In my experience really smart people can be arbitrarily wrong, perhaps moreso than less smart people, because they can create elaborate mental models to justify bad ideas, and someone significantly smarter than me can create difficult to refute arguments that serve as a bulwark against pushback. Remember that sophistry requires sophistication but is still little more than the smart person's stupidity.
Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
41–50 of 336 posts
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#42When 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…
[deleted]
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#43When 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…
I rarely use big words when there's a simpler one that has almost the exact same meaning. Sometimes I'm communicating something quite precise and nuanced. In those cases I may use big words because it is the right word to use. English is my 2nd language as well, so if nothing else I think I would deserve some credit for having developed a good vocabulary. It annoys me when people dismiss the precision in the language…
>I rarely use big words when there's a simpler one that has almost the exact same meaning.
Yes, but the simpler one isn't necessarily the one that pops up into your head. Always opting for the simpler word means a less natural dialog flow for some.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#44There 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…
> My father told me that con men preferred to go after smart people This doesn't make a lot of sense. Most cons like the various Nigerian money scams and pyramid scams are designed to only get responses from less intelligent people.
It's not hard to imagine why the sorts of people who fall for widely-spread con nets and those who fall for highly personalized focused attacks aren't the same.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#45There 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…
Nassim Taleb calls them IYI, Intellectuals Yet Idiots
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#46When 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…
I went through a phase of using "big words". At some level it was almost definitely an attempt at showing off. Maybe you genuinely weren't, but I definitely was, and I sense it strongly in others.
These days I almost always focus on being understandable. I think it's a valuable skill to give a broad overview about a topic in a field they know nothing about, in language they will understand. Though I'm not good enough to convincingly explain "technical debt" to high level management yet!
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words." Yeah, I had similar experiences. I read a lot of books and absorbed their vocabulary, and sometimes it would slip out. I would just say what's on my mind, and that's what other people do, right? Then I would get into trouble also by pausing to weigh my words, people read too much into your pause before answering them. Or I just wouldn't say much, b…
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
I'm almost certain people exist with a real aptitude for say, high level mathematics, and no aptitude at all for communicating with others. I may have even met one or two...
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I rarely use big words when there's a simpler one that has almost the exact same meaning. Sometimes I'm communicating something quite precise and nuanced. In those cases I may use big words because it is the right word to use. English is my 2nd language as well, so if nothing else I think I would deserve some credit for having developed a good vocabulary. It annoys me when people dismiss the precision in the language…
Lots of more precise words are not particularly 'big' words. One shouldn't have to pre-edit one's thoughts to pull out the better word because it doesn't fit into a typical 5th grade education. I love older British children's literature because it doesn't do this at all- it expects the kids to learn new vocabulary along the way. Check out 'Peter Pan'- the verbiage is no different than if it was targeted to an older a…
FWIW I find the way you wrote that very pretentious. I suppose you can accuse me of not being as smart as you (you could be right - I have no idea). But the fact remains I understand everything you say but still come away with thinking - "this guy sounds like a bit of a blow-hard".
You might be a nice person, but it's the impression I get.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#49When 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…
I don't know my exact position on the curve, but I can relate. I find it ironic that many of the folks who score pretty high on general intelligence, often have an issue with social intelligence. I spend a lot of time now trying to study human nature in a game of catch-up. What most people seem to learn instinctively, I need to study.
What's the irony, really... there's probably a reason innate IQ settled around where it did over the thousands of years since civilization started and not higher.
Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
#50When 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…
> "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words." Yeah, I had similar experiences. I read a lot of books and absorbed their vocabulary, and sometimes it would slip out. I would just say what's on my mind, and that's what other people do, right? Then I would get into trouble also by pausing to weigh my words, people read too much into your pause before answering them. Or I just wouldn't say much, b…
Whenever I paused to consider my next words, someone would start talking into my silence and then accuse me of interrupting them when I tried to continue.
I eventually realized that I wasn't bad at speaking; I just had a different style. Some people are more agile in conversation, because they do not think about what they want to say before activating their mouth-parts to make the noises. They jump right in, by using formulaic nulls to establish conversational priority, then fill in the content afterward. Then they hold priority with more nulls for as long as it takes to come up with more content.
I have never been able to bring myself to hold conversational priority by babbling nonsense, and I can't abide listening to a constant stream of nulls, trying to sift signal from noise, so I just don't talk to certain people. The best I can manage is gestural nulls.
It's one of the reasons why I prefer writing to speaking. I suspect I might be able to speak normally with Scandinavians, as I have heard they consider silences to be an essential part of conversation. Here in the US, I am continually frustrated by not being able to speak in paragraphs.
And that may be because most people do not think in paragraphs. A lot of them can't even manage whole sentences.