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RolfAndreassen comments on The Singularity Institute's Arrogance Problem - Less Wrong
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Well, no, I don't think so. Most academics do not work on impossible problems, or think of this as a worthy goal. So it should be more like "Do cool stuff, but let it speak for itself".
Moderately related: I was just today in a meeting to discuss a presentation that an undergraduate student in our group will be giving to show her work to the larger collaboration. On her first page she had
Subject
Her name
Grad student helping her
Dr supervisor no 1
Dr supervisor no 2
And to start off our critique, supervisor 1 mentioned that, in the subculture of particle physics, it is not the custom to list titles, at least for internal presentations. (If you're talking to a general audience the rules change.) Everyone knows who you are and what you've done! Thus, he gave the specific example that, if you mention "Leon", everyone knows you speak of Leon Lederman, the Nobel-Prize winner. But as for "Dr Lederman", pff, what's a doctorate? Any idiot can be a doctor and many idiots (by physics standards, that is) are; if you're not a PhD it's at least assumed that you're a larval version of one. It's just not a very unusual accomplishment in these circles. To have your first name instantly recognised is a much greater accolade. Doctors are thirteen to the dozen, but there is only one Leon.
Of course this is not really modesty, as such; it's a particular form of status recognition. We don't make much overt show of it, but everyone knows their position in the hierarchy!
I have seen this elsewhere in the academy as well.
At many elite universities, professors are never referred to as Dr-so-and-so. Everybody on the faculty has a doctorate. They are Professor-so-and-so. At some schools, I'm told they are referred to as Mr or Mrs-so-and-so. Similar effect: "we know who's cool and high-status and don't need to draw attention to it."
Wow, I didn't even consciously recognize this convention, although I would definitely never, for instance, add titles to the author list of a paper. So I seem to have somehow picked it up without explicitly deciding to.