By “arrogance” do you mean overestimating your abilities, or just being annoying about it? The first one is problematic, but so is underestimating. You should calibrate yourself and get an accurate view of your abilities. The second one seems to be more about some kind of signalling. It has an obvious disadvantage of alienating people, but it must have some kind of advantage or people wouldn’t do it.
I don’t buy arguments of the form “it must be good otherwise we wouldn’t do it,” but that’s just a quibble. I’d buy a signaling argument and you’re right that I’m not clear on my terms. This is a stab, but the way I think I’m using arrogance is as using your high abilities to justify a inflated sense of self worth. OK, applying that back to the question, I don’t see how an inflated sense of self-worth could make you a worse critical thinker. Maybe? I have to think about it more.
People usually think that someone else is being arrogant in an annoying way when it feels like he isn’t listening to what they think and their reasons. And usually people feel that way when, in fact, the person is not doing much listening, probably because he thinks he has nothing to learn from the conversation. That could make you a worse critical thinker because there is almost always something to learn.
By “arrogance” do you mean overestimating your abilities, or just being annoying about it? The first one is problematic, but so is underestimating. You should calibrate yourself and get an accurate view of your abilities. The second one seems to be more about some kind of signalling. It has an obvious disadvantage of alienating people, but it must have some kind of advantage or people wouldn’t do it.
Advantage: a successful display of arrogance could elevate one’s social status? That’s the first explanation that leapt to my mind, anyway.
Yes, very much so. Arrogance is a high-risk strategy, though—if you are shown wrong, your fall is very painful.
I don’t buy arguments of the form “it must be good otherwise we wouldn’t do it,” but that’s just a quibble. I’d buy a signaling argument and you’re right that I’m not clear on my terms. This is a stab, but the way I think I’m using arrogance is as using your high abilities to justify a inflated sense of self worth. OK, applying that back to the question, I don’t see how an inflated sense of self-worth could make you a worse critical thinker. Maybe? I have to think about it more.
People usually think that someone else is being arrogant in an annoying way when it feels like he isn’t listening to what they think and their reasons. And usually people feel that way when, in fact, the person is not doing much listening, probably because he thinks he has nothing to learn from the conversation. That could make you a worse critical thinker because there is almost always something to learn.