On the whole, smarter people tend to be more in line with the respectable opinion, since they are able to figure out how to optimize their views for maximum signaling value.
This carries all sorts of interesting implications.
Your brain is wired in some non-standard manner, so that it doesn't deal with status signaling and social conformity in the usual way. This clearly sends off bad signals, since it increases the probability that you might be weird, dysfunctional, or even dangerous in all sorts of ways.
This seem to be a better way to state some of what I was going for in the third paragraph of my comment.
Your brain is wired in a way that makes it hard to acquire those beliefs that happen to be respectable here and now. (But you would conform easily, perhaps exceptionally so, in a different society with different respectable beliefs.)
There seems to be some overlap between this and the previous one.
You've belonged, or still belong simultaneously, to non-mainstream social circles (or alien societies) that have different status criteria for beliefs.
This includes meta-contrarians correct?
(Of course, if there is a conflict between signaling and instrumental implications of some issue, then hypocrisy and rationalizations are called for.)
(Are there perhaps other possibilities I'm missing?)
It may be that the gap between reality and signalling would actually be too great to rationalize for anyone who had practical use for it, you are just the one stuck with it. The effect of this might be in the long term sufficient to hurt the reputation and signalling value of certain professions, economic niches or even entire (sub)cultures.
This [smart people having a greater ability to figure out high-status-signaling views and acquire them] carries all sorts of interesting implications.
Yes, especially when we couple it with the fact that smart people have not just more ability, but usually also stronger incentives to optimize their views for signaling value. The smarter you are, the greater is the relative contribution of the signaling value of your views and opinions to your overall status likely to be. On the very top of this scale are people whose primary identity in life is that of p...
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.