Does anyone else have trouble with people who openly display their intelligence or attempt to be smart about something? High-school and media have somehow ingrained a hostility towards that and I find it surprisingly hard to overcome. I think it is some sort of empathy response, similar to vicarious embarrassment.
Actually and visibly being really smart, and pretty much always right in their domain of expertise.
Trying to look really smart and right, over and above merely being so.
Arrogance in dealing with people who are wrong.
Arrogance in dealing with people disagreeing with oneself.
(1) is a great virtue, (2) and (4) are mortal sins of rationality, and (3) merely a venial one. I will overlook a lot of arrogance in someone who is actually pretty much always right, especially if it isn’t me they’re being arrogant at.
People who are insecure around smart people often read actually being right and knowing it (1 and 3) as pretending to be right and intimidating others (2 and 4).
I find it good to be clear as to add support for the original idea; and also tell the person they have agreement not just “that was a thing that I felt like +1 to.
I openly display my intelligent all the time. Nobody would -describe- it as that, however. They’d describe me as giving advice, suggesting solutions, or similar -specific- activities, and only in appropriate situations. (If you don’t know when advice is desired—which is, critically, not whenever somebody mentions a problem they have—don’t give it unless asked.)
“Openly displaying your intelligence”, as an activity in itself, is merely -bragging-, and is just as annoying, and for precisely the same reason, as the guy who will tell anyone who will listen about how he’s a motorcycle racer who could easily win any race he ever entered, but he just enjoys riding his motorcycle for the fun of it.
For me the most annoying aspect of “displaying intelligence openly” is the following:
Imagine that you have an average person A, an intelligent person B, and a super-intelligent person C. More precisely, imagine that there are 100 As, 10 Bc, and 1 C, because most people are at the center of the bell curve.
From A’s point of view, both B and C are smarter than him, and he cannot really compare them. All he can say is that he kinda understands what B says, but a lot of what C says is incomprehensive.
The experience of B is that most people are either A or B. Add some political or other mindkilling, and B may quickly develop a heuristic “everyone who agrees with me is a B, and everyone who disagrees is A and a huge waste of time”.
Now once in a while B and C meet and disagree about something. B, using their long-practiced heuristics says “lol, you’re an idiot”.
An observer A looks at their interaction and thinks “B is probably right, since I know B to be a smart person; and C also seems kinda smart, but not as smart as B, and B says he is wrong, so he probably is”.
From my point of view, B is “cheating” in this process, using both his intelligence and his lack of even higher intelligence to create an advantage over C. Thus I applaud the norms which prevent this, even if they were created for other reasons.
“attempt to” is a key phrase in your question. I don’t see much trouble with openly displayed intelligence, as long as it’s actually intelligent (correct, and directed to an agreed shared goal). Nobody much cares for show-offs or useless knowledge.
I do see a bit of resistance to “weird”, which often comes with analysis. Much of the time, but not always, that’s because the supposed-intelligent participant has done only a superficial analysis and not really attempted to understand the equilibrium that is the status quo.
High-school is … unrelated to the real world, for which I am grateful. Don’t extrapolate from what is effectively a Robbers Cave experiment that kids impose on each other in the absence of any meaningful effort/skill rewards.
I think the ingrained hostility doesn’t come from high school and media, but from human nature which doesn’t like it when people are trying to raise their status relative to you.
But anyway, the motive of speaking the truth is different from the motive of displaying intelligence, so to the degree that someone has the second motive that is likely enough to hinder the first. So if someone has the second motive, that isn’t a good reason to be hostile, but it is a good reason to take what they say with a grain of salt.
Does anyone else have trouble with people who openly display their intelligence or attempt to be smart about something? High-school and media have somehow ingrained a hostility towards that and I find it surprisingly hard to overcome. I think it is some sort of empathy response, similar to vicarious embarrassment.
It’s worth distinguishing a number of things.
Actually and visibly being really smart, and pretty much always right in their domain of expertise.
Trying to look really smart and right, over and above merely being so.
Arrogance in dealing with people who are wrong.
Arrogance in dealing with people disagreeing with oneself.
(1) is a great virtue, (2) and (4) are mortal sins of rationality, and (3) merely a venial one. I will overlook a lot of arrogance in someone who is actually pretty much always right, especially if it isn’t me they’re being arrogant at.
People who are insecure around smart people often read actually being right and knowing it (1 and 3) as pretending to be right and intimidating others (2 and 4).
seconded. nothing to add.
That’s what the little thumbs-up button is for.
I don’t think we have a problem on LW with too much people writing messages that they agree with other people.
I find it good to be clear as to add support for the original idea; and also tell the person they have agreement not just “that was a thing that I felt like +1 to.
but I could have been more lazy...
I openly display my intelligent all the time. Nobody would -describe- it as that, however. They’d describe me as giving advice, suggesting solutions, or similar -specific- activities, and only in appropriate situations. (If you don’t know when advice is desired—which is, critically, not whenever somebody mentions a problem they have—don’t give it unless asked.)
“Openly displaying your intelligence”, as an activity in itself, is merely -bragging-, and is just as annoying, and for precisely the same reason, as the guy who will tell anyone who will listen about how he’s a motorcycle racer who could easily win any race he ever entered, but he just enjoys riding his motorcycle for the fun of it.
For me the most annoying aspect of “displaying intelligence openly” is the following:
Imagine that you have an average person A, an intelligent person B, and a super-intelligent person C. More precisely, imagine that there are 100 As, 10 Bc, and 1 C, because most people are at the center of the bell curve.
From A’s point of view, both B and C are smarter than him, and he cannot really compare them. All he can say is that he kinda understands what B says, but a lot of what C says is incomprehensive.
The experience of B is that most people are either A or B. Add some political or other mindkilling, and B may quickly develop a heuristic “everyone who agrees with me is a B, and everyone who disagrees is A and a huge waste of time”.
Now once in a while B and C meet and disagree about something. B, using their long-practiced heuristics says “lol, you’re an idiot”.
An observer A looks at their interaction and thinks “B is probably right, since I know B to be a smart person; and C also seems kinda smart, but not as smart as B, and B says he is wrong, so he probably is”.
From my point of view, B is “cheating” in this process, using both his intelligence and his lack of even higher intelligence to create an advantage over C. Thus I applaud the norms which prevent this, even if they were created for other reasons.
“attempt to” is a key phrase in your question. I don’t see much trouble with openly displayed intelligence, as long as it’s actually intelligent (correct, and directed to an agreed shared goal). Nobody much cares for show-offs or useless knowledge.
I do see a bit of resistance to “weird”, which often comes with analysis. Much of the time, but not always, that’s because the supposed-intelligent participant has done only a superficial analysis and not really attempted to understand the equilibrium that is the status quo.
High-school is … unrelated to the real world, for which I am grateful. Don’t extrapolate from what is effectively a Robbers Cave experiment that kids impose on each other in the absence of any meaningful effort/skill rewards.
I think the ingrained hostility doesn’t come from high school and media, but from human nature which doesn’t like it when people are trying to raise their status relative to you.
But anyway, the motive of speaking the truth is different from the motive of displaying intelligence, so to the degree that someone has the second motive that is likely enough to hinder the first. So if someone has the second motive, that isn’t a good reason to be hostile, but it is a good reason to take what they say with a grain of salt.