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).
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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).