Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Willingness to look stupid

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 811 posts

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#131

Post by barrenko »

roenxi wrote: post #58
marginalia_nu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is important to ask [...] "how do I measure 'looking something'" when this sort of topic is bought up. Why is that?

"Looking stupid" is an assessment of what other people think. Eg, asking for the smallest box isn't stupid - Apple expects all the boxes to be good products. Even picking a product randomly isn't stupid and therefore shouldn't look it. The looking stupid part is an assessment of what the store clerk is thinking. That is a very subtle, fraught and complicated assessment. There is a lot going on to do with the audience…

Yes, but in general it's pretty noticeable when someone thinks you're stupid, because when people find a reason to place you "below" so to speak, all kinds of behaviour quickly come out.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#132

Post by neilwilson »

One of the great advantages of having a Northern English accent is that people automatically assume I'm stupid because of how I sound.

And that's very often to great advantage when you're trying to discover something about a system that people would rather not reveal.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#133

Post by barrenko »

This is a whole thing, like talking about money, people have all kinds of emotions about this.

Reminds me of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his practice of being obviously arrogant to assholes.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#134

Post by barrenko »

cycomanic wrote: post #46
thom wrote: post #22

There's a bit of a disconnect between the the purported theme of this article, being okay looking stupid, and the actual contents, which is just a catalogue of times other people were stupid, posted on the internet so everyone knows the author is clever. Being willing to look stupid involves actually being able to deal with mistakes and failure, with actually _feeling_ stupid sometimes. Just listing a bunch of great…

Thanks you said this much better than I did a bit further up. The whole post smacks a bit of arrogance to me, even though the advice is good.

Why is it arrogant?

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#135

Post by jacobolus »

josephg wrote: post #36

After a terrible breakup years ago I took a trapeze class. Before we got up on the trapeze bar, I spent most of the class telling everyone how bad I was going to be at it. When I got home I lay in bed confused. Why did I do that? This article is spot on. I was afraid of being seen to be bad at something. Have you noticed? We spend almost our entire adult lives doing things we’re good at. Anything we do that we’re bad…

> For me, it had been too long.

I have a 5 year old and a 2.5 year old, and hang out with lots of small children. Fear of looking stupid as a beginner is something that most people have right from the start: I have watched kids be afraid of incompetence (to the point of not wanting to try) at riding a bike, running, swinging across monkey bars, drawing, singing, reading, learning a new language, ...

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#136

Post by jbjohns »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

> Going into an Apple store and asking for (and buying) the computer that comes in the smallest box, which I had a good reason to want at the time > The person who helped me, despite being very polite, also clearly thought I was a bozo and kept explaining things like "the size of the box and the size of the computer aren't the same". Of course I knew that, but I didn't want to say something like "I design CPUs. I und…

It's amusing how many people are literally offended that they didn't explain why. But the answer we have is: because they wanted the smaller box. They are paying for it, no further explanation is required to the employee or anyone else. The employee should get the smallest box as requested and then they can try something like "may I know why you want the smallest box? I might be able to provide better help".

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#137

Post by programmer_dude »

yetihehe wrote: post #120
programmer_dude wrote: post #56

Wow, this describes me to a T. The only difference being, you (Dan Luu) are much smarter than me. The other day I got confused by a decimal separator on Hacker News and posted a comment saying so. I am pretty sure some people assumed I was stupid. Perhaps they did not want to put in the effort required to understand why some one might get confused in the given situation. I will admit sometimes I fall into this trap t…

> The other day I got confused by a decimal separator on Hacker News and posted a comment saying so. I am pretty sure some people assumed I was stupid. Perhaps they did not want to put in the effort required to understand why some one might get confused in the given situation. When you try to post low-level questions on a high-level forum (no matter what trade it is), you will get negative responses, because you dilu…

Yes, that's understandable.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#138

Post by digbybk »

Reluctance to ask stupid questions comes from a fear of rejection. I studied physics in undergrad and I found it pretty difficult, but wanted to be a part of the group of smart physics kids. It left me with a pretty strong fear of looking stupid and a reluctance to speak up in class when I didn’t understand.

Not minding if you might sound stupid comes from a place of security in your life. If you already have a solid in-group, then the fear of being rejected by some other group starts to go away and you feel more comfortable risking looking dumb in front of people.

I think it comes from a deep instinct to find allies and show that you’ll be a valuable member of a group, or at least not a liability.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#139

Post by [deleted] »

terabytest wrote: post #27

I guess the "stupid question" I'd ask of this article is: why don't you reveal your goals or thought process when challenged after asking a question that might be perceived as stupid? Take the Apple Store example: why not explain the reason why you were asking for a product by the size of its box when they responded by saying that size of the box does not map to size of the product? Being open about your goal would'v…

[deleted]

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#140

Post by dustingetz »

CURSE OF DEVELOPMENT: the depth of any transaction is limited by the depth of the shallower party. If the situational developmental gap between two people is sufficiently small, the more evolved person will systematically LOSE. A trivial example: if you speak English and French, and your friend only speaks English, you will be forced to converse in English.

Full quote from Gervais Principle here: https://dustingetz.com/d4337a942961484b8b408d4b1963e161

My transition from developer to founder is marked by needing to win more (all) transactions with minimized variance. As Warren Buffet says "never lose money", you might think it's +EV to apply Kelly Criterion here and risk a bit to maximize alpha, but in soft human affairs there are too many unknown unknowns to quantify risk, you need to keep it simple and not lose transactions. IMO

Post reply on HN