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If you interviewed body-builders about health and fitness, would you find them narcissistic if they say that they are physically superior to most people? Or a s

If you interviewed body-builders about health and fitness, would you find them narcissistic if they say that they are physically superior to most people? Or a scientist who's spent her whole life studying, and who believes that their depth of knowledge is superior to most people? Not all claims of superiority are narcissistic. (Although I think society has rightly picked a convention where you're not really supposed to say such things about yourself, but rather wait for someone else to nominate you as superior in some narrowly defined way.) It is, in fact, possible to be truly superior in spiritual terms, but such people are usually identified by their demeanor and accomplishments more than their claims.

tartoran 6y ago
Id even go as far as looking at their acomplishments. If they say they’re superior but have nothing to show then it is possible we’re dealing with some form of narcissism. They may as well have acomplishments and be narcissistic. Narcissists don’t have passions. Some of them are incredibly smart but they learn things/have accomplishments solely for the world to be impressed by them. They do brag a lot. On the other hand really knowledgegable people are quite modest as they truly understand how little they know.
- javajosh 6y ago
  I think I understand sentence 2, but the meaning of 1 and 3 elude me! But I disagree with your last sentence, at least as a generalization. There are legitimately talented, accomplished, capable, and arrogant people all over the place! In fact I'd say a slight majority of talented people are arrogant (say, 60%). That said, there are pretenders who are arrogant without talent, and they "poison the well" for the 60%. I think this is especially a problem in software, because the field is still "pre-paradigmatic science" (in the Kuhn sense) which means, in part, that there is no great way to measure relative developer capability. The best you can do is examine their history of "finishing hard things" or "solving synthetically hard problems." How fast and well do you learn? What is your intuition about design, about code? Do you actually care about the structure of software enough to have opinions about it? The biggest problem we face is that the really good developers answer yes to the last question, but then are faced with the dilemma of being forced to dwell in an inferior technology space in order to make a living. Presumably a strong paradigm would reduce this error mode! If you had ideas around defining that paradigm for software applications, somewhere between the too-abstract Turing machine/Lambda Calculus and the too-concrete "everything is just a string of bits" mental models, would that make you narcissistic? Or just too ignorant to realize that "the best paradigm" is too subjective to define, or illusory, or already discovered (and ignored)? Was Lavoisier, and the other scientists that converted the practice of alchemy into the practice of chemistry narcissists because they competed with each other for recognition and fame?
  - tartoran 6y ago
    Was talking about narcissism not arrogance which by itself doesn’t imply narcissism. Some of the mentioned scientists may have been narcissists but it’s hard to impossible to diagnose people like that, especially ones who are no longer around. And there’s also a distinction between narcissism (the persobality disorder) and narcissitic traits which we all have to some degree. If you’re curious about the subject I recommend watching Sam Vaknin youtube. He is a narcissist but also extremely an intelligent intellect. He is not hiding the fact that he is a narcissist and has a very interesting insight
idealboy 6y ago
From the article, I think this is the important distinction with spirituality versus your other examples: “And because spiritual matters are generally ‘elusive to external objective standards,’ that makes them a ‘suitable domain for illusory beliefs about one’s superiority.’” In bodybuilding or science, there are objective standards that you can be measured against. In spirituality, it’s oftentimes too easy to claim superiority without any method of objective measurement. I think that’s what makes it so appealing to some people.
- javajosh 6y ago
  >without any method of objective measurement [of spiritual superiority] I guess I disagree with this assertion, then. There is a way to objectively measure your spiritual superiority, and that's to examine the person and where they are, and what direction they are going- wrt their behavior. What are their qualities? Patient? Honest? Hard-working? Organized? Reliable? Easy-going? Empathic? Insightful? Generous? Good judgement? I think that you can't be all of those things (all of which require emotional/reactive control) without your spirituality (and physicality, it must be said) being in good order. And this is all observable.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    > There is a way to objectively measure your spiritual superiority Saying things like this is a good way to indicate that one has not yet reached enlightenment.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    That's a very dangerous road you're suggesting walking down there, "observing" others and making judgements about the whole of their character based on isolated examples is a fruitful source of prejudice and cognitive bias.
    - javajosh 6y ago
      Well, no. In the best case you have a panopticon into their life. But since people will rarely give you that in real life, you do the best you can and always take what you observe with a grain of salt.

