However, with their attention placed on esteem, their concrete reasoning underdeveloped and their school curriculum poorly absorbed, such leaders aren’t well positioned to create value.
Also relevant is Paul Graham’s, Why Nerds are Unpopular. Take away: Nerds are unpopular because they don’t care about being popular and instead want to focus their attention on non-social pursuits.
Actually pg claimed they do care, to the point of depression and suicide when they turn out to not be popular. His point was that they don’t only care about popularity, which is what is required to achieve it in the highly competitive high-school social scene.
Jessica L. Tracy’s response to the Edge question is relevant to this. It’s somewhat speculative, yet it is consistent with what we know about the attitude of very high-achieving folks, who do not generally show narcissistic tendencies. Compare: Eliezer on Competent Elites; Eric S. Raymond on the relevance of verifiable, technical achievement.
Thus, it may be that the emphasis on self-esteem in education backfired due to fairly basic tendencies of human psychology and cognition.
Also relevant is Paul Graham’s, Why Nerds are Unpopular. Take away: Nerds are unpopular because they don’t care about being popular and instead want to focus their attention on non-social pursuits.
Actually pg claimed they do care, to the point of depression and suicide when they turn out to not be popular. His point was that they don’t only care about popularity, which is what is required to achieve it in the highly competitive high-school social scene.
But yes, very relevant.