There’s a certain conflation between being viewed as intelligent and being viewed as high-status. People who don’t have the smarts to play the intellectual status game have a couple of obvious choices to increase their perceived status. They can either reject the whole “thinking well is a valuable skill” set of ideas, or they can reject evidence that says that they aren’t smart and pretend to be better at the whole thinking thing than they really are.
Both of these are very big stumbling blocks for becoming a more rational and better person. In order to want to join the rationalist community, you need to have the beliefs that you aren’t as capable as you could be, that thinking better is good for you, and that you can admit to mistakes without undermining your position. These beliefs are much more present among high-IQ people for what I think are obvious enough reasons that I don’t need to enumerate them.
There’s a certain conflation between being viewed as intelligent and being viewed as high-status. People who don’t have the smarts to play the intellectual status game have a couple of obvious choices to increase their perceived status. They can either reject the whole “thinking well is a valuable skill” set of ideas, or they can reject evidence that says that they aren’t smart and pretend to be better at the whole thinking thing than they really are.
Both of these are very big stumbling blocks for becoming a more rational and better person. In order to want to join the rationalist community, you need to have the beliefs that you aren’t as capable as you could be, that thinking better is good for you, and that you can admit to mistakes without undermining your position. These beliefs are much more present among high-IQ people for what I think are obvious enough reasons that I don’t need to enumerate them.