May be related to this. I have the feeling that white rural Americans dislike "smart" people more than they dislike immigrants, blacks, city slickers and even billionaires.
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Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
221–230 of 336 posts
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between metaphors and speaking down to someone. When I talk about topics in CS or mathematics with my girlfriend or some members of my family, I speak in metaphors. I don't speak to them like they're five. I speak to them like they're intelligent people who have a model of the world that is different than mine or the things I want to discuss, and I relate my work or interests to their models.
Plenty of people don't talk down to 5 year olds. That's an assumption you've made regarding 'explain like I'm 5'. Ironically, that's what makes 'explain like I'm 5' so useful - it takes away the assumptions people have in their heads and forces them to use simple language and explain things from first principles. It's quite powerful really. Richard Feynman was famous for being to explain physics in a way a layman cou…
> Richard Feynman was famous for being to explain physics in a way a layman could understand.
Agreed. And the Challenger O-ring demonstration was a beautiful example of metaphor even if it wasn't correct. (Morton-Thiokol engineers had evidence that the O-rings didn't seal even at 75F and had been trying to stop launches PERIOD).
However, Feynman was also famous for "proof by intimidation" if you caught him out on something he didn't understand.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
"And the Reserve System, established in response to monetary instability, had the power to exercise deliberate control over the stock of money and so could take advantage of this possibility to promote monetary stability. That conjecture is not in accord with what actually happened. As is clear to the naked eye in Chart 1, the stock of money shows larger fluctuations after 1914 than before 1914 and this is true even…
The idea that "the stock of money" is a real, objective thing is rank insanity. The idea that this "stock of money" should magically be constant makes even less sense. There is no stock of money. There are only political decisions, assorted client and patron relationships, and national and international conflicts among interest groups that define social goals and resource distribution. Money is political power counte…
Just curious: is this coming from stuff you've read or original thought? Because what you just said feels much closer to the truth than anything I heard in my macroeconomics 101 class. But I'm not an economist, so.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is a crock. it was a crock when it was written and it's still a crock now. the idea that someone can for 8 years in the spotlight disguise themselves so much so that appear wholly opposite is ludicrous. it takes months for professional actors to produce 90 minutes of performance - the guy was on camera for literally weeks. he's not "smarter than you" this kind of revisionist nonsense is politically motivated - p…
Do you think you could become president of the US if you just wanted to? Probably not. Trump is smart. I would be in literal, not figurative, disbelief if any president in the history of modern US weren't. The competition for that position is very sharp and only the best make it. There are many problems with Trump, but IQ isn't one of them. Hitler wasn't dumb either. Being a good demagogue is hard. The strategy and s…
Leaders are between 1 and 2 standard deviation on top of the average. It's been studied already.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#225If you are struggling with such issues, you might find some of the resources at Hoagies Gifted Page helpful. I don't read it myself anymore, in part because it is the smart version of poor little rich boy. In other words, it whines a lot about "Oh woe is me. I am so smart and it is ruining my life." But if you are having social challenges as a smart person, that isn't necessarily a bad thing to be exposed to.
You can also search for social and emotional needs of the gifted for additional material. You could look up Beyond IQ as well.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hitler put himself into a situation where the best option, in his opinion, was to blow his own brains out. So he's not winning any awards for being brilliant. Perhaps being a good demagogue has more to do with luck and circumstance than it does with skill and intelligence? Maybe that's why it's not so common? Intelligence means achieving your goals on purpose. It is something that can be taught and reproduced in othe…
Your definition of intelligence is quite unorthodox and so is idea that brilliance somehow excludes suicide or risk taking or over confidence - all things that can make you loose big time. Hitler ability to speak was not luck. It was work, skill and talent. And world did not just spontaneously arranged itself for them to get power, Hitler took a lot of calculated deeps to make it so, it is not like he was only one tr…
Hitler was perhaps one of the stupidest people to ever grace the history books, and managed to wipe out vast numbers of his own people, including himself, in a completely pointless war of his own making, wherein he managed to make enemies of three of the most powerful entities in the world at that time.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the recent book is to be believed at all, we now know that the person that Trump outsmarted most of all was himself. He never intended to actually win.
Trump's whole persona is about winning brashly and bigly. It's ludicrous to think that he entered a race he didn't intend to win. > If the recent book is to be believed at all It isn't to be believed, literally at all. http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/367902-dont-believe-m... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/03/mi...
"by Sebastian Gorka"
Yeah, no thanks. I'll believe 100% of the book before I believe 0.01% of what Gorka spouts.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that's kind of scary. I don't want some average Joe I can relate to being the most powerful person in the world. I want someone smarter than me with a lot of solid political experience who knows how to navigate issues while being pragmatic enough to get stuff done. Being president of the US isn't like being a plumber.
If you believe this you will always get a technocrat with a great resume who has spent years enforcing the status quo, and, once elected, will do nothing to change it. If you want anything to be better you need to move away from gatekeeping "qualifications" because they are always bestowed upon proponents of business as usual by proponents of business as usual. What does "smart" mean? They went to Harvard and are the…
> For a leader, you want a strong vision for the future, passion, a very strong will, charisma.
Europe was plagued with many of this style of "leader" between the 1920's and 1940's and tens of millions of people died for it.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hitler put himself into a situation where the best option, in his opinion, was to blow his own brains out. So he's not winning any awards for being brilliant. Perhaps being a good demagogue has more to do with luck and circumstance than it does with skill and intelligence? Maybe that's why it's not so common? Intelligence means achieving your goals on purpose. It is something that can be taught and reproduced in othe…
Your definition of intelligence is quite unorthodox and so is idea that brilliance somehow excludes suicide or risk taking or over confidence - all things that can make you loose big time. Hitler ability to speak was not luck. It was work, skill and talent. And world did not just spontaneously arranged itself for them to get power, Hitler took a lot of calculated deeps to make it so, it is not like he was only one tr…
I didn't provide a definition of intelligence, I provided a description of it. The ability to win at dice is not intelligence. That's not a controversial claim.
>Hitler ability to speak was not luck.
Nor was it particularly intelligent. Plenty of people speak well. He just had a podium in front of the right people. People who wanted to hear stupid ideas delivered with emotion. If you stood him in front of his enemies, he would be insulted and denigrated, because he wasn't a good speaker so much as he was good at finding an approving audience.
You're not a great runner if you happen to look around and find yourself a race where you win by moving slowest. If that brings you rewards, you're lucky. Not skilled. Hitler was an opportunist, and you can't learn to succeed in life by following his example. Because luck can't be taught.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who "hate politics" tend to create a lot of it. Being politically savvy/expedient is as much about knowing how to get along with people as it is getting what you want.
> People who "hate politics" tend to create a lot of it. There is a reason for that. Politics is basically the process of pasting kludges together until the net result is something that no powerful group hates enough to be willing to smash it all to smithereens with a sledgehammer. But if you objectively look at any of the kludges individually, or even the overall result after a few years, it's a horrific mess. A hor…
> but the only way to do that is to wipe the slate clean and start over from scratch with multilateral negotiations between two hundred separate parties
Hum... Have you ever seen negotiations between hundreds of different parties? They way to do that is getting enough force to change an incentive, and changing it; then going after enough force to change another one, and changing it. Let the people fight over the new incentive far from you.