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Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#61

Post by [deleted] »

pfisch wrote: post #33
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…

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#62

Post by louithethrid »

The problem with highly intelligent people is that they have a competition among themselves, and the most intelligent one coming out of those competitions is usually the one with the most measurable success (money) for the least amount of measurable input (work).

Meaning, there is a herd effect at work here, where renomee is nothing and looking down among the less intelligent ones is everything. Thus its a race away from productive intelligent endavours with lots of input (science) towards optimal endavours (hacking the system aka lawyer, investor). Meaning that blackhats among the intelligent always outcrowd the white hats in the long term deteriorating society as a whole.

Some streetsmarts might recognize the dynamic and engage it with disrupting countermeasures before the system itself is destroyed by a upper society where it is not feasible to be anything else then a well dressed game theory con-men.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#63

Post by mywittyname »

criddell wrote: post #18
craftyguy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. I really dislike the current trend in article writing, where the author(s) feel a need to start off with a multi-paragraph, tangentially-related (at best) narative about how their cousin's friend's sister's aunt felt this way and that about something, and the actual meat of the article is buried somewhere in the last 1/4th of the text.

They even do that for simple things like recipe websites. I google some food, find a recipe, and most of the time the first four paragraphs are describing the first time the author cooked with saffron or the cultural impact of the spice trade a thousand years ago. You know what? All I want is the recipe for my pressure cooker.

Serious Eats is good about this. They have a 'read the whole story' link on the recipe page for people that really care that a Magnum Unicorn is the best device for cracking peppercorns for steak au poivre. But the recipe page right to the point for those that don't care.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#64

Post by bfung »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #52
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…

Maybe the title should be "Why Really Dumb People Dislike Really Smart Leaders". "Talk to them like they're five" is what that suggestion sounds like to me.

"Talk to them like they're five" when they're adults that can figure out that they're being talked down upon is a quick way to alienate the crowd even more.

If instead you mean to use more common words and to make concepts relatable to everyday life - that usually works out pretty well in my experience. It's not an easy thing to do either for the "smart" leader.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#65

Post by guelo »

roenxi wrote: post #55
guelo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If putting economists in charge somehow curtails monopolies, externalised costs, tragedies of the commons and boom and bust business cycles then someone really should sit down and get that news out there. Nothing I've heard suggests economists outperform a healthy democratic process. Monetary policy is one that is more up for debate - it seems reasonable that it can have a positive effect on gdp, but something has de…

In healthy democracies politicians seek advice from economists for their policy proposals.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#66

Post by borplk »

mrkstu wrote: post #31
borplk wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

I agree.

But I think people who get angry about someone using big words tend to have quite a low bar for what is considered a big word.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#67

Post by logfromblammo »

dboreham wrote: post #39
pfisch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Perhaps "people who thought they were smart"?

They say you can't cheat an honest man. Why is that? Clearly, a lot of mostly honest folks do get conned sometimes.

They aren't talking about something like Bank of America overcharging you on mortgage interest every month for years. That's not the kind of con you can do without a lot of cooperation, teamwork, and setup. It's more about the one-time scores.

At the core of every con is a kernel of dishonesty, as the bait. Even something as simple as the Nigerian 419 or Spanish Prisoner has the implication that the advance fee supplied by the mark will be used to pay bribes. That means the mark is willing to be dishonest. The hook is set by revealing an opportunity for the mark to cheat the con artist to screw them out of some money. The million dollars will be transferred into your account, in your name, and we will ask you nicely to please, please give it to us, minus a reasonable fee.

You go after the person smart enough to realize that they could just keep all that money, but not smart enough to realize there was never any money to keep. You go after the person who thinks they are smart enough to scam the con artist, and also dishonest enough to try. It might be because actively trying to scam someone turns off your own defenses against getting scammed.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#68

Post by roma1n »

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…

> 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.

Another reason for going after high-status professionals (proxy for 'smart') is that they may be less likely to use violence as a method for dispute resolution?

Also, if they have to maintain a reputation of savviness, they may be less encline to make it public knowledge that they got swindled by pressing charges.

Also, disposable income...

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#69

Post by jancsika »

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…

I'm not sure I understand the upshot.

If you were shown to be intelligent enough to be bumped up a couple of grades, you were also intelligent enough to choose the most appropriate language for your audience. If people furrowed their brow at "nodes", "miners" and "Byzantine fault tolerance", degrade gracefully to the a simple story of the "Two Generals Problem."

That pattern doesn't work for everything, but it certainly works for anything you would have been talking about in the 4th grade.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#70

Post by clairity »

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…

1. it's not smart men cons are after, it's overconfidence. most truly "smart" people admit uncertainty and exhibit healthy skepticism. doctors, like many professionals, tend to be rewarded for exhibiting overconfidence.

2. people tend to call decisions poor because they result in perceived bad outcomes (from the perspective of the person making the judgment), without considering the range of all possible outcomes (the number of which is bigger than our brains can cope with). if most outcomes would have been "bad" ones, then the decision made might have been the best one possible without necessarily leading to a "good" outcome. (many such misperceptions and misattributions are possible when judging decisions in hindsight)

we like to tell ourelves stories that put us at the top of the heap (or similarly put others "below" us), regardless of the truthiness of those stories.

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