[MichaelZuo]

It’s more nuanced then that. People don’t want others pretending to be superior to them, if they are not actually that much better.

e.g. A literal supergenius can behave very erratically nearly every week of the year, 40 years straight, and still achieve notable successes in life, such as Kurt Godel

But a regular genius pretending to be a literal supergenius and trying to do the same, is well at best going to be perceived as a clown.

And it gets even more lopsided as you go down. Someone merely very smart pretending to be a literal genius is never going to earn anyone’s respect around the table.

[Joel_Mckay]

Lets be honest, most faculty members eventually become simple Ectoparasites on student work, or ruminate on problems they stopped making progress on for decades.

As someone prone to idealism, you need to careful of the external consequences of work that runs into conflict with institution politics, government goals, and foreign/domestic intelligence services (professional thieves.)

I am probably just a clown, but often had to consider the escalation of coercion stages in the context of personal resolve. You will be evil one day too... Best of luck =3

[trinsic2]

How does this have anything to do with standing up to harms? Im sorry this is starting to sound like the philosophy that the Nazi regime operated under.

[MichaelZuo]

How does ‘standing up to harms’ relate to how other people assess you?

You can say anything, stand up to anything, etc., at a meeting but have differing underlying motives that is unsaid.