I’m curious where the term “Superior General Knowledge” in the headline came from. It’s not explicitly defined in the article and ironically is not an intellectually humble way to describe the article’s conclusions.
People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
141–150 of 267 posts
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#142My understanding of the great geniuses is they tend to not be very humble...is this concept empirically supported, or does it just sound nice? In my experience, the really knowledgeable people tend to be quite opinionated, while also being willing to question their own ideas and receive critical feedback. So, it seems they have both great humility and arrogance, not one or the other.
The canonical genius has to be Albert Einstein, who was known for humility. As to some others, people make history as geniuses for (1) doing genius things and (2) making sure everyone knows they're the genius that did it, so you have to consider the effect of (2) when you try making a list.
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#143A few years ago the guy I was sharing an office with at work was cleaning off his desk and found a stack of resumes. He said they were all from the batch that I was hired from and asked if I wanted to know why I was picked. Very cautiously I said yes. He told me I was the only one who when really pushed during the technical interview said "I don't know". Their initial strategy had been to start easy on some topic and…
The older and more confident I got the less I felt a need to 'know everything.' I'm not perfect, but these days when it comes to anything whether it be technical or cultural (e.g. bands or movies) I strive to not be afraid to say "I don't know what that is" and be excited to learn about it.
There's so much out there. I actually picked this up from reading Hacker School's user manual, "no feigning surprise"[1] and of course an xkcd comic[2].
It was a comfort to see an engineer who I highly respect (Dan Abramov) post a list of things he doesn't know[3].
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#144A good friend once told, after listening to me bitch about someone who loved to comment on my work, "You can learn something from everyone". I spent some time trying to dismiss that before considering that if he was right I'd already missed out on a lot, and that certainly humbled me because when I started looking for it I found he was right. The flip side to this is sharing what you know when it contradicts what oth…
Years ago I saw someone doing a community outreach lecture tour, for Next Generation Science Standards. On behalf of NSF I think. She was getting hostile questions, many of the too-broken-to-even-be-wrong variety. Ones where normally I'd just shake my head, perhaps think "nutter", and hope the speaker was able to move on without getting bogged down. She addressed the questions with a grace, and insight, and empathy,…
I try to give good answers to misguided questions, but it can be really hard to do well. You have to guess what wrong assumption they're proceeding from in real time, and then respond with something that addresses that while still being interesting to the rest of the audience. Some people are great at it, through some combination of genius and practice.
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#145A few years ago the guy I was sharing an office with at work was cleaning off his desk and found a stack of resumes. He said they were all from the batch that I was hired from and asked if I wanted to know why I was picked. Very cautiously I said yes. He told me I was the only one who when really pushed during the technical interview said "I don't know". Their initial strategy had been to start easy on some topic and…
That's reminiscent of the nasty version of 20 questions, where everyone bar the subject is told the only rule is to give an answer that is consistent with previous answers.
Never been on the receiving end, but what I've seen you don't want to be on the receiving end.
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#146TBH I doubt this very much. In fact I doubt, in general, that such broad assertions can even be made. Anecdotally, I have worked at 2 research labs by now (one of them was MS Research, another relatively unknown), and of the few truly genius-grade people I met there none really had much "humility" on display. They know a staggering array of stuff really well, and they know they know it. If you don't know something, t…
Is it possible there were people in those labs that knew more than these geniuses, but you never noticed because they presented themselves modestly?
Unlikely. My bar for a "genius" is pretty high. It's actually pretty obvious when you're in a room with one - it almost feels like they're different species. Stuff that's insurmountable to you is easy as a pie to them, and they can explain it in simple terms. They couldn't care less about the fact that you weren't able to understand it on your own.
And some of them present very modestly most of the time, but if you're wrong about their stuff, they won't mince words. Nor would they be humble about things to get along with you, or doubt their knowledge just because it's trendy to do so. They don't necessarily shove themselves into everyone's face.
