Thank you for writing this, it led me to reconsider this phenomenon from a different perspective and revisit Lsusr’s post as well as competent elites, which seemed to really string things together for me.
Lsusr is primarily talking about success “outside of the usual system”, which generally frees someone up even more from the usual system. Start-ups are the primary example of this.
Alkjash is primarily talking about success within the existing system. The stereotypical successful career is an example of this.
This definitely feels like part of the thing, but I would (as with many things) phrase it in the language of status. I claim that much of the “freedom” that Lsusr talks about and the “intelligence and aliveness” Eliezer talks about is consequences of feeling high status. In academia, the standard solution to all of the ennui and anxious underconfidence a grad student or postdoc feels is … wait for it … tenure. Your inhibitions magically disappear when you become faculty, and mathematicians often become confident to explore, gregarious, and willing to state beliefs even in dimensions orthogonal to their expertise (e.g. Terry Tao on Trump). This is explained by direct changes in the brain, as well as external changes in how the intelligent social web coopts your cognition, when a person gains status.
My guess is that the difference between what you call Lsusr’s “outside of the usual system” and my “within the existing system” is the difference between systems with shorter and looser status hierarchies and those with longer and tighter ones. In the former it is easier for an exceptional individual to quickly gain competence and reputation and reap the benefits of status. This difference is in turn mostly explained by systems having different levels of play. Thus, one would find success more agency-limiting for a longer period of time in professional Go than in professional Starcraft, in mathematics than in AI/ML, in Google than in a startup, etc.
My interpretation of Lsusr’s philosophy is that there is a magic sauce that rhymes with arrogance which allows one to turn on powerful high-status feelings and behaviors (confidence, agency, vision) regardless of circumstance. Unfortunately there are harsh cultural defenses against this kind of thing that one has to prepare for.
In academia, the standard solution to all of the ennui and anxious underconfidence a grad student or postdoc feels is … wait for it … tenure. Your inhibitions magically disappear when you become faculty, and mathematicians often become confident to explore, gregarious, and willing to state beliefs even in dimensions orthogonal to their expertise (e.g. Terry Tao on Trump).
Is this actually true?
My model of anxious underconfidence is something more akin to pjeby’s—that if have some moderate successes under your belt but still feel underconfident, then you will typically keep feeling underconfident no matter how much external evidence you manage to rack up. And even if you become high status, you may still feel unconfident about your high status (e.g. Trump is arguably the highest-status person in the US, but that doesn’t seem to have made him any less anxious). I would guess that Terry Tao would have felt confident stating beliefs even in dimensions orthogonal to his expertise even before he became tenured.
I don’t question the finding that getting tenure typically correlates with having fewer inhibitions, but it seems to me more plausible that the causality is just “if you can no longer be fired then you will be less inhibited about the things that would cause you to be fired”. Especially since status comparisons tend to be relative rather than absolute—once you get to be one of the faculty, then you easily stop comparing yourself with non-faculty, and start comparing your status with the other faculty members instead. (“The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.”)
Let me share some more gears/evidence. I believe something a little more interesting happens than what you’re saying (which is definitely one piece of the puzzle).
(1) It’s fun to look at how the audience organizes itself during math talks. The faculty almost always sit in the front row, point out mistakes more directly (“You mean this” instead of “Is this correct?”), ask questions more often (and with less hand-raising), and sometimes even feel comfortable to answer questions in the speaker’s stead. I suspect this is a social role that everyone learns through attending enough seminars.
(2) Faculty have access to a lot more privileged information about other mathematicians than everyone else. They are on editorial boards, hiring committees, admissions committees, conference organization, awards panels, etc. I got a confidence boost after peer reviewing my first couple of papers, the transition to faculty is this x10 in terms of data to train on and notice you’re being underconfident.
(3) Professors spend a lot of time with their research groups/PhD students/undergrads compared to in the company of other faculty, so they aren’t doing as much comparing themselves with other faculty as you would think. At least in mathematics, it’s generally preferred for faculty at the same university to have research interests as far as part as possible (to cover a breadth of fields), so each professor interacts a great deal on the day-to-day with their group of undergrads/grad students/postdocs. Meetings with other faculty are mostly logistical, with the possible exception of a handful of close collaborators. This is probably even more true in fields where a professor is literally a head of their own lab and the PI for all research that happens in the lab. I think status feelings tend to work on the level of “people you interact with most on a daily basis” instead of “people you intellectually compare yourself to.”
