There is a tradeoff, and it's basically a question of whether you fear the consequences of stupidity more, or the consequences of defection. I fear stupidity more; opportunities to backstab are uncommon, but opportunities to screw things up accidentally are everywhere.
The odd thing is, our genes and default psychology seem to think we should care more about defection, and less about stupidity. Perhaps because in the evolutionary environment, literal backstabbing was more common, and things like bad driving didn't exist.
Smart people can afford to be more novelty seeking. They are more likley to avoid catastrophic failure trying the same novelties compared to ordinary or stupid people. Defection by someone smarter than you is harder to detect or predict. And it may have much worse results. Catastrophic results you may not be able to undo or repair because you are outmatched. Evolution takes into account that you are hackable by the very rare much more intelligent person.
I elaborated on the analysis of this scenario here.
Try playing a popular board game with someone of aver...
This is thread where I'm trying to figure out a few things about signalling on LessWrong and need some information, so please immediately after reading about the two individuals please answer the poll. The two individuals:
A. Sees that an interpretation of reality shared by others is not correct, but tries to pretend otherwise for personal gain and/or safety.
B. Fails to see that an interpretation of reality is shared by others is flawed. He is therefore perfectly honest in sharing the interpretation of reality with others. The reward regime for outward behaviour is the same as with A.
To add a trivial inconvenience that matches the inconvenience of answering the poll before reading on, comments on what I think the two individuals signal,what the trade off is and what I speculate the results might be here versus the general population, is behind this link.