Do top people vary behaviors more? Where is causation here?
Robin Hanson: Top people have more conflicting stories about them as both nice and jerks. Because, I think, their behavior is in fact more context dependent. As that is in fact a more winning social strategy.
Triangulation: Also: high status attracts both detractors and sycophants.
Alternatively: top people are smarter, and smarter people are better able to detect when someone else is being a jerk to them. You’re not just asking, you’re not looking for advice or a mentor, you’re not engaging in good faith, you’re not here to enrich my life or make a mutually beneficial deal, you’re just a waste of space and time, and should confine yourself to wasting your own space and time. Perhaps the reason people at the top are both nice and jerks, is because they’re actually nice, but dumb people can’t detect when someone else was being a jerk to them first, and high status people attract a lot of pretending-to-be-nice jerks.
Actually, top people don’t even have to be smarter, they just have to run into this situation with a much higher freuency than the public.
Alternatively: top people are smarter, and smarter people are better able to detect when someone else is being a jerk to them. You’re not just asking, you’re not looking for advice or a mentor, you’re not engaging in good faith, you’re not here to enrich my life or make a mutually beneficial deal, you’re just a waste of space and time, and should confine yourself to wasting your own space and time. Perhaps the reason people at the top are both nice and jerks, is because they’re actually nice, but dumb people can’t detect when someone else was being a jerk to them first, and high status people attract a lot of pretending-to-be-nice jerks.
Actually, top people don’t even have to be smarter, they just have to run into this situation with a much higher freuency than the public.