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 prestigious intellectuals. (Unsurprisingly, the views of such people tend to be extremely uniform and confined to a very narrow range of variation.)
One puzzle here however is that the level of status-driven intellectual uniformity has varied a lot historically. In the Western world it was certainly far lower, say, a 100 or 150 years ago than today. Reading books from that period, it's clear that a lot of what people said and wrote was driven by signaling rather than matter-of-fact thinking, but the ratio was nothing like the overwhelming preponderance of the former that we see nowadays. It seems like back then, intellectual status-signaling was somehow successfully channeled outside of the main subjects of intellectual disputes, leaving enough room for an honest no-nonsense debate, which is practically nonexistent today in respectable venues outside of hard sciences and technical subjects.
I have only some vague and speculative hypotheses about the possible explanations for these historical differences, though.
There two seem to have some overlap.
I'm not sure about that. It seems to me that these might be completely independent mechanisms. The first, unlike the second, would stem from a failure of the general mechanisms for handling status and social norms, indicating a more generally dysfunctional personality, while the second one would result in a perfectly functional individual except for this particular quirk consisting of some odd and perhaps disreputable beliefs.
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.
Yes, this is indeed an interesting scenario. I can think of a few ongoing examples, although describing them explicitly would probably mean going too far into ideologically charged topics for this forum.
One puzzle here however is that the level of status-driven intellectual uniformity has varied a lot historically. In the Western world it was certainly far lower, say, a 100 or 150 years ago than today. Reading books from that period, it's clear that a lot of what people said and wrote was driven by signaling rather than matter-of-fact thinking, but the ratio was nothing like the overwhelming preponderance of the former that we see nowadays.
This could just be the nostalgia filter (WARNING: tvtropes), i.e., there were also a lot of pure status signaling works back then, but they have since been forgotten.
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.