There's an ever so slight difference between being deliberately arrogant, and making an innocent mistake when calculating the soundness of your plans. Plans which you've dared to elaborate because you know yourself to be capable of elaborating them, based on previous evidence.
The smartest people make the hugest mistakes. To use a physical metaphor, only a weight lifter could inflict themselves this kind of horrible injury, but that's because they're amazingly strong in the first place.
I don't know if I'm getting my point acorss.
I don't think Einstein made the (arguable) mistake of telling the President about nukes because he was being arrogant.
I think that if your argument is "because Harry screws up spectacularly, spectacular screwups are part of high rationality," you may not be reading MoR correctly.
The smartest people make the hugest mistakes.
Yes, power amplifies the effect of decisions. If you control for power, then one would hope intelligence would decrease the hugeness of mistakes (in distribution, at least).
I don't think Einstein made the (arguable) mistake of telling the President about nukes because he was being arrogant.
I disagree with your political example, but do not see a reason to argue it here.
This is my first attempt at starting a casual conversation on LW where people don't have to worry about winning or losing points, and can just relax and have social fun together.
So, Big Bang Theory. That series got me wondering. It seems to be about "geeks", and not the basement-dwelling variety either; they're highly successful and accomplished professionals, each in their own field. One of them has been an astronaut, even. And yet, everything they ever accomplish amounts to absolutely nothing in terms of social recognition or even in terms of personal happiness. And the thing is, it doesn't even get better for their "normal" counterparts, who are just as miserable and petty.
Consider, then; how would being rationalists would affect the characters on this show? The writing of the show relies a lot on laughing at people rather than with them; would rationalist characters subvert that? And how would that rationalist outlook express itself given their personalities? (After all, notice how amazingly different from each other Yudkowsky, Hanson, and Alicorn are, just to name a few; they emphasize rather different things, and take different approaches to both truth-testing and problem-solving).
Note: this discussion does not need to be about rationalism. It can be a casual, normal discussion about the series. Relax and enjoy yourselves.
But the reason I brought up that series is that its characters are excellent examples of high intelligence hampered by immense irrationality. The apex of this is represented by Dr. Sheldon Cooper, who is, essentially, a complete fundamentalist over every single thing in his life; he applies this attitude to everything, right down to people's favorite flavor of pudding: Raj is "axiomatically wrong" to prefer tapioca, because the best pudding is chocolate. Period. This attitude makes him a far, far worse scientist than he thinks, as he refuses to even consider any criticism of his methods or results.