tartoran 6y ago

Id even go as far as looking at their acomplishments. If they say they’re superior but have nothing to show then it is possible we’re dealing with some form of narcissism. They may as well have acomplishments and be narcissistic. Narcissists don’t have passions. Some of them are incredibly smart but they learn things/have accomplishments solely for the world to be impressed by them. They do brag a lot. On the other hand really knowledgegable people are quite modest as they truly understand how little they know.

javajosh 6y ago
I think I understand sentence 2, but the meaning of 1 and 3 elude me! But I disagree with your last sentence, at least as a generalization. There are legitimately talented, accomplished, capable, and arrogant people all over the place! In fact I'd say a slight majority of talented people are arrogant (say, 60%). That said, there are pretenders who are arrogant without talent, and they "poison the well" for the 60%. I think this is especially a problem in software, because the field is still "pre-paradigmatic science" (in the Kuhn sense) which means, in part, that there is no great way to measure relative developer capability. The best you can do is examine their history of "finishing hard things" or "solving synthetically hard problems." How fast and well do you learn? What is your intuition about design, about code? Do you actually care about the structure of software enough to have opinions about it? The biggest problem we face is that the really good developers answer yes to the last question, but then are faced with the dilemma of being forced to dwell in an inferior technology space in order to make a living. Presumably a strong paradigm would reduce this error mode! If you had ideas around defining that paradigm for software applications, somewhere between the too-abstract Turing machine/Lambda Calculus and the too-concrete "everything is just a string of bits" mental models, would that make you narcissistic? Or just too ignorant to realize that "the best paradigm" is too subjective to define, or illusory, or already discovered (and ignored)? Was Lavoisier, and the other scientists that converted the practice of alchemy into the practice of chemistry narcissists because they competed with each other for recognition and fame?
- tartoran 6y ago
  Was talking about narcissism not arrogance which by itself doesn’t imply narcissism. Some of the mentioned scientists may have been narcissists but it’s hard to impossible to diagnose people like that, especially ones who are no longer around. And there’s also a distinction between narcissism (the persobality disorder) and narcissitic traits which we all have to some degree. If you’re curious about the subject I recommend watching Sam Vaknin youtube. He is a narcissist but also extremely an intelligent intellect. He is not hiding the fact that he is a narcissist and has a very interesting insight

idealboy 6y ago

From the article, I think this is the important distinction with spirituality versus your other examples: “And because spiritual matters are generally ‘elusive to external objective standards,’ that makes them a ‘suitable domain for illusory beliefs about one’s superiority.’” In bodybuilding or science, there are objective standards that you can be measured against. In spirituality, it’s oftentimes too easy to claim superiority without any method of objective measurement. I think that’s what makes it so appealing to some people.

javajosh 6y ago
>without any method of objective measurement [of spiritual superiority] I guess I disagree with this assertion, then. There is a way to objectively measure your spiritual superiority, and that's to examine the person and where they are, and what direction they are going- wrt their behavior. What are their qualities? Patient? Honest? Hard-working? Organized? Reliable? Easy-going? Empathic? Insightful? Generous? Good judgement? I think that you can't be all of those things (all of which require emotional/reactive control) without your spirituality (and physicality, it must be said) being in good order. And this is all observable.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > There is a way to objectively measure your spiritual superiority Saying things like this is a good way to indicate that one has not yet reached enlightenment.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  That's a very dangerous road you're suggesting walking down there, "observing" others and making judgements about the whole of their character based on isolated examples is a fruitful source of prejudice and cognitive bias.
  - javajosh 6y ago
    Well, no. In the best case you have a panopticon into their life. But since people will rarely give you that in real life, you do the best you can and always take what you observe with a grain of salt.