What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

This is different from confidence, where you don't have to advertise your strengths. You show, rather than tell. There is no expectation put on the audience -- they are free to come to their own conclusions rather than be told what to think. That annoying sense of neediness is not present.

I think this places a lot of trust in audiences to know how to appraise a skill accurately. Since we've settled on bench press for an example, I'd bet that most people register 315lb and 405lb bench presses as "a lot", as some nebulously huge amount of weight in their head, even though someone who can bench 405lb is enormously more rare than someone who can bench press 315lb. (315lb is rare as it is; here's a discussion of this.) You might also expect people to estimate (based on your musculature) that you can bench a lot, but observers have no idea what that number actually is, so expecting people to guess that you can bench some vaguely large number because of some mental correlation with you being a large person is hardly an actual understanding of your skill.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

I think this places a lot of trust in audiences to know how to appraise a skill accurately. Since we've settled on bench press for an example, I'd bet that most people register 315lb and 405lb bench presses as "a lot", as some nebulously huge amount of weight in their head, even though someone who can bench 405lb is enormously more rare than someone who can bench press 315lb. (315lb is rare as it is; here's a discussion of this.) You might also expect people to estimate (based on your musculature) that you can bench a lot, but observers have no idea what that number actually is, so expecting people to guess that you can bench some vaguely large number because of some mental correlation with you being a large person is hardly an actual understanding of your skill.

Sure -- but I suppose what I am trying to say is that a confident person would not necessarily care if the audience can't appraise his skill accurately.

I think it again calls into question why someone would need the audience to understand exactly how good he/she is in the first place.

[~kitty~]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Sure -- but I suppose what I am trying to say is that a confident person would not necessarily care if the audience can't appraise his skill accurately.

I think it again calls into question why someone would need the audience to understand exactly how good he/she is in the first place.

For some people, it would probably be an issue of acceptance or recognition. That what you accomplished actually means something. I mean, it's the same reason why people care about trophies or achievements in games that are available on your gamer profile.

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Sure -- but I suppose what I am trying to say is that a confident person would not necessarily care if the audience can't appraise his skill accurately.

I think it again calls into question why someone would need the audience to understand exactly how good he/she is in the first place.

I think "need" is used hyperbolically here. Why does this behavior imply need, as opposed to desire or enjoyment?

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

I think "need" is used hyperbolically here. Why does this behavior imply need, as opposed to desire or enjoyment?

It doesn't (necessarily). I'm defining it in the context of being labeled a braggart. Moreover, I'm trying to say that this is largely a perception issue.

For example:

Someone who just casually brings up a feat of theirs ("My personal best was about 400 pounds or so!") is not necessarily bragging. You could easily devise a number of hypothetical conversations, slip that statement in, and nobody would really get turned off by it (standalone).

What's going to get interpreted as bragging is if that self-promotion is permeating the conversation to some sufficient threshold based on the receiving audience and conversational context. If someone is constantly bragging to me about their awesome achievements, it's going to make me think "Why is this person telling me all of this? Is he trying to get me to compliment him or acknowledge that he's superior to me or something? Is he trying to make me feel worse about myself? Am I simply being used as a captive audience / narcissistic supply and nothing more?" etc.

[stargroup100]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

I think this places a lot of trust in audiences to know how to appraise a skill accurately... You might also expect people to estimate (based on your musculature) that you can bench a lot, but observers have no idea what that number actually is, so expecting people to guess that you can bench some vaguely large number because of some mental correlation with you being a large person is hardly an actual understanding of your skill.

What Rubix and I have been trying to tell you is that we wouldn't be talking about arrogance anymore, at least not in this context. What he meant by "needing the audience to know" is more technically equivalent to "the purpose of bragging". What does this person want to accomplish by telling people this?

Whether or not someone is arrogant or not does necessarily depend on what he says is true/demonstrable or not, but rather social context. They can believe you and understand correctly and you could still be arrogant. They can think you're lying in addition to not understanding what you actually mean and yet you could be not arrogant. These factors are [usually] independent. (You can construct situations in which the belief and its interpretation influences social perception, but in the end what matters is that percpetion.)

Rubix explained it quite well in the posts above me, better than I could have.

