Maybe we live in a short lucky period of time, where people remember that you can make a ton of money by being good with computers and perhaps some other science... and this gives some status to smart people (other than managers). Nobel price is probably helpful here, too, because it's something that everyone knows, so people know that science can somehow translate to very high status.
people who are invested in status markers defend those markers
Then, why don't smart people do the same thing? Instead of (or in addition to) competing with each other, why don't we insist more that being smart is cool (and being stupid is incool)?
Status games are zero-sum on individual level (whether Alice is more popular than Bob, or the other way round, is only important to the Alice and Bob), but when comparing groups, it can have an impact on the whole world. For example, higher status of scientists would probably mean more science, which improves everyone's life. Just to put things in perspective: we spend $2×10^6 for Khan Academy, but 50×10^9 for the latest Winter Olympics. (I'm choosing two activites than anyone can enjoy; as opposed to a specific school or stadium where the access is limited.) Yeah, that's factor of 25000. Because running really really fast is so much more imporant that understanding numbers.
I think the core issue is cooperation. Eliezer's why our kind cant cooperate provides a perspective.
Making intelligence high status means having public role models who are intellectuals. We can't really agree on role models.
Sport fans can agree that Tiger Woods is awesome even if the don't like golf.
Agreeing that an extremely smart charismatic figure like Julian Assange is awesome is much harder because it's political. Agreeing that Sergey Brin and Larry Page are awesome is political. Agreeing that Peter Thiel is awesome is political.
Steve Job management...
Paper by the Cultural Cognition Project: The culturally polarizing effect of the "anti-science trope" on vaccine risk perceptions
This is a great paper (indeed, I think many at LW would find the whole site enjoyable). I'll try to summarize it here.
Background: The pro/anti vaccine debate has been hot recently. Many pro-vaccine people often say, "The science is strong, the benefits are obvious, the risks are negligible; if you're anti-vaccine then you're anti-science".
Methods: They showed experimental subjects an article basically saying the above.
Results: When reading such an article, a large number of people did not trust vaccines more, but rather, trusted the American Academy of Pediatrics less.
My thoughts: I will strive to avoid labeling anybody as being "anti-science" or "simply or willfully ignorant of current research", etc., even when speaking of hypothetical 3rd parties on my facebook wall. This holds for evolution, global warming, vaccines, etc.
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Also included in the article: references to other research that shows that evolution and global warming debates have already polarized people into distrusting scientists, and evidence that people are not yet polarized over the vaccine issue.
If you intend to read the article yourself: I found it difficult to understand how the authors divided participants into the 4 quadrants (α, ß, etc.) I will quote my friend, who explained it for me:
I was helped by following the link to where they first introduce that model.
The people in the top left (α) worry about risks to public safety, such as global warming. The people in the bottom right (δ) worry about socially deviant behaviors, such as could be caused by the legalization of marijuana.
People in the top right (β) worry about both public safety risks and deviant behaviors, and people in the bottom left (γ) don't really worry about either.