January 27, 2003

Intelligence and arrogance

There is nothing more confusing to me than someone who is arrogant about being smart. I have met many, many such people in my days and it just doesn't make sense. Let's break it down.

There are two types of ways that you could be arrogant about "being smart": being arrogant about having a lot of intelligence and being proud of knowing a lot. Now, I will not go into what "intelligence" means here (the ability to remember, to process, to identify trends, etc.) but this seems like the natural divisions of silly arrogant smart people:

1. I am a genius.
2. I know everything about x

I will start with 1.

I am a pretty tall person, about 6'2". There are a lot of people taller than me in the world, but overall I am probably in the top 5% of people in terms of height worldwide. I am not proud of this fact and do not hold my head up high to show people how tall I am. This is because I had absolutely nothing to do with me being tall.

People who are arrogant about being smart are bragging about being tall. Science thinks that smart kids are born smart and are influenced by their environment to be smarter. This brings us to our second point.

If you know everything about x then this is because you studied it for a long time. While I personally believe that you can never know everything about any subject without being silly, stupid, or blind to your own ignorance about the world, let's assume that you do.

You have worked hard, and are a worldwide expert in microwaves. You know everything about microwaves and you dominate Microwave Jeopardy at parties. For years you have studied in a graduate student cubbyhole, pouring over thousands of articles and user manuals, learning everything about these fascinating machines.

After all these years of study how can you be arrogant about your knowledge? Do you feel that other people could also reach this level of knowlege if they put in the same amount of work? Hmmm. If you do then you can't be arrogant about reaching this level; that would be like being arrogant of crossing the street. So you must feel as if only you could reach this goal only. You are uniquely destined to master the microwave. Why? Because you are smarter than most people and have the dedication and ability. This is just being proud of being smart.

So, what I am trying to say is the following. To be arrogant about anything is silly because to get somewhere you do two things:

1. Use your inborn skills, which are given to you through genetics, environment, and anything else beyond your control.
2. Work very hard.

To be arrogant about 1 is stupid because you had nothing to do with it. To be arrogant about 2 is silly because anybody can work as hard as you if they want it.

In order to be truly arrogant you basically have to believe that you are smart and that you are the only one that has the dedication to reach where you are. To believe this or that you are the smartest person ever born is quite simply immature given the changing nature of the world.

So overall I feel that arrogance about being "smart" or general arrogance about anything for that matter, is a form of immaturity.

January 27, 2003 05:38 PM