[Cavernio]

Arch's ideology, it appears to me, is that truth is the most important thing. To avoid talking about something, or to purposefully hide something or downplay it or whatever, means that you're hiding the truth, and it seems he has adopted the stance that hiding truth is somehow morally reprehensible. (I am unsure if this ideology is what he actually believes or if he's just trying to place context and further thinking of the last CT thread he started like a year ago, about sock-puppeting, but anyways...)

My take on this is that, again, truth is firstly, always hidden-unless it's something being thought about at that given point of time, that truth is, in a sense 'hidden'. In that way, bringing up something like your personal best bench-pressing record once is alright. But bringing it up until someone acknowledges to you 'yes, fuck, you're amazing at this' angrily, has angered someone. Someone can see a perspective or truth and not talk about it. Because, again, to constantly be reminded of one's failings causes mental health issues, is bad, etc. To be angry at people who are braggarts is probably more an innate defense mechanism that everyone has to a degree, to keep oneself emotionally/mentally in a healthy state of mind such that the person can function.
The only reason this would not be an issue is if the person is largely uninfluenced by events and people around them in the first place.

[Cavernio]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

I think "need" is used hyperbolically here. Why does this behavior imply need, as opposed to desire or enjoyment?

...'Need' as a word taken by itself is always hyperbolic...

[Reincarnate]

I think this discussion is going to be difficult to have until we more clearly define certain cases.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

2. Arrogance is sometimes considered having a falsely high opinion of oneself, which would suggest it's only a problem if your opinion of yourself is false.

Outlining a few scenarios here:

1. Having an opinion of yourself that is "falsely high" because the assessment of the skill is out of sync with reality (e.g. thinking you're exceptionally good at benchpressing when you may just be slightly above average).

2. Having an opinion of yourself that's "falsely high" because the assessment of self is out of sync with reality, even though the skill is assessed accurately (e.g. because you can bench 450, you think this makes you a superior person to everyone else and gives you justification to brag and/or talk down to others).

3. Having an opinion of yourself that's "falsely high" because the assessment of self is out of sync with reality, as well as the skill (e.g. because you can bench 200... etc).


Scenario 1 I would say is not arrogant by itself. Falsely assessing your own skill says nothing about how you relay or impart that perception to others.

Scenarios 2 and 3 are much more arrogant because the individual is using their perceived skill level to justify treating others like shit.

You might ask "Isn't Scenario 3 more arrogant than Scenario 2 due to the false assessment of one's own skill?" I'd say it depends on personal preference. Some people really hate being insulted by those they can't outmatch, whereas others might hate being insulted by people who are full of hot air. Depends on one's sensitivity to, say, bullying vs. bullshitting, etc. I'm not using those terms rigorously here or anything, but just giving some first-order examples to illustrate that the underlying truth of the claim is more of an "adjustment" factor rather than a root driver of arrogance-perception itself.

I think someone who is a braggart is not necessarily arrogant (although they can be). They may just be very insecure or egocentric, which is still insufferable to be around because of the neediness.

Being an arrogant braggart is an even worse combination. It's like insulting the very people you're also demanding validation from.

[Arch0wl]

Thanks for the distinctions, Rubix. I think you could be clearer about general superiority vs. domain-specific superiority, but that's more of a side-discussion although I'd be interested in pursuing it in you are. By domain-specific superiority: someone who bench presses 405 is superior to someone who benches 315 in benching, and may indirectly be superior in other strength-related things depending on how this ability transfers, but would not be superior to someone at, say, chess for this ability because they're completely unconnected.

Of course, the possibility of someone being generally superior to another person seems either impossible or very much possible depending on how you're defining hierarchies of things. I'm sure someone exists who tops percentile rankings in nearly everything most people care about (or the top things that lots of people value), but you could say that this person still wouldn't be superior to anyone because they aren't superior in every domain ever, nevermind that some domains allow for intersubjective superiority but are ultimately subjective (i.e. you can be "more attractive" in the sense that you are most attractive to the largest number of people, but ultimately some people just won't find you attractive) and some are purely subjective period, i.e. your skill at "being a good boyfriend/girlfriend" is completely dependent on what your partner thinks this means.

