I would rather have second-rate politicians who know they are duffers than ones who believe they are brilliant.
Nice line. Read the whole post. Pointer from Mark Thoma.
In The Secret of Our Success, Joseph Henrich argues that individual humans are not so very intelligent on our own. Instead, it is out collective culturally-acquired knowledge that is impressive. One implication that I draw from this is that we should not be looking for some superior intellect to run our lives. Our lives are better run by drawing on our collective wisdom.
Collective knowledge and collective wisdom are two very different things, and only one of them is impressive.
Warren Buffett said about CEOs something to the effect that “you want energy, intelligence, and ethics. But without the last one, the first two will get you killed.”
“…it is out collective culturally-acquired knowledge that is impressive.”
I was just reading this interesting piece from SSC which is relevant to that idea:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/03/what-developmental-milestones-are-you-missing/
This jumped out at me.
“I remember reading this piece by Nathan Robinson, where he compares his own liberal principles saying that colleges shouldn’t endorse war-violence-glorifying film “American Sniper” to some conservatives arguing that colleges shouldn’t endorse homosexuality-glorifying book “Fun Home”:”
I think they shouldn’t endorse anything, and I don’t think mine is just a 3rd equally valid opinion. I think my opinion is correct and people who don’t hold it are wrong. That it doesn’t at least occur to the author (or presumably anybody else because they can’t even recognize the 2nd equally viable opinion held by nearly half the population) that aspiring for neutrality might at least equally viable is “problematic.”