To consider oneself smart.
Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#32[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#33Not using systems when starting out.
Not using what kind of systems, when starting out doing what? I'm afraid I have no idea what you mean.
I meant thinking in systems instead of just doing things, esp when it comes to business. There are two very good books that have a lot of stuff about this: the emyth and work the system. I'm on a mobile phone right now but if you want me to elaborate please let me know.
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#34Thinking you can beat the market. Trying to trade individual stocks. Thinking you can make a genuinely new SASS product that noone has ever thought of before.
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#35There is a concept called "fluency illusion" which everyone is susceptible to, which is when you are passively flipping through a book on some topic, and you say: yeah, I know this, I know this too, yeah yeah, I got this. And then you are stopped and asked a question about the material and it's like: gulp. Shit.
Everyone falls victim to this, but I think smart people can be especially prone.
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#36Stock market education, stock market tips and stock market signals... Scammers are making millions out of well educated people... A lot of investigations into the dark world:
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#37Distraction and procrastination. I'm not sure I'm smart enough to qualify for your "smart people" designation, but those are two ailments that are affecting me. :) Perhaps being smart is being not easily distracted, then I'm very dumb.
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#38[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#39Developers who think that launching a successful startup involves just writing a bunch of code and then the money will come flooding in. With the exception of a few outliers this is simply not true, you need marketing, business development, support, netwoking, accounting.
Speaking as a developer who believed this myself for too long
Re: Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into?
#40Conflating negativity/criticism/pessimism with intelligence. Making a declaration about viability of software based on its present state (youtube will never work they'll get sued), (bitcoin will never work because it can't scale), instead of predicting the viability of a future iteration of it. Nitpicking someone's communication/word choice/edge case instead of focusing out what they were trying to convey
You just summed up maybe two-thirds of the comments on HN.