One is closing your mind—“I know this to be so and no empirical facts will make me change my mind!” That seems to be unambiguously bad.
Another is showing disdain for others—“What such a stupid creature like you could possibly know about this?” That can certainly by justified (I recommend reading comments on popular sites such as YouTube if you doubt this), but also has obvious failure modes. There are additional complications here as arrogance in this sense is often seen and/or used as a form of status signaling.
Yet another is thinking you know better—“Hold mah beer and watch this!” In this sense Jackass is all about arrogant people. This meaning boils down to the willingness to take large risks in highly uncertain situations and the value of this characteristic is debatable. I think I can make an argument that this is a personally dangerous but socially priceless trait—you do want to have mad experimenters around, though you would not necessarily want to be one yourself.
“Arrogance” could mean different things.
One is closing your mind—“I know this to be so and no empirical facts will make me change my mind!” That seems to be unambiguously bad.
Another is showing disdain for others—“What such a stupid creature like you could possibly know about this?” That can certainly by justified (I recommend reading comments on popular sites such as YouTube if you doubt this), but also has obvious failure modes. There are additional complications here as arrogance in this sense is often seen and/or used as a form of status signaling.
Yet another is thinking you know better—“Hold mah beer and watch this!” In this sense Jackass is all about arrogant people. This meaning boils down to the willingness to take large risks in highly uncertain situations and the value of this characteristic is debatable. I think I can make an argument that this is a personally dangerous but socially priceless trait—you do want to have mad experimenters around, though you would not necessarily want to be one yourself.