I forget who said this originally, but much of rationalism is internalizing the fact that you, yes you, are prone to all manner of biases and mental tics that lead to error. If ‘arrogance’ as it’s being used here is something that interferes with recognizing the errors that you’re making in any given moment, then arrogance is certainly antithetical to rationalism.
On the other hand, I’m fairly used to people thinking of me as arrogant in person-to-person communication, and when they give me that label it never has much to do with my willingness to admit error. Usually it has to do with my vocabulary, or other patterns of behavior that they interpret as a desire to be seen as intellectually superior. If that’s what ‘arrogance’ means, then it’s more orthogonal to rationalism. Heck, arrogance as an affect might even be rational in certain circumstances, depending on how you want to be seen during particular social situations.
If you are actually concerned quite a lot with being better than other people, and your challenges are not directly competitive or collaborative in nature (if you’re trying to invent something in your garage, or write well, or do well in classes that aren’t graded on a curve), then that form of arrogance is probably a failure mode. It implies that you’re performing a social role, not trying to succeed, and so you’ll tend to optimize for best appearances and not best results.
I forget who said this originally, but much of rationalism is internalizing the fact that you, yes you, are prone to all manner of biases and mental tics that lead to error. If ‘arrogance’ as it’s being used here is something that interferes with recognizing the errors that you’re making in any given moment, then arrogance is certainly antithetical to rationalism.
On the other hand, I’m fairly used to people thinking of me as arrogant in person-to-person communication, and when they give me that label it never has much to do with my willingness to admit error. Usually it has to do with my vocabulary, or other patterns of behavior that they interpret as a desire to be seen as intellectually superior. If that’s what ‘arrogance’ means, then it’s more orthogonal to rationalism. Heck, arrogance as an affect might even be rational in certain circumstances, depending on how you want to be seen during particular social situations.
If you are actually concerned quite a lot with being better than other people, and your challenges are not directly competitive or collaborative in nature (if you’re trying to invent something in your garage, or write well, or do well in classes that aren’t graded on a curve), then that form of arrogance is probably a failure mode. It implies that you’re performing a social role, not trying to succeed, and so you’ll tend to optimize for best appearances and not best results.
Unless the appearance (or the result of it) is what you value.