That bit threw me for a loop a bit since "a good sport" isn't someone who is good at sports, it's rather someone, well, friendly, agreeable and positive.
However people can’t just ignore someone like Taleb, even if they’d really like to, because he’s been so RIGHT about so many things, which exposes the flaws in their thinking.
But that's not enough for people to actually want to spend time with you; you have to bring more to the table, e.g. insightful cultural commentary, to make people laugh, or some sort of common ground. Navigating conversations to find common ground is much easier said than done. Doubly so for telling engaging and relatable stories to convey a sense of shared experience.
So I don't mean a preference for professional competence, but a preference for "social competence", acknowledging of course that it's also highly dependent on the culture.
To get more personal, I've been called "boring", "transparent", "predictable", "two dimensional". I think I'm probably more engaging than a script programmed to regurgitate platitudes, but some of my critics have suggested not by much!