How do you stave off intellectual vanity and snobbery?

[Hitsumei]

Does anybody else have a hard time walking the line between confidence and snobbishness? (Your statement made me think of this, McQ.) I can come off rather cocky and arrogant, but I'm really rather lacking in the self-confidence area.  

I don't think that you come off as cocky or arrogant. I think you come of as tentative when it's called for, and comical when it is not. Though I think that you probably hold back, afraid to come off as too rude, while still desiring to satisfy your craving to point out what you see as comically absurd. Which to me demonstrates a healthy amount of self-examination, as well as a comprehension of both your position, and the position of who you are responding to.

[curiosityandthecat]

I don't think that you come off as cocky or arrogant. I think you come of as tentative when it's called for, and comical when it is not. Though I think that you probably hold back, afraid to come off as too rude, while still desiring to satisfy your craving to point out what you see as comically absurd. Which to me demonstrates a healthy amount of self-examination, as well as a comprehension of both your position, and the position of who you are responding to.

You don't know me IRL.

[karadan]

I often find myself holding back from a conversation just because I might sound silly. Usually more often over teh interwebs than in real life. I'm a very quiet gamer when it comes to MMO's. I have teamspeak but hardly ever chat over it. I know all the tactics involved but for some reason, something in my head stops me from saying anything through fear of being wrong. The same can be said for many topics on this forum. I simply hold myself back because I'm not 100% sure how well received my comments might be. It sounds quite vane, I know, but it really is because I'm a rather paranoid person, especially when I'm talking to someone I can't see. I use body language as much as the spoken word when communicating so when speaking over a medium such as the net, I can get quite uncomfortable. I certainly don't like chatting over the phone. I guess it stems from my need to feel universally accepted and liked. I hate feeling like I've pissed someone off.

Because of the above, I will always try to analyse what I've said for fear of patronising someone. I'd hate to feel I've come across intellectually superior in any situation. I realise I can't always control how I'm received by others but that isn't a bad thing. However, I have found that if I publicly apologise and/or accept that I'm wrong in a conciliatory way, it garners a lot of respect. People generally expect others to doggedly carry on arguing a point when they are plainly incorrect (that doesn't happen very often here, I should add). I'd like to hope i stave off intellectual snobbery by immersing myself amongst people with a greater intellect than my own. It keeps my feet on the ground.

I sometimes wish I was a bit more thick-skinned but meh, I'm happy with the way I am.

[PipeBox]

Shoot Karadan, post whatever you think and get corrected.  It's a learning experience, and besides, I typically get destroyed by anyone who isn't a creationist around here.  

[adimagejim]

Staving off arrogance and snobbery is really pretty easy.

I read lots of stuff written by people smarter than I am, no matter their viewpoint.

For example, I have no problem admitting St. Thomas Aquinas was much smarter than I am. That doesn't make him right on God though.

I think Thomas Jefferson was among the smartest people who ever lived, but I don't think it was the smartest thing to have affairs with slaves.

Take what you can from where you can. It takes intellectual honesty and humility to admit you learn from others, no matter how smart they are or if they agree with you.

Jim

[Mister Joy]

I don't believe in 'intelligence', which makes it hard for me to claim any intellectual superiority over anyone. It's far too abstract and subjective to be taken seriously. A lot of people thrive in one area but are inept in all others. I know a lot about literature and history because that's what I'm mainly interested in. If you started quizzing me on my knowledge of science you'd probably find that, compared to most of you, I'm extremely ignorant. I know enough to be able to see through 'intelligent design' but that's easy enough to do if you listened in high-school. I try to remember, when talking to a creationist, say, that even they could very possibly be my intellectual superior in another field, they could have a higher IQ than me and they could be much more mentally flexible. The fact that someone is misinformed and/or delusional on one subject doesn't mean they're stupid. Couldn't being smart actually make you better at deluding yourself? Being able to rapidly contrive such complex rationalisations, on the spot, in the face of any obstacle must require some brains.

There are other simple things that make 'intelligence' untestable, too. Eg. suppose you ask two people a very simple, easy question: "what's 54x2?"

Person A just thinks about finding the answer and gives it immediately.
Person B is more preoccupied with figuring out what your motives are for asking them this question, what the social implications will be for a right or wrong answer and how they will act on those social implications. The actual answer is secondary and takes up very little mental energy, so they appear to hesitate.

Is person A 'more focussed' or just simple-minded? Has anyone else found that, sometimes, those who appear slow or unresponsive turn out to be quite complex thinkers on closer interrogation, able to arrive at conclusions that most people wouldn't be able to? And has anyone else noticed that, occasionally, those who appear very sharp and quick to respond are actually incredibly shallow and only think fast because they don't think much? Then again, some people are just slow because they're slow. Whether or not people have an overall 'intelliegence', I don't think there's any way to measure that unless you can a) read minds and b) ask them every question expressible in any language.