I've never heard anyone actually consider this question ("what would a general superiority even be / what would it mean to be superior to someone else anyway?") beyond a very shallow examination of it ("duh some people are obviously better" / "no one is better than anyone else"), so if you have any thoughts on it I'd like to hear them. It's by default an emotional topic because to say that some people are better than others (or are not, but this happens much more on the 'are' side) provokes readers into thinking the person saying this thinks themselves superior in this way, and that they're arguing it out of self-interest. That is an ad hominem circumstantial argument, but it's practically built into the discussion.

Originally Posted by Cavernio

My take on this is that, again, truth is firstly, always hidden-unless it's something being thought about at that given point of time, that truth is, in a sense 'hidden'. In that way, bringing up something like your personal best bench-pressing record once is alright.

This is really a side discussion, but I'm not sure how this would account for things like external reality and so on. Logical truths (i.e. in mathematics or various systems of logic) are true but based on reasons that can be verified independent of one person's considerations of those things.

[stargroup100]

Assuming we're going a bit off-topic, talking about superiority like you described and not necessarily about arrogance anymore:

There are some things in this world that are so general and vague that I don't think you can analyze them, but interestingly can still say something meaningful. This is because while you may not be able to compare two things that are close to each other, you can still see large differences. (Example: You may not always be able to tell if something is a fruit, but if you were given something obvious like a piano or a hammer you can still confidently say it's not a fruit.)


But that's just one way of looking at it. An even more important point, I think, is the fact that "general superiority" is a meaningless concept in itself, as it is not demonstrable or indicative of anything.

"So what if he's superior to me? Does that mean he's better than me at something? Do more people like him?"

If you can even answer the "so what?" question, then you've just explained the context in which he is superior, as well as the particular "subjective hierarchy" you just mentioned. This is no longer "general superiority" in the general sense you're thinking of, as everyone who is now being compared to that person will be compared with that particular hierarchy that was just explained.


There are also different contexts for the two statements "duh some people are obviously better" and "no one is better than anyone else".
"Duh some people are obviously better" is talking about how everyone approaches things in their own way, and since everyone's approaches are unique, then they cannot be totally equivalent in terms of being better than another approach.
"No one is better than anyone else" is more talking about a human's moral worth. This is no longer talking about skills or intelligence or anything of that kind, but a more ideal representation of how people should treat and think of each other.
These are two completely different things. One has to do with more social issues, while the other is in fact demonstrable and inherently true in many ways.


ps this puts you in tier 3 XD

[Arch0wl]

I can't believe you brought up your tier system in this thread. If you want to start a discussion about that, you can keep it to your thread, but bringing this up in another thread invites criticism of your system across multiple threads.

[Arch0wl]

Okay, the first part of this reply is a really necessary kind of reply, even though it's a boring one

Originally Posted by stargroup100

There are also different contexts for the two statements "duh some people are obviously better" and "no one is better than anyone else".
"Duh some people are obviously better" is talking about how everyone approaches things in their own way, and since everyone's approaches are unique, then they cannot be totally equivalent in terms of being better than another approach.
"No one is better than anyone else" is more talking about a human's moral worth. This is no longer talking about skills or intelligence or anything of that kind, but a more ideal representation of how people should treat and think of each other.
These are two completely different things. One has to do with more social issues, while the other is in fact demonstrable and inherently true in many ways.

You can't make these inferences from these sentences. Since I have the suspicion that when I say this kind of thing it's not established what I mean, I'll elaborate: If you had tried to make this kind of inference on any reading test, it would be considered invalid, because the words as written don't support this kind of conclusion, and if you're trying to say that anything implies anything it needs to follow from what's written; even if you had said "how I read this is correct given the subtext", this would only be true if a subtext through repeated use of the phrasing such that it's established ("nice house, would be a shame if something happened to it"); since this is not the case with the words as written, you can't just take your own interpretation as a subtext.

A great deal of what makes an argument justified or not is dependent on whether you accurately paraphrase what you're trying to say, so not only is correctly interpreting/reading/rephrasing these things not trivial/"arguing semantics"/whatever, it's perhaps the most important thing if you're going to have a true conclusion.

