying amounts of deception to get access to some of the capita
l and attention you wield. This is true both in professional life (other compani
es and non-profits who want to ally with you) and in personal life (people who w
ant to befriend or date you). This also seems obvious based on incentives. If so
meone has $1M it might be worth spending 1 year trying to entrap them, if someon
e has $1B it might be worth spending your entire life trying to entrap them. For
ging trustworthy bonds outside your social class takes a significant amount of t
ime and effort, in fact a significant part of designing your company or governme
nt or whatever is basically figuring out how to get people of other classes to d
o your work without you ever having to trust them. - As an elite, if you're am
bitious and trying to get something done, you need to interact with a lot of peo
ple where you cannot let your guard down emotionally. You cannot choose to avoid
interacting with people if you are ambitious and wish to climb further upward.
(This is true for basically all 3 classes, but it is an added factor here. I'm n
ot claiming it's worse or better in this class.) - There is also cultural spir
alling here. If the other people you know are also more lonely and less willing
to take bold risks, this will also rub off on you. - My guess is elites can get
away with less weirdness on things that actually matter, in business and politic
s, than people of the knowledge class. - There's a lot of nuance here that's h
ard to summarise. - This is especially true if they wish to keep their elite s
ocial circles (including friends and family) or climb up within their class. -
This is especially true if the elite wields or aspires to wield attention rathe
r than capital. Elites often wield a lot of attention by crafting a public image
that is entirely separate from their private image. - Getting a large numbe
r of people behind cause may require you to support the average of their views,
and the average of a large number of people's views is by definition conformist.
- [Side note: I wish there was an honest way to do this. For example, I hav
e massive respect for a politician who says "my private beliefs are X, however t
he voters have voted for Y, therefore if I were elected I'm going to do Y" and I
have a lot less respect for someone who just pretends their private beliefs are
Y. I understand that the former has disadvantages. For instance, your voters ma
y be too unintelligent to understand the nuance. Also, your message will get mut
ated as it spreads across place and time, and competes with other ideas, so you
may prefer communicating a simpler message over a more complicated one. If someo
ne figures this stuff out, I'd be grateful.] - Elites can get away with less cri
ticism of other elites. People of the knowledge class can tolerate more criticis
m on average, both on the giving and receiving end. - Criticising another el
ite in public is essentially rallying a mob against them. An elite's words in pu
blic carry a lot more weight than someone of the knowledge class. (Arguably, bei
ng able to rally people using words is basically the most important role an elit
e plays, in a sense.) - An elite's words also end up setting up status heira
rchies across all the organisations they control. If you as an elite criticise o
nly one particular type of behaviour by someone, people across all your organisa
tions will go out of their way to avoid that particular type of behaviour. -
The elite who receives the criticism can also do a lot more damage in response.
See again, "it's a small world". The elite on the receiving end can influence t
heir network of other elites to demand conformism or else cut off their ties wit
h you. The extreme end of this phenomena is countries going to war over personal
rivalries involving trivial matters. - Even when elites do use their media
houses to push criticism against other elites, it's done via abstractions. It's
"The New Yorker published X" not "the Newhouse family who owns Conde Nast allowe
d X to be published", it's "the NSA helped kill X" not "Michael Hayden the NSA d
irector helped kill X", it's "climate non-profit got shutted because X" not "Moh
ammed bin Salman the prince of Saudi Arabia shuttered climate non-profit". Most
of us don't even know the names of the people who own the media houses and compa
nies and nonprofits that we interact with on a day-to-day basis, this alone is p
roof that abstractions work. (I'm not claiming anything about these specific exa
mples, they're just examples.) - [Side note: My guess is a lot of criticism
being extinguished top-down on the internet, is downstream of this phenomenon. E
lites own the social media and knowledge workers publish on them.] - Knowing w
hen to do things "how things are usually done" and when to invest on your person
al beliefs around better ways of doing things - seems like one of the strongest
markers of an elite's good judgment. - My guess is elites look at morality diffe
rently than people of the knowledge class. - Elites are less likely to registe
r the harm done by the organisations they wield as harm that they personally hav
e done. See also: [Power buys you distance from the crime](https://www.lesswrong
