Comments on: Blind Elites

By: Overcoming Bias : Just Enough Expertise?

Overcoming Bias : Just Enough Expertise? — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:23:38 +0000

[...] an audience. And unfortunately non-expert trolls, and their non-expert audiences, often simply cannot see when their arguments are “beaten” by experts. As Sean Carroll says: There is also an [...]

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 17:25:58 +0000

Regarding people being less able to distinguish levels of intelligence above their own, there’s a great scene in Good Will Hunting where Will gets tired of explaining a proof to Professor Lambeau, and Lambeau replies:
“it’s just a handful of people in the world who can tell the difference between you and me. But I’m one of them.”

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:23:39 +0000

jn, the issues you raise exist, but are somewhat besides the point that elites often can’t tell who is how smarter than they.

By: jn

jn — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:15:08 +0000

Maybe I am misreading this, but isn’t this really about the tradeoff between power/control vs effectiveness or productivity?

All else being equal, elites want to stay elite. But they also recognize that part of their status is tied to their group’s productivity and effectiveness.

Smart people (even narrowly construed) can aid their group but can also challenge their status. At the margin, they want smart people to become part of the group and aid their productivity without affecting their status.

In some fields, success is so obvious and so narrowly tied to one dimension that it is pointless to exclude smart people — even those who are otherwise the “wrong” social type.

In other cases, the markers for eliteness may have bearing on productivity (such as social awareness or stamina) or may simply be markers for in-group status. In the latter case, smarts without in-group markers may lead you to be excluded because the cost to the elites in terms of lowered productivity on the smart dimension is offset by loss on the effectiveness dimension or even on the power dimension. In the worst case, elites would prefer an objectively less productive person on all margins if the loss of productivity were smaller than the gain from excluding a potential rival.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:22:10 +0000

@rcriii — The explanation is even simpler, I think. Intelligence < Practice when it comes to being good at almost anything, including disciplines that seem to be about intelligence.

By: zzz

zzz — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:52:51 +0000

Thanks for your clarification, but I still don’t understand how this is a problem. If your field is saddled by elites who cannot tell whether people are productive or not, you’ve got a bigger problem than smart people staying out. Robin’s field is heavily math oriented: presumably a journalism teacher would have no problem grading their students’ writing quality, even though a math-econ paper would leave him stumped.

By: rcriii

rcriii — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:01:43 +0000

zzz, I did read the post. Robin has more than once posted about ‘smart’ people not doing as well at something as you’d think. Here the thesis seems to be that there are good reasons for smart people to either conceal their ability or stay away from certain aspects of life since their intelligence is not easily (properly?) rewarded.

I think that the explanation is simpler: 1) intelligence is not one-dimensional and not all the dimensions are useful in any given endeavor. 2) There are more traits that determine success than ‘smarts’.

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:58:23 +0000

I have observed that people seem to be capable of distinguishing intelligence up to around one standard deviation above themselves – anyone smarter than that is just “very smart”. This creates problems when you’re in an argument with someone considerably below you and considerably above part of the audience – e.g., a modern evolutionary biologist arguing with an articulate theologian in front of a college-educated audience.

But, on this same theory, bona-fide elites should be able to tell if you are smarter than them – they may not know how much smarter you are, but they’ll be able to tell you’re smarter. A hacker should be able to distinguish a superhacker, a mathematician should be able to distinguish a supermathematician.

It’s the “elites” who are faking it, who have no criterion of discrimination apart from how much people agree with their theories, who will be unable to distinguish.

By: zzz

zzz — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:24:02 +0000

“Robin, it appears as if you use the word ‘smart’ as a proxy for ability,”

Read more carefully before posting, you’ve got the whole thing backwards. Robin clearly states that better outcomes may or may not reveal intelligence, depending on the specific area of life.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:28:08 +0000

Greg and Rciii, yes, cognitive abilities are multidimensional and in part context specific.

John, yes, the point is more that for many cognitive abilities, your ability to distinguish levels diminishes above your own level.

Chuck, nice quote, if we could find it.