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#147A questionnaire from the article: 1) I am willing to admit if I don't know something. 2) I like to compliment others on their intellectual strengths. 3) I try to reflect on my weaknesses in order to develop my intelligence. 4) I actively seek feedback on my ideas, even if it is critical. 5) I acknowledge when someone knows more than me about a certain subject. 6) If someone doesn't understand my idea, it's probably b…
> When I was younger I was pretty painfully shy, so (4) I would not seek feedback, but not out of a lack of humility.
To fix such a things in a questionnaire there are 9 questions. Maximum score you could possible get is 9 times 7 = 63, but probably not many people would get so much. Even those who are super humble.
> Also (3) I don't get, because while I am extremely motivated by intellectual curiosity, I have maybe zero motivation to "develop my intelligence" like it was some kind of fitness thing.
So you do not reflect on your weaknesses in order to develop intelligence? Or you are doing it sometimes, when it is obvious for you that your task needs more intelligence from you? Maybe 3 as an answer would fit?
> I don't think that is really related to humility.
Good questionnaires are not like a random internet ones. There are special methods allowing to ensure that questionnaire is measuring what we want to measure, not something else. For example, you can measure intellectual humility based on the interviewing a participant, and then ask participant to fill a questionnaire with a 50 questions (or maybe 150, as much as your creativity could devise), that you think might be good. Get 50 participants, or maybe 100. The more is better, but it is a long and difficult task, to interview 100 people, and if you used a several PhD students as interviewers, than you need to control for interviewer also, because different people could get different results even when asking the same questions. So you would need even more participants to get a statistical significance. Number of questions itself also increases the number of data points needed.
After you gathered data, you would run it through R to find questions that are the best fit, to reduce questionnaire to bearable size. Probably after it you should test your new questionnaire by the same tactic you invented it. You even might need to do this, if at the first stage you got insufficient number of participants. But now you would need no factor analysis or something like, just a correlation would be enough. Or maybe chi-square.
I didn't read an article itself, but it is a published paper in a reviewed journal, so I bet it is done good, not just authors picked 9 questions on a random. Therefore I bet, that if you don't think that it is really related to humility, than you probably should change your mind and think the other way around. If it somehow important for you, I'd suggest to find a full text of paper describing methods used to devise a questionnaire and read them through. Maybe you are right after all. There might be a statistical mistakes, mistakenly used statistical methods for example, or some issues with the data gathering.
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#148My understanding of the great geniuses is they tend to not be very humble...is this concept empirically supported, or does it just sound nice? In my experience, the really knowledgeable people tend to be quite opinionated, while also being willing to question their own ideas and receive critical feedback. So, it seems they have both great humility and arrogance, not one or the other.
The canonical genius has to be Albert Einstein, who was known for humility. As to some others, people make history as geniuses for (1) doing genius things and (2) making sure everyone knows they're the genius that did it, so you have to consider the effect of (2) when you try making a list.
If they manage to do #2, they are still a genius, which contradicts the notion that geniuses must be humble.
Personally, I prefer a bit of arrogance so that people clearly state what they believe and why, even if it is a bit blunt. The clarity of this approach seems to lead to better ideas, since my personal observation is that great ideas also tend to be fairly simple and can be stated in a straightforward manner.
Plus, when an idea is clearly stated, it is easier to know if the idea is right or wrong, which is necessary for the humility bit of self questioning.
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is logical consistency not a core tenant of a rational argument? I’ll concede that some people don’t value logical consistency - but that doesn’t make them more rational in their arguments. If there is subjectivity in a ‘logical inference’, I’ll err on the side of being open to it.
It absolutely is. However, people are often not entirely rational creatures. Advocacy, for a very effective example, is a combination of reason, emotion and character. How people feel matters. Who they are interacting with and or referencing matters. Roll all that up, and we are likely to encounter people who are not self consistent. That is OK, human. I just noted that being a predetermination, that's all. Secondly,…
I readily affirm that feelings are most important, but it's pretty common to refuse to abandon one's feelings or one's facts and logic in the name of consistency.
It's not that someone can expect you to feel differently because they've presented a logical argument. That's not likely or expected.
Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
#150The Socrates paradox: "I know that I know nothing"