Generally speaking, I don't know why anyone could/would look at someone's skills and think anything other than "damn, they are good at that specific thing". If you apply any moral, ethical or role model paradigm to them, you will surely be disappointed. This goes for programmers, athletes, politicians and every other person in the world.
I don't think positive or negative of anyone until they prove otherwise, but I do note that I'm quite pleasantly surprised when someone with great skills turns out to be a genuinely nice person. Though, I am not surprised when they turn out to be assholes.
Bottom line, don't mix someones demeanor or attitude with their skills.
I might just be lucky, but I've had the opposite experiences in my corner of academia. Most jerks turn out to be at best moderately skilled in a narrow technical area of competence, while most brilliant people are quite pleasant and even humble.
Most of the dismissive/arrogant people I've met at conferences tend to be moderately intelligent junior professors with a chip on their shoulder. Meanwhile, the genuinely brilliant and famous folks are enjoyable to talk to; three of the nicest people I've met at a conference are probably three of the most famous (Robert Moog, Craig Reynolds, and Espen Aarseth).
Some could be the particular social dynamics of this area, e.g. junior professors are still trying to climb a career ladder and feel they need to network at conferences with important people, while already-established people are happy to talk to grad students. (And of course there are exceptions.)
Alternately, the causality could go the other way: i.e. people who are humble and friendly and who treat everyone they talk to with respect and genuine interest (as opposed to sucking up to those above and ignoring those below) might end up famous because people enjoy working with them.
Yes, and the mechanism for this is no mystery. Academia is a political game. Your peers vote to give you tenure. They vote, anonymously, on whether to publish your papers. They vote, anonymously, on whether to give you grants. If you want smart students, you have to recruit them. Et cetera.
You do have to be smart, but you also have to make friends.
(And, let me hasten to add, there's nothing particularly wrong with this. The point of academia is to build knowledge by connecting with your students and your peers: Teaching, and learning. Socializing is the name of the game. If you want to hide in your closet being an isolated cranky genius you don't need the university, and vice versa. Well, except maybe for the libraries. There's a reason why research libraries have the reputation of being filled with slightly crazy cranky people. ;)
Perhaps your experience with brilliant people is actually a good reflection on your own attitude. I can imagine brilliant people acting "arrogant" towards people who expect too much from them, but acting nice towards people who are not unreasonably demanding, otherwise they'd get swamped. This would not explain the arrogance of the moderately intelligent though, but I guess social interactions are a bit complex, so there will be quite a few factors in play.
My particle physics professor in college said that he'd met a few Nobel Laureautes, and every one of them was a massive jerk, but maybe it was sour grapes (he was a pretty pleasant individual, though).
The Halo effect is a well-known cognitive bias that almost everyone applies instinctively to some degree. You can try to avoid it, but chances are that you'll automatically rate someone who comes to your attention in a positive way (by writing great code, by being a pleasant conversationalist, or simply beautiful) as generally more competent and even morally superior to some degree.
I agree with you rationally, but I do see why people would do otherwise. To an extent I did so myself, and I'm abnormally rational.
I think it's because people see things that they consider 'good causes' (be it open source software or doing medical work in refugee camps in Africa) through rose-colored glasses. I guess that sounds like stating the obvious, but it's not until one does these things for long enough that one is really confronted with the realities and gets a more 'fundamental' understanding of these dynamics than just rationally 'knowing' but not internalizing it.
The reverse also applies. I have seen the sentiment that great hackers are antisocial, great artists are assholes etc. This is of course not (aways) true either.
If I understand you correctly, you think greater skills to some extend correlates with not beeing nice. This is not my experience. For some personalities skill leads to confidence, for others to arrogance.
There are common cases where the moral, ethical, and role model paradigms do, in fact, all apply because of what those persons represent (e.g. teachers and peace officers). Ethics of course has a much broader application as a fundamental part of what it means to be a skilled practitioner (e.g. the in fields of law, healthcare, finance, and civil service). Even in normal business transactions ethics and morals plays an important part in coloring our opinions from how we feel about Nintendo's right to brick one's hardware to our willingness to hire a crackhead as a janitor.
Because you usually think you have come to your "moral, ethical paradigm" by reason, therefore you expect intelligent people to share the same paradigm. We also usually take technical skills as a symptom of intelligence.
