I think some behaviors which may be considered arrogant can be justified. For example, dismissing other people’s opinions out of hand can be a good choice when actually surrounded by people with very low-quality opinions.
As for appearing arrogant to others—it may be a difficult-to-avoid side effect, or it may have value of its own—there are social contexts where acting arrogant is useful.
Is it arrogant for HPJEV to consider himself to know better than the adults around him? Maybe so, but he’s right about a lot of these things. (I believe there’s a significant subset of HPMOR would-be readers who found Harry insufferably arrogant. Does that mean he should change his behavior?)
Having tabooed “arrogance”, one of the interpretations is “emotional attachment to the idea of one being right”. That, I think is a real problem for an aspiring rationalist—you need to be able to consider the possibility of being wrong.
As DanielLC says, you should calibrate yourself and neither strive to underestimate nor overestimate your abilities.
I want to be able to assure myself that this or that intolerable academic will be magically punished with a decreased capacity to do good work
(If they aren’t well-calibrated, that seems like a likely outcome.) Edit: not sure about this part.
Quote: I think some behaviors which may be considered arrogant can be justified. For example, dismissing other people’s opinions out of hand can be a good choice when actually surrounded by people with very low-quality opinions.
This is to appear arrogant yes. This is stupid because you can dismiss ideas without being a dick.
To BE arrogant, to believe yourself superior, is bad for a rationalist, because it will hurt more if you are wrong and hence you will have a harder time cooping with new evidence.
Which is basically what you said in the end, you need to be open for the possibillity that you are wrong. But then we must conlcude that it is always bad to be arrogant while trying to be rational. Iit is likewise bad to SEEM to be arrogant if you can avoid it. And if you can´t avoid it then A) you have other problems or B) someone else is simply jealous and you are NOT arrogant.
Quote: I think some behaviors which may be considered arrogant can be justified. For example, dismissing other people’s opinions out of hand can be a good choice when actually surrounded by people with very low-quality opinions.
Note: to quote someone, you should place a “greater than” character before the quoted portion. (You can only quote solid paragraphs; if you want to quote across a line break, you’ll have to use the “greater than” character a second time.)
Ex. 1:
“> Hello.” (without the quotation marks)
becomes
Hello.
Ex. 2:
“> Hello”
“> World”
becomes
Hello
World
(Question for someone more experienced with Markdown than me: the backslash escape character apparently doesn’t work with the quote character. I had originally planned to use the backslash to escape the quote character, but it just showed up as “>”, so I was forced to use literal quotation marks instead, which I felt was quite inelegant, especially for a demonstration. Is this behavior intentional?)
I think some behaviors which may be considered arrogant can be justified. For example, dismissing other people’s opinions out of hand can be a good choice when actually surrounded by people with very low-quality opinions.
As for appearing arrogant to others—it may be a difficult-to-avoid side effect, or it may have value of its own—there are social contexts where acting arrogant is useful.
Is it arrogant for HPJEV to consider himself to know better than the adults around him? Maybe so, but he’s right about a lot of these things. (I believe there’s a significant subset of HPMOR would-be readers who found Harry insufferably arrogant. Does that mean he should change his behavior?)
Having tabooed “arrogance”, one of the interpretations is “emotional attachment to the idea of one being right”. That, I think is a real problem for an aspiring rationalist—you need to be able to consider the possibility of being wrong.
As DanielLC says, you should calibrate yourself and neither strive to underestimate nor overestimate your abilities.
(If they aren’t well-calibrated, that seems like a likely outcome.) Edit: not sure about this part.
You’ve articulated what I think better than I did, so thanks :)
Quote: I think some behaviors which may be considered arrogant can be justified. For example, dismissing other people’s opinions out of hand can be a good choice when actually surrounded by people with very low-quality opinions.
This is to appear arrogant yes. This is stupid because you can dismiss ideas without being a dick.
To BE arrogant, to believe yourself superior, is bad for a rationalist, because it will hurt more if you are wrong and hence you will have a harder time cooping with new evidence.
Which is basically what you said in the end, you need to be open for the possibillity that you are wrong. But then we must conlcude that it is always bad to be arrogant while trying to be rational. Iit is likewise bad to SEEM to be arrogant if you can avoid it. And if you can´t avoid it then A) you have other problems or B) someone else is simply jealous and you are NOT arrogant.
Note: to quote someone, you should place a “greater than” character before the quoted portion. (You can only quote solid paragraphs; if you want to quote across a line break, you’ll have to use the “greater than” character a second time.)
Ex. 1:
“> Hello.” (without the quotation marks)
becomes
Ex. 2:
“> Hello”
“> World”
becomes
(Question for someone more experienced with Markdown than me: the backslash escape character apparently doesn’t work with the quote character. I had originally planned to use the backslash to escape the quote character, but it just showed up as “>”, so I was forced to use literal quotation marks instead, which I felt was quite inelegant, especially for a demonstration. Is this behavior intentional?)