New study offers clues about what makes someone cool | Hacker News Reader

New study offers clues about what makes someone cool

nytimes.com

57 points_tk_48 comments

Study Paper: Cool People – https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-xge0001799.pd...

According to my own findings, there is minimal intersection between the group of cool people and the group of people who read coolness research.

The first rule of cool is don't care about cool. The second (for experts) is that you can care if you don't show it. The third is that you can read research about cool and yet not care (God level cool)

That said, I think coolness research can help uncool people fight uncool shit like this

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44478115

well, you said "minimal", so not strictly empty right? ;)

"""

But Bezos was dissatisfied with that simplistic conclusion and applied his usual analytical sensibility to parse out why some companies were loved and others feared.

Rudeness is not cool. Defeating tiny guys is not cool. Close-following is not cool. Young is cool. Risk taking is cool. Winning is cool. Polite is cool. Defeating bigger, unsympathetic guys is cool. Inventing is cool. Explorers are cool. Conquerors are not cool. Obsessing over competitors is not cool. Empowering others is cool. Capturing all the value only for the company is not cool. Leadership is cool. Conviction is cool. Straightforwardness is cool. Pandering to the crowd is not cool. Hypocrisy is not cool. Authenticity is cool. Thinking big is cool. The unexpected is cool. Missionaries are cool. Mercenaries are not cool.

On an attached spreadsheet, Bezos listed seventeen attributes, including polite, reliable, risk taking, and thinks big, and he ranked a dozen companies on each particular characteristic. His methodology was highly subjective, he conceded, but his conclusions, laid out at the end of the Amazon.love memo were aimed at increasing Amazon's odds of standing out among the loved companies. Being polite and reliable or customer-obsessed was not sufficient. Being perceived as inventive, as an explorer rather than a conqueror, was critically important. "I actually believe the four 'unloved' companies are inventive as a matter of substance. But they are not perceived as inventors and pioneers. It is not enough to be inventive-that pioneering spirit must also come across and be perceivable by the customer base," he wrote.

"I propose that one outcome from this offsite could be to assign a more thorough analysis of this topic to a thoughtful VP," Bezos concluded. "We may be able to find actionable tasks that will increase our odds of being a stand out in that first group of companies. Sounds worthy to me!"

"""

from B. Stone. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Little, Brown & Co., 2013.

Seems he lost interest in that pursuit similar to Mr. Burns losing interest in Frank Grimes once the next interest came along.

According to my experience, cool people put in an absolutely inordinate amount of research, time and effort in order to appear as if they don't even have to try.

Cool cannot be described or quantified, so they're just milking some funders for sweet, sweet grants.

It’s something I realized a long time ago about humans. Resources and opportunities go where they are least needed. Want high social status? Your best bet is to need absolutely nothing from anyone.

Coolness, in its original sense, is about never caring too much because you will never need to. People are drawn to what doesn’t care about them; they assume the response they get will be objective.

This makes a ton of evolutionary sense. Success begets success. Those that don't need outside help are successful; those that cooperate and build on it are more successful. Unfortunately, it also leads to local maxima- those that are good at gathering from neighbors and happen to have good neighbors reach highest success, regardless of their own intrinsic ability.

Neither "Attempt to split success equally so everyone gets the same results" nor "Give all the resources to those that have the most" are good ways to run a society, or good long term evolutionary strategies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Pound_Bank_Note

> Two very rich and eccentric brothers spot him and give him an envelope with no information. Seeing money inside the envelope, Henry immediately heads for a cheap dining house and eats a meal; afterward, he discovers that the money is a single bank note for one million pounds sterling, the equivalent of $5 million in United States currency. Without knowing it at the time, Henry has become the subject of a £20,000 bet between the brothers. One believes that the mere possession of the bank note can enable a person to survive even with no other means of support, while the other feels that the holder will be unable to use it without drawing the authorities' suspicions.

Case study clip from The Young Pope

("Hyperbole in reverse")

https://youtu.be/hY8C3cIMR4o

I've found in my life cool people generally have something to offer, be it inspiration, insight, other otherwise, I feel like cool is often aspirational and differs depending on where someone is trying to go in life. It seems to me cool people have some unique degree of "Culturedness" - this lines up with the traits they found. If you are Extraverted, Hedonistic, Powerful, Adventurous, Open and Autonomous, you're likely ending up in situations and experiences that have a different venn from the other folks around you.

