Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 336 posts

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#271

Post by andrewjl »

rb808 wrote: post #40

Related: 'George W. Bush is smarter than you'. Elite leaders often make themselves look dumber than they really are. https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/

GWB may be intelligent, but he demonstrated very little of it during his tenure in office.

The Iraq war was architected by Cheney / Rumsfeld, Bush playing an incidental part at best. The invasion of Afghanistan demonstrated a studied lack of historical knowledge and the failure points of previous attempted invasions. Charitably, he does get credit for kickstarting the drone program which gave the US a credible (if ethically suspect) deterrent to terrorist organizations. However BO gets deserves more credit for deploying both the physical and legal apparatus to make routine drone strikes, particularly in places like Pakistan, a reality.

As for the economy, the tax cuts were a core Republican party agenda item since Reagan. Bush did not drive that, Congress did. Privatization of Social Security? Failed. Immigration? Same. Foreign policy? Besides alienating allies via needless wars, nothing noteworthy.

That leaves two things, foreign aid and No Child Left Behind. The former was a legitimate accomplishment and for that GWB should get credit. The latter had mixed results.

Then again an above average presidency does not a supposedly smart President make.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#273

Post by davidmr »

Zak wrote: post #123
killjoywashere wrote: post #87

Personal anecdote, but I wonder if my experience as a junior officer in the Navy helped with this. The last comments in the piece are that intelligent leaders should 1) seek creative metaphors and 2) speak charismatically. Coming to the fleet from a bachelor's in physics, I knew I was reasonably intelligent, but also that there were some people much smarter than me (at least my battered ego assured me of that). So, w…

I have to ask... Why did sailors try to drive through the closed base gate and test 440V circuits with their fingers?

I’m glad someone else felt the need to ask. I did work on a computer with 480V into the rack and the electrical training they made us sit through scared the bejesus out of all of us. It was basically 4 hours of watching people get electrocuted with 480v+. A 480V arc flash is no joke[0]. The training had the desired effect: we played it absolutely by the book, the CPR-trained buddy system, the PPE, everything.

[0] https://youtu.be/-iClXrd50Z8 the helpful “ding” is the best part. At any rate, imagine take that on your arms or face.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#274

Post by zzzzzzzza »

philwelch wrote: post #228
wfo wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I voted for clinton, would describe myself as almost neoliberal, and love technocrats... but was kaiser willhelm really the kind of leader you describe, or was he more of the "elite club of eliteness" kind? (I am genuinely not familiar with the history, but I suspect the conventional narrative on the rise of fascism overplays the importance of the demagogue in plunging the entire world into war)

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#275

Post by JackFr »

guelo wrote: post #28
WalterBright wrote: post #16

There could be something else at work here. My father told me that con men preferred to go after smart people, like doctors. The reason is that smart people thought they were too smart to get conned, and hence were more gullible. He was also an economist, and told me that there wasn't an economist born who could stand the idea that the economy would run better (i.e. free market) without their "help". And I've noticed…

> the economy would run better (i.e. free market) without their "help". As if boom and bust business cycles aren't a thing in free markets. Or monopolies. Or monetary policy. Or externalized costs. Or tragedy of the commons. That's just run of the mill anti-intellectualism.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account." -- The Fatal Conceit, Friedrich Hayek

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#276

Post by Agentlien »

wolfgke wrote: post #155
Raphmedia wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Why do we push files to production on a Friday evening? Why do we snipe hot-fixes into production via FTP? Because we are all crazy & lazy bums, I would guess.

> I don't know. Why do we push files to production on a Friday evening? Because we worked for the whole week on it and now want that other people can see it on their weekend. Since we are so proud of our work and trust in its quality, we are willing to do an extra shift on the weekend, should problems occur.

While I understand and have also myself been guilty of this, I have come to believe that this attitude is selfish and irresponsible.

The experience which gave me perspective was on a project at my previous job. I worked together with another highly passionate engineer and we made amazing progress over the course of a very short time.

The day before the demonstration of our results to our bosses, meant to serve as evaluation and retrospective for this project, we had reached all goals and the simulation was really robust and stable. However, when I came to work on the day itself, I found my colleague sitting at his desk, looking very tired. He'd been working through the night to get all the extra bells and whistles implemented. The demonstration was a disaster. Nothing worked, everything crashed. A lot of people were upset.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#277

Post by lsc »

slededit wrote: post #236
namelost wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The alternative was a Germany as vassal state under crippling WWI reparations and a failing economy. The war was not "pointless" even if it ultimately failed in its goals. I'm not defending his ideology, but its important to understand the rational reasons behind his decisions if we want to prevent another global catastrophe. Even without Hitler its still likely Germany would have instigated fighting at some point.

so, that's one way of looking at it, it's the conventional view, and probably more correct, but...

Another way of looking at it is that the fighting resulted because France and the allies didn't crack down on Germany when they failed to meet the terms of their surrender.

Personally, I feel that your view (and the conventional view) is more correct, but it's interesting to think about the converse. I mean, we've still got troops in Germany today, right? What if that's the key? It wasn't about economically rebuilding them, but what if, instead the war didn't flare up again simply because the occupation never ended?

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#279

Post by watwut »

Retra wrote: post #229
watwut wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you wrote is not true. Hitler was very good at reading audience, adjusting speech to them and seeing how they react. His work and actions had impact on that movement sucess.

I would not learn from Hitler, because his idea of sucess involves imperialistic war and multiple genocides. And his ideology praised ruthlessness as a virtue. Has nothing to do with whether he had speeking skill or not, whether he could paint well or not.

Just because he was bad guy does not mean we have to go all emotional and pretend he had IQ 75. That just allowing emotions to win over what and why happened.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#280

Post by ipfreighly »

oblib wrote: post #5

When I was a kid my family would often chide me for using "big words" and told I was trying to "impress everyone" doing that. The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned and thought was interesting and every time that happened I was kind of shocked and left wondering how they'd missed the gist of what I was talking about. My own mother did it. I finally stopped sharing things I thought they'd atta…

There's two problems here. One is convincing people that you're smart and not just acting smart. The mistake is assuming that people can recognize directly that someone else is smarter than them. The more effective way to be recognized as smart is social proof.

The second problem is that being smart is a kind of social power (like being rich or beautiful) so there is an incentive not to recognize your intelligence if it's seen as a social threat. Showing someone that they're wrong usually results in a loss of social value for them. Something like sharing your IQ score can be seen as an unprovoked signal of social power.

If you want to leverage your intelligence politically then the most important thing is to signal your political allegiances first. Generally power is recognized when others realize that it's in their interest to do so.

Post reply on HN