![]() ![]() I remember the battles I fought then, and would still fight them now on behalf of another child if a target of opportunity arose. I haven't switched sides to declare that children are stupid and need to be overridden for their own good (as would signal my own adulthood and maturity). I remember my low-prestige roots - for example, I remember what it was like to be a child squeezed through the horrors of the elementary school system.When my brain begins thinking something that generates a sense of high status within the tribe, I stop thinking that thought. In fact I try to avoid sending my brain signals which tell it that I have achieved acceptance in my tribe. I try in general to avoid sending my brain signals which tell it that I am high-status, just in case that causes my brain to decide it is no longer necessary.I have an overwhelming sense of doom about what happens if I start going down that road. I consistently refuse to be drawn into running the Singularity Institute.Not so much satisfaction that I forget that it's better to be correct in the first place, but enough to be a counter-force to the fear of losing face. I try to feel a small flash of self-satisfaction whenever I publicly admit that I am wrong, over what a good rationalist I am being and what a good impression I am making. ![]() Having achieved some small degree of status in certain very limited circles, here's what I do to try to avoid the status-makes-you-stupid effect: High-status individuals get less honest advice from their friends, especially about their own failings.High-status individuals become more convinced of their ideas' rightness or of their own competence.High-status individuals feel less social pressure to listen to your arguments, respond articulately to them, or change their minds when their own arguments are inadequate, which decreases their apparent or real intelligence.High-status individuals are just as smart as they ever were, but when you or I try to approach them, the status disparity makes it harder to converse with them - they would sound just as intelligent if we had higher status ourselves.High-status individuals are under less pressure to perform, in general.High-status individuals spend more time on dinners and politics, and less time on problem-solving and reading they exercise their minds less.High-status individuals were intelligent when they were young the observed disparity is due solely to the standard declines of aging.Intelligence as such is a high-cost feature which is no longer necessary once status is achieved.I think Robin Hanson had a post about this but I can't recall the title. Once high status is achieved, new ideas are high-risk gambles with less relative payoff - the optimal strategy is to be mainstream. The open-mindedness needed to consider interesting new ideas is ( was) only an evolutionary advantage for low-status individuals seeking a good idea to ride to high status.Vassar's hypothesis: Higher status increases the amount of face you lose when you change your mind, or increases the cost of losing face.But where does that impression come from, since I haven't actually tracked them over time? (Fundamental question of rationality: What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?) My best guess for why my brain seems to believe this: I know it's possible to have intelligent conversations with smart grad students, and I get the strong impression that high-status people used to be those grad students, but now it's much harder to have intelligent conversations with them than with smart grad students. I do have a definite and strong impression, with respect to many high-status individuals, that it would have been a lot easier to have an intelligent conversation with them, if I'd approached them before they made it big. To the extent that status does, in fact, make people stupid, this is a rather important phenomenon for a society like ours in which practically all decisions and beliefs pass through the hands of very-high-status individuals (a high "cognitive Gini coefficient").ĭoes status actually make people stupid? It's hard to say because I haven't tracked many careers over time. Michael Vassar once suggested: "Status makes people effectively stupid, as it makes it harder for them to update their public positions without feeling that they are losing face."
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