Thank you for writing this, it led me to reconsider this phenomenon from a different perspective and revisit Lsusr’s post as well as competent elites, which seemed to really string things together for me.
This definitely feels like part of the thing, but I would (as with many things) phrase it in the language of status. I claim that much of the “freedom” that Lsusr talks about and the “intelligence and aliveness” Eliezer talks about is consequences of feeling high status. In academia, the standard solution to all of the ennui and anxious underconfidence a grad student or postdoc feels is … wait for it … tenure. Your inhibitions magically disappear when you become faculty, and mathematicians often become confident to explore, gregarious, and willing to state beliefs even in dimensions orthogonal to their expertise (e.g. Terry Tao on Trump). This is explained by direct changes in the brain, as well as external changes in how the intelligent social web coopts your cognition, when a person gains status.
My guess is that the difference between what you call Lsusr’s “outside of the usual system” and my “within the existing system” is the difference between systems with shorter and looser status hierarchies and those with longer and tighter ones. In the former it is easier for an exceptional individual to quickly gain competence and reputation and reap the benefits of status. This difference is in turn mostly explained by systems having different levels of play. Thus, one would find success more agency-limiting for a longer period of time in professional Go than in professional Starcraft, in mathematics than in AI/ML, in Google than in a startup, etc.
My interpretation of Lsusr’s philosophy is that there is a magic sauce that rhymes with arrogance which allows one to turn on powerful high-status feelings and behaviors (confidence, agency, vision) regardless of circumstance. Unfortunately there are harsh cultural defenses against this kind of thing that one has to prepare for.
Is this actually true?
My model of anxious underconfidence is something more akin to pjeby’s—that if have some moderate successes under your belt but still feel underconfident, then you will typically keep feeling underconfident no matter how much external evidence you manage to rack up. And even if you become high status, you may still feel unconfident about your high status (e.g. Trump is arguably the highest-status person in the US, but that doesn’t seem to have made him any less anxious). I would guess that Terry Tao would have felt confident stating beliefs even in dimensions orthogonal to his expertise even before he became tenured.
I don’t question the finding that getting tenure typically correlates with having fewer inhibitions, but it seems to me more plausible that the causality is just “if you can no longer be fired then you will be less inhibited about the things that would cause you to be fired”. Especially since status comparisons tend to be relative rather than absolute—once you get to be one of the faculty, then you easily stop comparing yourself with non-faculty, and start comparing your status with the other faculty members instead. (“The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.”)
Let me share some more gears/evidence. I believe something a little more interesting happens than what you’re saying (which is definitely one piece of the puzzle).
(1) It’s fun to look at how the audience organizes itself during math talks. The faculty almost always sit in the front row, point out mistakes more directly (“You mean this” instead of “Is this correct?”), ask questions more often (and with less hand-raising), and sometimes even feel comfortable to answer questions in the speaker’s stead. I suspect this is a social role that everyone learns through attending enough seminars.
(2) Faculty have access to a lot more privileged information about other mathematicians than everyone else. They are on editorial boards, hiring committees, admissions committees, conference organization, awards panels, etc. I got a confidence boost after peer reviewing my first couple of papers, the transition to faculty is this x10 in terms of data to train on and notice you’re being underconfident.
(3) Professors spend a lot of time with their research groups/PhD students/undergrads compared to in the company of other faculty, so they aren’t doing as much comparing themselves with other faculty as you would think. At least in mathematics, it’s generally preferred for faculty at the same university to have research interests as far as part as possible (to cover a breadth of fields), so each professor interacts a great deal on the day-to-day with their group of undergrads/grad students/postdocs. Meetings with other faculty are mostly logistical, with the possible exception of a handful of close collaborators. This is probably even more true in fields where a professor is literally a head of their own lab and the PI for all research that happens in the lab. I think status feelings tend to work on the level of “people you interact with most on a daily basis” instead of “people you intellectually compare yourself to.”