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MichaelVassar comments on The Contrarian Status Catch-22 - Less Wrong
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Most smug contrarians have many contrarian beliefs, not just one. If we average over all the various beliefs of smug contrarians, what level of accuracy will we find? (Could we find data on smug contrarians from a century ago?) I suspect accuracy will be far too low to justify such smugness. Even if we limit our attention to high IQ smug contrarians, I suspect accuracy will also be low. Yes the typical objection to smugness is probably to the cockiness of asserting higher status than one has been granted, but the typical reason people are smugly contrarian is also probably wanting to defy current status rankings. You can't assume that because they are hypocrites and disagree with you that you are not a hypocrite.
Once again, I think that for smart (e.g. made good arguments, e.g. arguments that contemporaries who also made good arguments [recursive but sound] couldn't poke holes in) smug contrarians of a century ago this is simply wrong, though it needs a lot of cashing out in specific detailed claims.