Comments
Generally speaking, I don't know why anyone could/would look at someone's skills and think anything other than "damn, they are good at that specific thing". If you apply any moral, ethical or role model paradigm to them, you will surely be disappointed. This goes for programmers, athletes, politicians and every other person in the world.
I don't think positive or negative of anyone until they prove otherwise, but I do note that I'm quite pleasantly surprised when someone with great skills turns out to be a genuinely nice person. Though, I am not surprised when they turn out to be assholes.
Bottom line, don't mix someones demeanor or attitude with their skills.
I might just be lucky, but I've had the opposite experiences in my corner of academia. Most jerks turn out to be at best moderately skilled in a narrow technical area of competence, while most brilliant people are quite pleasant and even humble.
Most of the dismissive/arrogant people I've met at conferences tend to be moderately intelligent junior professors with a chip on their shoulder. Meanwhile, the genuinely brilliant and famous folks are enjoyable to talk to; three of the nicest people I've met at a conference are probably three of the most famous (Robert Moog, Craig Reynolds, and Espen Aarseth).
Some could be the particular social dynamics of this area, e.g. junior professors are still trying to climb a career ladder and feel they need to network at conferences with important people, while already-established people are happy to talk to grad students. (And of course there are exceptions.)
Alternately, the causality could go the other way: i.e. people who are humble and friendly and who treat everyone they talk to with respect and genuine interest (as opposed to sucking up to those above and ignoring those below) might end up famous because people enjoy working with them.
Yes, and the mechanism for this is no mystery. Academia is a political game. Your peers vote to give you tenure. They vote, anonymously, on whether to publish your papers. They vote, anonymously, on whether to give you grants. If you want smart students, you have to recruit them. Et cetera.
You do have to be smart, but you also have to make friends.
(And, let me hasten to add, there's nothing particularly wrong with this. The point of academia is to build knowledge by connecting with your students and your peers: Teaching, and learning. Socializing is the name of the game. If you want to hide in your closet being an isolated cranky genius you don't need the university, and vice versa. Well, except maybe for the libraries. There's a reason why research libraries have the reputation of being filled with slightly crazy cranky people. ;)
Perhaps your experience with brilliant people is actually a good reflection on your own attitude. I can imagine brilliant people acting "arrogant" towards people who expect too much from them, but acting nice towards people who are not unreasonably demanding, otherwise they'd get swamped. This would not explain the arrogance of the moderately intelligent though, but I guess social interactions are a bit complex, so there will be quite a few factors in play.
My particle physics professor in college said that he'd met a few Nobel Laureautes, and every one of them was a massive jerk, but maybe it was sour grapes (he was a pretty pleasant individual, though).
The Halo effect is a well-known cognitive bias that almost everyone applies instinctively to some degree. You can try to avoid it, but chances are that you'll automatically rate someone who comes to your attention in a positive way (by writing great code, by being a pleasant conversationalist, or simply beautiful) as generally more competent and even morally superior to some degree.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Halo_effect
I agree with you rationally, but I do see why people would do otherwise. To an extent I did so myself, and I'm abnormally rational.
I think it's because people see things that they consider 'good causes' (be it open source software or doing medical work in refugee camps in Africa) through rose-colored glasses. I guess that sounds like stating the obvious, but it's not until one does these things for long enough that one is really confronted with the realities and gets a more 'fundamental' understanding of these dynamics than just rationally 'knowing' but not internalizing it.
The reverse also applies. I have seen the sentiment that great hackers are antisocial, great artists are assholes etc. This is of course not (aways) true either.
If I understand you correctly, you think greater skills to some extend correlates with not beeing nice. This is not my experience. For some personalities skill leads to confidence, for others to arrogance.
There are common cases where the moral, ethical, and role model paradigms do, in fact, all apply because of what those persons represent (e.g. teachers and peace officers). Ethics of course has a much broader application as a fundamental part of what it means to be a skilled practitioner (e.g. the in fields of law, healthcare, finance, and civil service). Even in normal business transactions ethics and morals plays an important part in coloring our opinions from how we feel about Nintendo's right to brick one's hardware to our willingness to hire a crackhead as a janitor.
Because you usually think you have come to your "moral, ethical paradigm" by reason, therefore you expect intelligent people to share the same paradigm. We also usually take technical skills as a symptom of intelligence.
Like professional athletes, celebrities or politicians.