People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge • Hacker News Board

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#191

Post by k_sze » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

karmelapple wrote: post #178

AmericanChopper wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, both christians and atheists who are interested in debating each other tend to have a hard time understanding the limits of their knowledge. The criticism can be directed equally in both directions. The entire sum of scientific knowledge is based on unprovable axioms, just the same as the entire sum of religious knowledge is based on unprovable axioms. Faith is a belief in something you can’t prove, and p…

Faith is a belief in something without evidence, correct? Science is rooted in empirical evidence. It may be with imperfect models and imperfect measurement, but there is indeed fairly reasonably-measured evidence.

The Faithful would also call just about anything “evidence”.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#192

Post by Consultant32452 » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #186

Consultant32452 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always respond in layers. The first layer is to say I work in computers. If they want to know more, they'll ask. If there is a follow up question that doesn't make it clear they're tech savvy, I'll explain one level deeper. I work on the website for x company, or I help secure your credit card info at such and such back. It doesn't matter if you're front end, back end, dba, network, sysadmin, help desk, etc. Just s…

The key thing is knowing that their level of curiosity may not be what you prefer. I've come to terms that people often don't actually care about understanding what I do and would rather just make assumptions about it. If you can't accept that and let it be, you can become a very despondent person. :) And then when you try to correct their misunderstanding, you just make them unhappy too. Everyone loses.

Yep, if they're not actually interested, which is usually the case, you're either going to bore them or insult them because it will come off as bragging.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#193

Post by root_axis » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:11 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #181

karmelapple wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith is a belief in something without evidence, correct? Science is rooted in empirical evidence. It may be with imperfect models and imperfect measurement, but there is indeed fairly reasonably-measured evidence.

Faith is a belief in something you can’t prove. The munchausen trilemma invalidates all logical proofs. As such, all forms of knowledge are based on unprovable axioms from which knowledge is derived. If you were to try generalise some of the axioms that form the foundation of scientific knowledge, you might say that ‘empirical evidence is a source of absolute truth’ or that ‘everything we don’t understand about the p…

What is your definition of "prove"?

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#194

Post by foxhop » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

itsangaris wrote: post #106

It's likely the inverse: the more knowledge, the more intellectual humility, which is just rephrasing Aristotle, “The more you know, the more you know you don't know.”

Every door of knowledge I "crack" yields twenty more locked doors.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#195

Post by heelix » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #162

te_platt wrote: post #134

A 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…

"I don't know" is often the best answer. I was listening to some Christian on a video criticizing atheists and saying something related to the god of the gaps fallacy. He commented something along the lines of "you have to have an answer to these things!" No. No you don't. You don't just invent some fairy tale just because you don't understand something. Often the best answer is "I don't know"

I do a lot of interviewing... I've found that folks who say "I don't know, but I'd guess x based on y" is a fantastic answer. Lets me know how they are thinking as they walk through an educated guess.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#196

Post by WiseWeasel » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

rconti wrote: post #136

BWStearns wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took it as a tongue in cheek thing, but if you look here https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=... you might find the results amusing. Apparently a decent amount of people reading an article about intellectual humility are the type to google a word they don't know.

Good for them! I looked it up, too, to see if there was a common usage I'm unfamiliar with. I am a non-native French speaker, and the pluralization didn't make sense to me, but I thought maybe this was a case where I was unaware of a word being re-appropriated and used differently in English. It does seem to show up as plural, but without the accent. I still don't really know, though.

The pluralization does exist, as “those who have perceived” or “those which have been perceived”, but it is indeed a grammatical error in the article's usage. The ç is always correct, but accents are a common casualty of transliteration and informal writing.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#197

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:57 AM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #162

te_platt wrote: post #134

A 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…

"I don't know" is often the best answer. I was listening to some Christian on a video criticizing atheists and saying something related to the god of the gaps fallacy. He commented something along the lines of "you have to have an answer to these things!" No. No you don't. You don't just invent some fairy tale just because you don't understand something. Often the best answer is "I don't know"

Please keep religious flamewar off this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#198

Post by ddingus » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #149

ddingus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does any of that matter?

The OP said they did not predetermine, and I just pointed out that they do. (And I do not care)

No worries, just information.

Understanding others helps considerably when having conversations IMHO. My comments here speak to that.

Just know others may, or may not make the value judgements presented in this thread, that's all.

It is far more likely than you think. Consider a politically charged issue, some matter where religion is involved...

This all just is not the set piece implied.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#199

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:01 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #181

karmelapple wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith is a belief in something without evidence, correct? Science is rooted in empirical evidence. It may be with imperfect models and imperfect measurement, but there is indeed fairly reasonably-measured evidence.

Faith is a belief in something you can’t prove. The munchausen trilemma invalidates all logical proofs. As such, all forms of knowledge are based on unprovable axioms from which knowledge is derived. If you were to try generalise some of the axioms that form the foundation of scientific knowledge, you might say that ‘empirical evidence is a source of absolute truth’ or that ‘everything we don’t understand about the p…

[deleted]

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#200

Post by dgacmu » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:13 AM UTC

nolemurs wrote: post #156

threezero wrote: post #95

The article title is clickbait nonsense: “The findings in relation to knowledge acquisition were mixed. While an online study involving 604 adults (and using the more comprehensive measure of intellectual humility) found the aforementioned link between greater intellectual humility and superior general knowledge, another involving college students (and the briefer intellectual humility questionnaire) found that those…

Thanks for this. I read the title, and my thought process was: "I agree". Then: "There's no way the study backing the article is good enough to draw meaningful conclusions. This is clickbait." Then: "I guess if i'm going to be intellectually humble I should still read the article." I think based on your comment I can safely skip the read, and save myself some time. Intellectual humility is one thing, but I can go rea…

There's more to it than the excerpted quote. It's worth a read. The article does not breathlessly treat any of the studies it discusses as the word of the flying spaghetti monster, and it does a good job of presenting a broader perspective on the question.