If you're unclear on why this is necessary to bring up, it's because if you read a sentence like "duh some people are obviously better" (which in the original context should read as "duh some people obviously have general superiority over others") and take this to mean "some people obviously approach things in their own way", you're gathering meaning from nowhere and your argument is effectively speculation because you haven't actually addressed the argument in the first place, you're responding to something imaginary. Someone who says "duh some people obviously have general superiority" doesn't actually have to be right, first of all, they could think that people are generally superior to others based on some kind of intrinsic superiority in a eugenics sense or whatever, so saying "they think everyone approaches things in their own way" is out of nowhere given the meaning of the sentence. "No one is better than anyone else" absolutely does not have to connote morality -- someone who believes their race is superior to others based on traits like hair color, eye color, physicality and so on wouldn't invoke morality, and someone who says "no, you're wrong, no one is better than anyone else" would just be presenting a negation of the racial supremacist's view.

I don't know how you process these things, but in the event that you read the above paragraphs as antagonistic, know that I'm not trying to be; it may come off that way because the language is deliberately negating, but language that may read this way is also the clearest and simultaneously most neutral way to identify perceived errors in the above quote, which is ultimately a more important concern.

Originally Posted by stargroup100

"So what if he's superior to me? Does that mean he's better than me at something? Do more people like him?"

If you can even answer the "so what?" question, then you've just explained the context in which he is superior, as well as the particular "subjective hierarchy" you just mentioned. This is no longer "general superiority" in the general sense you're thinking of, as everyone who is now being compared to that person will be compared with that particular hierarchy that was just explained.

What I think you're trying to say here is that since every claim to superiority can be narrowed to a specific domain, general superiority could not exist. I don't think I disagree, but it misunderstands the kind of arguments people make in favor of general superiority (even if they don't call it that.)

Someone who believes that they're actually able to be "better than other people" probably thinks that some hierarchies are more valued than others -- to give an extremely obvious example, men will dump far more money into penis enlargement than improving their FFR scores. So someone who believes in this idea might say that a finite number of hierarchies (domains you can be better than someone at) represent a majority or the bulk of valued traits by other people, and being better at those things determines general superiority. To elaborate further: being better at football is probably worth more, in the sense of hierarchy-to-hierarchy comparison, than being better at Starcraft; some SC players probably make more than people who are good but not great at football, but the 99th percentile of football players will absolutely make more money from this ability than the 99th percentile of Starcraft players. This of course ties superiority in some domain to value, monetary or not.

However, I'm not sure how strong this argument is, since tying this to value carries a strong if not complete dollar connotation. I know that a lot of people wouldn't date, say, this guy, and I know a lot of people who know people like this guy; this kind of person isn't even limited to bankers, and in fact exists in a variety of fields. Yet, he's objectively quite more valuable than other people in terms of dollar value. It's worth asking: how many people would tolerate him if he were a billionaire, as opposed to just a millionaire? I have no idea how many different ways of modeling value exist, so it could be also that a model of value exists that explains how someone can be quite wealthy but still regarded as undesirable.

I think someone who thinks something like "[trait] makes me better than you as a whole" either thinks that whatever trait this is supersedes all other traits in the sense that it's more valuable, or that the trait pyramids down to other traits. I know some people view intelligence this way, in the sense that they think by having sufficiently powerful intelligence someone will a priori come to all or most correct conclusions about the world. This is not true for a variety of reasons, but I think it identifies the nature of the error in terms of a specific pattern of reasoning, rather than just "this conclusion is unacceptable on grounds of outrage" or whatever.

[stargroup100]

Ah, sorry about that last comment, I wanted to lighten the mood and poke fun a bit. If it was inappropriate I apologize.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

You can't make these inferences from these sentences.

Here's what you wrote:

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

I've never heard anyone actually consider this question ("what would a general superiority even be / what would it mean to be superior to someone else anyway?") beyond a very shallow examination of it ("duh some people are obviously better" / "no one is better than anyone else"), so if you have any thoughts on it I'd like to hear them.

Looking back I guess I didn't clarify enough. Basically I was responding to the fact that you said how those two sentences could be interpreted as shallow examinations. I'm trying to argue that those two sentences offer two possible answers, neither of which is complete, and that this is a demonstration of why the question "What is general superiority?" is meaningless.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

If you're unclear on why this is necessary to bring up, it's because if you read a sentence like "duh some people are obviously better" (which in the original context should read as "duh some people obviously have general superiority over others") and take this to mean "some people obviously approach things in their own way", you're gathering meaning from nowhere and your argument is effectively speculation because you haven't actually addressed the argument in the first place, you're responding to something imaginary.