.com/posts/9fB4gvoooNYa4t56S/power-buys-you-distance-from-the-crime) - (Argu
ably knowledge workers do the same blame deflection, just in a different context
. If a smartphone manufacturer uses slave labour to mine their rare earth metals
for their smartphone, then the people purchasing the smartphone typically think
they're blameless with "if not us then someone else would do it" as a potential
justification, and the CEO and investors of the company also typically think th
ey're blameless with "if not us then someone else would do it" as a potential ju
stification.) - Elites are basically above the law, the only law that matters
is the rules set by other elites. The only way people of the knowledge class get
to enforce rules on the elites is to find another elite who is willing to do th
e enforcing. - Most large organisations end up doing some harm to someone. Som
e of this is an accidental byproduct of governing a large organisation. - Of
ten organisations was designed by people other than you. Even if you as an elite
have the ability to re-design them better, it's often not worth the time and ef
fort invested to do this, if your goals in life are something else. - Some of
this is deliberate. Governments often deliberately suppress their citizens using
the military for example. Companies often have armies of salesmen, lawyers and
scientists aimed at addicting people to various products. These armies don't spo
ntaneously spring into existence, there are elites who devote their entire life
to trying to build them. A full analysis of deliberate harm done by elites and w
hy this happens is out of the scope of this post. - Again, "small world" pheno
mena means as an elite, you have less ability to cut people out of your network
if they have done evil things. If you want to raise as much capital or attention
as possible towards a cause, you have to be more willing to tolerate receiving
it from people who have done evil things. How much you tolerate depends on your
negotiating position, which could depend on how rich you are, for eexample. A kn
owledge worker's moral line might be "I will not accept money from anyone who is
rude to all their friends."; an elite's moral line might be "I will not accept
money from anyone who has committed genocide.". An aspiring elite with $10M may
be more tolerant of a billionaire rapist, another billionaire may be less tolera
nt of the first billionaire, because the former is more dependent on the billion
aire's support. (I don't know where these lines actually get drawn in practice,
I'm just guessing they get drawn differently.) - Elites are definitely more sy
mpathetic to utilitarian ethics - ensure good done is greater than harm done. El
ites accept as a matter of course that they will end up doing a bunch of both go
od and harm in their life. Knowledge workers are more sympathetic to deontologic
al ethics - do not harm, how much good you do less important. - The net result
of all these dynamics makes elite morality noticeably different from that of kn
owledge workers. - [Side note: I wish some elites could help explain their mor
ality to the rest of us. I'm afraid many elites have given up on trying to expla
in anything to anyone, and this makes me sad. Many knowledge workers think that
if an elite must have high moral standards, they must copy the values of the kno
wledge workers themselves. This is not possible due to all the incentives mentio
ned above. The net result of making such a demand is that you get politicians wh
o pretend to "live like a common man" while thinking in ways very different from
one. I wish some elites could explain to us what high ethical standards look li
ke *from their own perspective*, and then actually try to uphold those standards
. Forging genuine empathy and understanding between members of both classes is g
oing to require work of this sort.] - My guess is elites trade a lot of favours,
especially the ambitious ones. - Keep tracking of debts owed and incurred to
other elites, not just financial but favour-based, seems like a non-trivial part
of the job of an ambitious elite. Not keeping good records puts you at a disadv
antage. - My guess is elites, especially the most successful ones, make plans wi
th time horizons longer than the other two classes. - This is definitely not t
rue of all elites, I'm sure many are just trying to improve status among their p
eers or find a better partner or whatever. - Having more wealth does allow you
to make plans on the timescale of multiple generations though, so a handful of
elites make use of this opportunity. - Sucessful elites put a lot of time into
thinking what happens to their wealth, position and organisations after they di
e. They try finding successors (for example grooming their children for the role
) and try modifying their organisations such that they can survive their death.
They especially do this when they are old themselves. They care about what story
they are remembered for.[Side note: I basically think the internet is going to
disrupt the social norms of all three classes. I would first like to understand
what the current norms are, before trying to predict how they will be disrupted.
]