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The underlying assumption of this article every step of the way is that one's underlying motivation for argument, debate, or discussion is to signal social stan
by metamemetics 16y ago
The underlying assumption of this article every step of the way is that one's underlying motivation for argument, debate, or discussion is to signal social standing
I would argue instead that the most intelligent people find it innately enjoyable to talk about ideas. They are motivated by a desire to decrease-uncertainty and clarify-understanding.... they realize social standing is often an illusion and not overly worth worrying about.
- InfinityX0 16y agoI think Hacker News is strong supporting evidence of your point. There is some ability to display/leverage social standing here, but by and large, it is a platform of anonymous commenters commenting simply for the pleasure of discussion. That, and anonymously validating our own intelligence through the karma system - but it seems the prior benefit is a larger pull.
- timinman 16y agoThe karma system has got to be a huge magnet for this kind of discussion.
- blasdel 16y agoThere's even a High Score List: http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- InfinityX0 16y agoI don't think the High Score List really matters - it helps the 1% (estimation) percent of the community that's there, but for the rest of us, it's like trying to achieve the Home Run Record - it's largely a pointless metric. If there was something like "who received the most karma in the last week", then there would be cause for concern/thought that the community would be hurt by such a list.
- ckuehne 16y agoThere's no contradiction to your argument. I innately enjoy looking at beautiful women and eat delicious food without (always) being aware that the ultimate cause for the enjoyment is increase in genetic fitness. Or more to the point: I innately enjoy winning games or working creatively just as the male bower bird [1] finds innate desire to build richly colored bowers to attract females. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird
- Confusion 16y agoThere is a contradiction, because the argument in the article assumes the signalling of social standing is THE reason for the behavior. Opinions like A person who is somewhat intelligent will conspicuously signal eir intelligence by holding difficult-to-understand opinions. A person who is very intelligent will conspicuously signal that ey feels no need to conspicuously signal eir intelligence, by deliberately not holding difficult-to-understand opinions. are incredibly annoying. It's one of those opinions that are almost impossible to defend against or disprove, because of the vague nature of 'conspicuously' and 'difficult-to-understand'. Actually, I think you can attack it as form a meta-contrarianism itself: anti-intellectuals will hold the above opinion, intellectuals will denounce that opinion and meta-contrarians will claim that 'people cannot help but be influenced by concern for their social standing, so there is some truth in the assertions of anti-intellectuals that intellectuals show behavior which seems to be intended solely to make it harder for non-intellectuals to enter their field', which polarizes into the quoted opinion.
- ckuehne 16y ago"There is a contradiction, because the argument in the article assumes the signalling of social standing is THE reason for the behavior." Yes, of course it is the (proximate) reason. That is the whole point of the article. It does not argue however, that it happens consciously: "What is interesting about these triads is not that people hold the positions [..] but that people get deep personal satisfaction from arguing the positions [..]" People gain satisfaction from arguing. They don't have to be aware of the fact that they might be doing it to signal social standing but that is the end result of their actions on average. People usually go for status but like to convince themselves (and most often do so successfully) that they do things for a noble course.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoSometimes, yes, but this does not explain many debates about (American) politics - where there's often a lot of heat and very little light, and no real attempt to convince the other side.
- metamemetics 16y agoOr the set of people embroiled in the schema of partisanship and the set of people who are highly intelligent are disjoint.
- sesqu 16y agoPerhaps this is because the other side is not well defined. In particular, you cannot expect them to follow the whole debate, merely excerpts and the general lines of it. So to keep the debate going, you have to debate most of the whole point every time, and you have a length restriction to boot. So what results is summaries and anecdotes, with memetic evolution making sure the summaries are resilient to amendment. I wonder how they really do it. I've seen a lot of paper near politicians; perhaps they have the time and focus the audiences don't.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago> you cannot expect [the other side] to follow the whole debate Perhaps you can explain this to me. E.g. the whole healthcare discussion seems to be "interesting" to both sides, but I've seen very few civil and sensible discussions. Is the debate so divorced from reality that either side has its own facts? (I know the Republican fanatics believe really stupid things, and I presume the Democrat fanatics are no better; but these are not the majority, right? Just loud.)
- j_baker 16y agoI don't think the article makes that assumption at all. I think it is just talking about how we act when we do signal.
- obfuscate 16y agoIt seems obvious that both motivations are often present.
- sethg 16y agoSure, we like to talk about ideas, but some ideas are more enjoyable to talk about than others. I would absolutely disagree that intelligent people “realize social standing is often an illusion and not overly worth worrying about”. Humans are social animals, even if some of us recognize the existence of important things other than social standing.
- Xurinos 16y agoI just wanted to follow up my reply to someone else below with a comment for you -- and bear in mind that I just want to dissect, to point out things, not to attack or offend you. Please do not take my response personally. You can easily apply my arguments to my own posts, and I will agree with you. :) Your argument is an interesting proof of the notion that your speech signals social status. You mention "the most intelligent people". You then tell us what you believe they think. The implication is that you number amongst them or would like to be a member of that group. In addition, you have not cited any proof of this argument; it is mere speculation. Yet you "would argue" this random opinion, expecting that others on this forum would care about that opinion. Your speech translates to a simple statement: "I have an opinion, too." or more simply "I am here. Look at me." Your comment is a nice example of signaling social standing (whatever it really is, whatever you want us to believe it is).