I agree with pretty much all of that.

Yes, people who signal status by being jerks probably haven't thought about their options; but neither has your friend who pursues information at the expense of status (although I still suspect the different behavior is the result of values). A common compromise is to have separate venues for pursuing information and status; if you only see one venue, you can't tell what's going on. It would be better to tune each interaction, but that is difficult (ie, I may disagree with "practical"). If you find it easy, you're probably weird. Maybe it's a result of having invested in this skill, but that has an opportunity cost that I don't think you're accounting for. It may be worth the cost, but it's pretty expensive and there are fairly cheap options, like the compromise I mention above.

Going back to the phrase "dumb about people," I expect high-status people to be smart about people. They may fail to apply it to this particular setting, but failing to explore options I would file under "dumb about strategy." But that's my prior - I expect most people to be dumb about strategy, so I don't learn much from the observation.