The Cynical Genius Illusion (2018)

One might argue that incompetent people are cynical because, without the insulation and support structures that foster education, they are more attuned with the one true cynical reality of the world.

Another might argue that incompetent people are cynical because, without sufficient intellectual capacity, they are susceptible to false ideas concerning the one true non-cynical reality of the world.

The hopelessness and hopefulness of reality can be endlessly debated, but ultimately, it's up to the individual to choose which of these to put their faith in. I agree that that an overall cynical view could be an adaptation to defend against the threat of being taken advantage of. One should weigh this against whether or not such a worldview truly works in your favor. Amazing advances have been made in this world over the past few centuries, and I can't accept the notion that these come about through cynicism rather than hope for the future.

Holding a position that rejects human progress requires one to believe that good is ultimately insignificant. Judging by the increasing suicide rates of young people, this seems to be a modern problem, and so perhaps the solution can be found if we look towards the traditions that have unified humanity in the past.

This is a poor starting point, since there are also neutral and positive appraisals of self-interest as the ultimate motive. That includes biologists from Darwin to Dawkins and economists from Smith to Hayek.

  It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.

This very principal is behind the rise of conspiracy theories in times of upheaval and uncertainty throughout history, including during the pandemic.

That's rational behavior when the rate of incoming scams is several per hour or worse. The processing load imposed by today's sheer quantity of scam input is huge.

For example, people might resist paying taxes in the context of high levels of governmental corruption, as evidenced by a governmental failure to deal with widespread problems like poor roads, endemic homelessness, etc. In contrast, if the government used tax revenues wisely and efficiently to improve citizen's quality of life, rational actors would be happy to pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes, as the benefit to themselves would be greater (as even if they paid no taxes, they still wouldn't have the resources needed to address societal-scale problems).

Take Prisoner's Dilemma as another case. In a stable society, players develop reputations as cooperators or betrayers. Two people with long-standing reputations of cooperation would be much more likely to trust one another, while in an unstable society without any reputational basis, the opposite would be true (and damage to one's reputation wouldn't have any persistent negative effect). This can be treated as Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma (pdf):

https://www.u.arizona.edu/~mwalker/10_GameTheory/RepeatedPri...

Of course humans aren't rational logical actors, which is why advertising often works, and those who try the hardest to achieve that status don't seem to be very happy people.

The paper doesn't speculate on how many cultural environments cynicism is warranted. Is it statistically signficantly different from unconditionally embraced cynicism!?

It reminds me of those people financially set and secure for life who find the time to regularly do some random acts of charity as opposed to those skinflint poor individuals...

The effect is not huge in the association of “cynical” and of “genius” which itself is not even defined as far as I saw. The association is essentially “People generally believe that people who have a propensity for cynicism are better at math, critical thought, and reading comprehension.”

The opposite finding actually seems much stronger, which is that most people strongly believe that non-cynics would be better at important social tasks like talking someone out of suicide.

People are under no illusion, as intimated by the title of the study, that cynics are geniuses, but instead they make the probably accurate assessment that someone who “scrutinizes motives behind others’ apparently selfless acts” (as opposed to someone who explicitly doesn’t) would be better at interpreting a complex diagram or ensuring they received correct change.

i identify as a cynic, so i'm a little sore.

This seems to be the main point: a loss aversion regarding trust.

Ultimately, in order to really succeed at any big endeavor involving more than one person "trust" is essential. At some point the experience of "betrayal" (or "rejection" in another social context) will be inevitable and without the resources (social/financial support) to build up trust again, this negative experience will only be amplified.

"Betrayal" is one of the main drivers of virtually every story, in dramatizations the "cynic" naturally becomes the all-knowing, but without trust (or suspension of disbelief from the audience) there would be no story to tell, no adventure undertaken.

In a sense being cynical is robbing oneself of the richness of possibilities in order to contain the subset of betrayals in them. Those can be very costly and in impoverished circumstances quickly a fatal choice. But in another more harmless contexts one just wants to avoid feeling "dumb" by feeling smart enough to see through the little signs of intrigue and deception all around .... blissfully discarding the whole set and with it the probability of actually doing a smart thing.

Worshipped as a genius for his "inventions", which contain loads of abstract amok, aka weapons designs harming all of humanity in the long run, because he obviously despised his society.

Meanwhile the actual average human gets run over by the descendants of these contraptions in Ukraine and elsewhere. The moral of the story :

If deterrence works for the boss it works for the peasant.

So why can't we all be more trusting asked the farmer the pigs? Why insist on using nuclear deterrence like I do, in this lawless World made by lawless people like me? Completely impossible that cynicism is a valid reaction to a enshitified world going down the drain?

Consistent with my experience on social media (including this website): cynical perspectives always get the most upvotes