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

281–290 of 336 posts

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#281

Post by couchand »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #256
telchar wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use a metaphor as a counterargument, if there were a 6 foot spider in my shower you'd better believe I would talk about it at least a few times a day. That doesn't mean the spider has charisma, just that it's a clear and present danger weighing heavily on my mind. If anyone is exercising political sleight of hand I'd say it's the legislators and executive staff who are getting in all their unpopular actions while…

Trump's skillset is that of a reality TV star. He knows what to say and how to say it to engage people in drama. His presidency has been a continuation of this. It freaks out the intelligentsia because it seems insane to them that a person in such a high place of power could get involved in things like Twitter flame wars. That's low class/blue collar behavior that is totally foreign to their own culture. That is why…

> Twitter flame wars ... does not represent a genuine threat

...until it's a flame war between two nuclear powers with unstable leaders.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#282

Post by watwut »

namelost wrote: post #226
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…

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.

It was war for territory, "living space" and ultimately world domination. Effectively, it was imperial project. The other powers were not about to give power up for free. Those are quite clear points.

Hitler did not valued life and got used to violence in WWI. That has nothing to do with intelligence either. Both stupid and smart people can grow to not value life and be ruthless and confident and power hungry and taking too much risk.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#283

Post by vostrocity »

alexashka wrote: post #144
Jtsummers wrote: post #74

Earlier 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…

There is another element beyond explaining clearly, and that is that people tend to remember and relate to tangible examples better than abstractions. Metaphors are great memory devices even for people who are not dumb or uneducated.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#284

Post by vostrocity »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #27

>The study’s lead author, John Antonakis, a psychologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, suggests leaders should use their intelligence to generate creative metaphors that will persuade and inspire others—the way former U.S. President Barack Obama did. “I think the only way a smart person can signal their intelligence appropriately and still connect with the people,” Antonakis says, “is to speak in char…

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, David Kahneman writes about "peak-end rule" - people tend to rate experiences by their peak level of emotion during the experience, and by the way experiences end.

My takeaway is if you want people to remember an experience positively, what matters is a high peak of pleasure, and to have a good end.

These are places where clever metaphors can help.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#285

Post by ACow_Adonis »

sagebird wrote: post #265

There is a simpler explanation. It is the Peter principle. A person is promoted until failure. All else being equal, if two people are leaders, leader A will be on average as good as leader B. If one were significantly better, they would be promoted to the next level - eg a retired philanthropist billionaire or enlightened monk or what have you. If P and Q are qualities correlated with leadership, if P and Q are inde…

That's um... neither how stats nor reasoning works :(

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#286

Post by ebcode »

goatlover wrote: post #117
dasil003 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "smart" you mean arrogant urban sophisticates who think very highly of their own intelligence then you're probably right.

Or it could mean more cosmopolitan dwellers who understand living in a connected, diverse world that's always changing better than your average rural dweller.

In defense of your average rural dweller, things really do move a lot more slowly in rural areas in comparison to metropolises. There's less diversity as well. So, you know, please take it easy on us dumb hicks out in the sticks. We're less connected, sure, but we're getting there.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#287

Post by philwelch »

zzzzzzzza wrote: post #274
philwelch wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

Kaiser Wilhelm was out of power by 1920.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#288

Post by AnthonyMouse »

hux_ wrote: post #244
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Lot of black and white, 1+1=2 type statements here. Politics is about dealing with uncertainity and ambiguity. The real world is full of it. If your parents can't stand each other but tomorrow you get cancer and this dsyfunctional unit has to deal politics applies. Good politics makes things better. Writing down on a piece of paper - these truths are self evident that all men are created equal does not make it so in…

This isn't about the ambiguity. That's something else.

This is about, for example, ethanol subsidies. Basically everyone who doesn't receive them thinks they're dumb. It takes more than a gallon of petroleum to produce a gallon of ethanol, it diverts productive farmland from food which makes food cost more for the poor (and everyone), it's an inefficient use of tax dollars, etc.

Yet we continue to have ethanol subsidies, because it gets politicians from districts full of corn farmers to vote for the bill even when the bill contains a bunch of differently-toxic nonsense for other interests in different districts.

And you don't need 100% of the votes to pass, you only need 51%. So all you have to do is construct a bill that allows 51% of the districts to steal resources from the other 49% in various ways like that, and it passes. Which is why everyone hates politics.

But those bills are precarious, because it doesn't pay to have 75% of the vote. An excess 25% would require you to give things to people using resources you could have kept for your existing coalition.

Only that means you can't afford to lose too many of your votes when someone starts to make a stink about a specific inefficient program that was shoring those votes up. If the ethanol subsidies were removed from the bill, you would be short on votes.

Which turns honest outsiders just trying to make a positive impact into political enemies, because they're threatening to dismantle your majority coalition.

And the same dynamic plays out in any system based on majority voting.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#289

Post by floriferous »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #285
sagebird wrote: post #265

There is a simpler explanation. It is the Peter principle. A person is promoted until failure. All else being equal, if two people are leaders, leader A will be on average as good as leader B. If one were significantly better, they would be promoted to the next level - eg a retired philanthropist billionaire or enlightened monk or what have you. If P and Q are qualities correlated with leadership, if P and Q are inde…

That's um... neither how stats nor reasoning works :(

Can you elaborate on what’s wrong with his comment? The Peter principle looks like it has some legs (after a couple minutes of searching), and the analogy sounds reasonable to me.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#290

Post by mrslave »

Fricken wrote: post #269
mulmen wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have military experience and I will stop short of saying I wish I did because I think that does a disservice to both of us. What I will say is that the vets I have worked with have been excellent contributors and leaders. I work in a place that values strong leadership and makes a point of hiring veterans. It would be easy to dismiss that as public relations fluff but I truly believe vets make an invaluable c…

The theory is that Israel punches above it's weight class in the tech/startup sector at least in part because most everybody there has at least some military training.

Interesting. I would speculate the high average IQ is a more significant factor.
Post reply on HN