I wasn't saying "duh some people are obviously better" implies "some people obviously approach things in their own way", but rather the second statement offers an explanation of why under a certain context the first statement is obviously true. I phrased it the way I did because people can have radically different ideas that are both valid regarding a particular issue, and I wanted to acknowledge that.

I'm pretty sure the misunderstanding comes from my poor explanation though. I could have probably just said that it is impossible for everyone to be equally skilled at a particular thing, which is far more direct.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Someone who says "duh some people obviously have general superiority" doesn't actually have to be right, first of all, they could think that people are generally superior to others based on some kind of intrinsic superiority in a eugenics sense or whatever...

What I think you're trying to say here is that since every claim to superiority can be narrowed to a specific domain, general superiority could not exist. I don't think I disagree, but it misunderstands the kind of arguments people make in favor of general superiority (even if they don't call it that.)

I think I misunderstood the main point of your question this whole time. If I'm correct this time, you're asking about what causes someone to have different perceptions of general superiority, not what general superiority actually constitutes.

So far I have only really addressed the fact that the notion of general superiority in the absolute sense is meaningless, what you already seem to agree with (or at least don't disagree). I have not mentioned much about how people perceive general superiority, which I think is probably a much more open-ended question. My bad.

[Arch0wl]

Thanks, your post makes more sense following your clarifications.

[Xtreme2252]

I personally think it's good to be proud of your accomplishments. To me, arrogance is when you disregard other people's skills and accomplishments and disparage them and make excuses as to why others are lesser than yourself even though they've shown themselves to be equal or greater in a particular skill and have been humble about it.

For example, one of my friends is incredibly arrogant about League of Legends. He is Silver III with 600+ ranked games played in S4, and I'm Gold V with 300+ games played, yet he is jealous of me and blames his being stuck in Silver III on bad teammates and not himself, and he plays very selfishly, afk farming when he could group with his team and costing many matches he should be winning if he could be less self-centered.

[klimtkiller]

to me, arrogance is showing how much better you are at something than someone else purposely.

[V-Ormix]

arrogance to me seems like your inconsiderate of the reality you live in and forget how extensive everything that goes around you is that "your best" is the best if you cant comprehend better than your best cause how could some one be "better" than you?

Kind of like thinking you are the best cause no one in your "opinion" does what you do like you do so it cant be as good to "you". I'm better cause I said so, not out of taking the time to imagine every possible scenario of how some one could be better than me leading to a more reasonable conclusion.

Traits of what I refer to as one of the roots of evil: selfishness x)

[_Zenith_]

Originally Posted by Xtreme2252

For example, one of my friends is incredibly arrogant about League of Legends. He is Silver III with 600+ ranked games played in S4, and I'm Gold V with 300+ games played, yet he is jealous of me and blames his being stuck in Silver III on bad teammates and not himself, and he plays very selfishly, afk farming when he could group with his team and costing many matches he should be winning if he could be less self-centered.

Thread name, meet best explanation of thread name words.

[FoJaR]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Questions for discussion:

- What do you think arrogance is, first of all -- is it a false opinion of yourself? Is it a high opinion of yourself period? If you are legitimately one of the best at something as confirmed by rankings or whatever, and say you are, is this arrogance?

high opinion period. michael jordan in his prime, best player in the game. anyone can say it but him. everyone should have said it. if he says it, it's arrogance.

- Why do you think arrogance/bragging is taboo in some places but not others?

well first i'd like to see a map of where it's taboo vs where it's acceptable, and then i'll start conjecturing.

- Let's put the question in reverse: if you're one of the best at something and act humble, e.g. your behavior doesn't reflect how good you are, is this dishonest? Are you painting an inaccurate picture of yourself?

only if you are actually being dishonest. if you're really good at something, chances are that it's either really easy to be really good at that thing, which means that you're not special, or that you probably dont know enough or arent self aware enough to know where your shortcomings are.

spending time comparing yourself to the people around you is pointless anyways.