I’d be more comfortable with thinking that status produces stupidity if I’d heard the claim from a less contrarian source. My guess is that Eliezer has been talking about somewhat contrarian claims, and I expect smart grad students to be more open to such contrarian claims than are older more world-wise high status folks. If the intelligence test were not conflated with contrarian stuff, I’d expect high status folks to look much better. Of course do tell me if my guess is wrong. Now why higher status folks are less open to contrarian ideas is different issue. That could be because they are less smart on such topics, that they are more knowledgeable about such topics, or just that such openness better fits the desired image of a grad student than a high status person later.
As someone with extensive experience speaking with intellectually orientated people along the status continuum I would expect you to have a body of observations on which to make your own judgement. Given your own interest in status and signalling I would be surprised if the possibility of such a relationship hadn’t occured to you. What does your experience suggest? Do you observe ‘stupidity’ used to signal status? Does this seem to operate on the level of actually being stupid?
I’d be more comfortable with thinking that status produces stupidity if I’d heard the claim from a less contrarian source.
So would I, and yet I would be shocked if I did. Apart from being tantamount to an admission of either stupidity or low status it is also signalling that you are not part of the in group. Not a conservative move at all.
I’d be more comfortable with thinking that status produces stupidity if I’d heard the claim from a less contrarian source. My guess is that Eliezer has been talking about somewhat contrarian claims, and I expect smart grad students to be more open to such contrarian claims than are older more world-wise high status folks. If the intelligence test were not conflated with contrarian stuff, I’d expect high status folks to look much better. Of course do tell me if my guess is wrong. Now why higher status folks are less open to contrarian ideas is different issue. That could be because they are less smart on such topics, that they are more knowledgeable about such topics, or just that such openness better fits the desired image of a grad student than a high status person later.
As someone with extensive experience speaking with intellectually orientated people along the status continuum I would expect you to have a body of observations on which to make your own judgement. Given your own interest in status and signalling I would be surprised if the possibility of such a relationship hadn’t occured to you. What does your experience suggest? Do you observe ‘stupidity’ used to signal status? Does this seem to operate on the level of actually being stupid?
So would I, and yet I would be shocked if I did. Apart from being tantamount to an admission of either stupidity or low status it is also signalling that you are not part of the in group. Not a conservative move at all.
I observe that my performance in chess and go over the course of a game more than regresses to the mean. The farther ahead I get the worse I play.
I notice a similar (not to the mean) regression when I am playing chess and, well, just about everything. I excel under pressure.
It strikes me that these observations are relevant to the opening post but not to the immediate ancestors, at least by content.