I certainly buy that higher-status people have better friends. Status tends to make one’s social network grow, and you can pick the best of them. But ‘best’ might end up meaning something unuseful to intelligence.
The second one you list seems plausible to me (on the face of it). Talking to academics over dinner has exposed me to a lot of interesting arguments that I wouldn’t have encountered in my undergraduate nerdery.
And the first seems true, though it’s tempered by the difficulty in cashing out ‘obvious’ and the ability for high-status people to obfuscate their ignorance.
I certainly buy that higher-status people have better friends. Status tends to make one’s social network grow, and you can pick the best of them. But ‘best’ might end up meaning something unuseful to intelligence.
The second one you list seems plausible to me (on the face of it). Talking to academics over dinner has exposed me to a lot of interesting arguments that I wouldn’t have encountered in my undergraduate nerdery.
And the first seems true, though it’s tempered by the difficulty in cashing out ‘obvious’ and the ability for high-status people to obfuscate their ignorance.