From the paper: "Our method does not let us test the extent to which coolness was valued or prevalent in a culture, but historical analysis suggests that cool people were first recognized and admired in countercultural niches, such as mid-20th century African American jazz clubs and beatnik coffee shops that valued improvisation and creative expression (Belk et al., 2010; Heath & Potter, 2004). The desire to be cool spread as societies shifted their focus from industry to information, and coolness continues to play a larger role in cities (San Francisco, New York, London, Tokyo, etc.) and industries (fashion, entertainment, technology) where economic success depends on creativity (Florida, 2012; C. Warren et al., 2019). Stronger evidence that coolness is a status hierar"

> I've found in my life cool people generally have something to offer, be it inspiration, insight, other otherwise,

Great mathematicians have an insane amount of deep insights to offer, but the typical person simply does not have the capacity to absorb these insights. Oh yes, these people are typically introverted "nerds", not the "cool kids".

You lopped off the important part! I addressed that very thing in the words you cut out directly after!!!!!!!!! :)

In fact, what you wrote and I are highly alined. I have dyscalculia, so what you discribed was indeed exactly cool to me because i aspired to be good in math so I could be a computer scientist. Never managed to become a programmer but in art school I hung with a lot of them, I think we mutually found each other's sides of the academic houses very cool.

>Cool people are largely perceived to be extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous.

Subtract hedonistic and powerful.

I would say that adventurous, open and autonomous are three qualities that make a person interesting, as opposed to boring. They likely have entertaining stories and an approach to life that repels dullness.

And extroversion, though it doesn't have much bearing on being interesting, makes it a little more likely that I'd encounter them and get to know the three other qualities.

I noticed there's no word such as smart, bright, clever or wise mentioned in the sentence above.

Just an observation, nothing else.

the word cool is pretty much the opposite of bright so that tracks

What specifically do you mean by this?

I think he's riffing on the essential meaning of the word, e.g. a candle or a bright incandescent bulb cannot be cool- they're literally emitting heat.

That's exactly what I meant to say ;)

> Just an observation, nothing else.

I’m sure lol…

Guardian, fact-checking the paper with known cool people, suggests that they missed a key trait: "low-key"

https://archive.fo/cmP3O

(I disagree with their lists at the end of their article tho ;)

I don’t even have to read it cause it’s smoking. We’ve always known it was smoking.

Smelling like cancerous ass is not cool though

Smelling ass ain’t cool, maybe you should read the article.

i used to think that being a kickass programmer was cool

now all i think about is money

If you need a study to tell you how to be cool, I’m afraid there is no hope for you. Give up now.

Trying to figure out how to be cool by going as far as to write an academic paper is decidedly uncool

I think the term for this would be "poser", the not cool sub segment of the cool kids.

That doesn't make the scientists posers unless they are pretending to be something they aren't. Poser has a specific meaning.

Scientifically analyzing a phenomenon to break down its underlying principles and optimize it is a sign of capability, the one attribute found to be equally cool and good. And can be quite cool in some contexts.

Just as the blind will never understand color, the nerd will never understand cool.

Well put

This is 100% something Martin Prince or Professor Frink (or both) would study

They’re not trying to be cool. They’re trying to be scientific.

Be humble. That's always cool. If you are truly cool you don't need to talk about it.

If they're just going to give it away my personal brand will be worthless!

Cool people are perceived to be more extraverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open, and autonomous, whereas good people are more conforming, traditional, secure, warm, agreeable, universalistic, conscientious, and calm. This pattern is stable across countries, which suggests that the meaning of cool has crystallized on a similar set of values and traits around the globe. We build on the results to advance a theory of the role that coolness plays in establishing social hierarchies and changing social and cultural practices and norms.

This seems predicated on a false dichotomy of "cool" and "good" -- surely some are both.

Maybe this could discriminate between the two: good people can be taken advantage of; cool people are too smart for that.

That's a strange comparison! I guess this is where the ultimate caricature of cool comes from, though: Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll -> Hedonistic, powerful and adventurous. Crank those up enough, and you end up with a trashed hotel room or maybe a drumstick up someone's butt.

It's a kind of status jiu-jitsu: the less you want, the more others want you.

Good summary of this paper: https://unrav.io/#view/f1604fd7b327f48a9920f4d2561b9626

You can be funny, or cool, but not both. -- The Rock

dry humor had to be invented to beat The Rock

This paper beat The Rock

Oh My Scissors

Obviously I didn't have to click

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