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taw comments on High Status and Stupidity: Why? - Less Wrong
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Comments (142)
I think your premise is false, there's weak positive correlation between being smart and status, and you make a mistake most likely by comparing unusually smart low status individuals (grad students are not anywhere close to being typical low status people!!!) with random high status individuals.
Some of your arguments, especially #4, might very well be true, but I don't think they're anywhere near reversing the smartness-status correlation.
You assume the wrong premise. The premise is not "there is a negative correlation between status and intelligence". That is false and obviously so. The premise is "high status makes you less intelligent".
Causation does not imply correlation.
For example, high tax payments are correlated with high income, but make you poorer.
Still, what kind of evidence do we have for this?
This was the only bit of evidence offered, it's obviously just biased sampling:
No it isn't. Eliezer isn't talking about comparing grad students with hollywood stars and football players. He is comparing grad students to high status people that used to be grad students (with a probable bias towards high status academics and intellectuals.) Given a positive correlation between intelligence and status Eliezer should actually observe the opposite sample bias to the one you suggest. He would miss all the grad students who barely scraped through or were unable to make a name for themselves in academic communities.
I would be interested in some more evidence for this too. It certainly matches my observations and it is also what I would expect given what I know about psychology (as related to status) but a more objective quantification would be useful.
I think he's thinking of unusually smart high status individuals. If he isn't, I certainly am. I'm very careful to anticipate regressions to the mean, though most people seem to make that mistake regularly however much they endorse efforts to be rational.