= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Zachary_Kurtz comments on High Status and Stupidity: Why? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (142)
What about some concrete examples of people who have lost their edge because they achieved high status? Or some counter examples?
If I am thinking of some people of high status in different intellectual fields, say, scientists like Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, Richard Dawkins, Bertrand Russel or even technologists like Linus Torvalds, Paul Graham; I'm not sure I can see the kind of "High Status Stupidity" there. Or did I just pick the wrong examples?
A great example would be Arthur Conan Doyle. When it came to Sherlock Holmes, he was a brilliant writer but failed when he tried anything else, including his belief in spiritualism and the supernatural.
Why should he have succeeded at anything else? You don't need "high status stupidity" to explain his failures. Regression toward the mean would suffice, just like with "one hit wonders" in music.
If we're going to allow examples from the arts we can also list the Wachowski siblings and George Lucas.
ETA : Actually, now I think both of those were due to the fact that successful writers/directors/etc are given less oversight by financiers.
Yet less oversight still might lead them to behave less intelligently. Another item for the list?