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Willingness to look stupid

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Re: Willingness to look stupid

#161

Post by aynyc »

jacobolus wrote: post #135
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, ...

Similar situation here. One of the things I found useful for skill-based activities is to take video. I took my kid's swim lesson from 3-6, the improvement is obviously drastic. Now, my oldest is starting to understand that while she's not good at something right now, she just need more practice. It's a huge mental change for her.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#162

Post by Grustaf »

dangerface wrote: post #127
lukeholder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if that is true, why cause so much trouble and just said why you want the smallest box.

I think the sales person was causing the trouble tbh, if a customer knows what they want take the sale don't waste their time with 20 questions at the end of the day we both know the sales person was just trying to upsell the customer something they clearly didn't want. Its the sales persons job to take the hint and just make the sale tbh.

There is no indication at all that the clerk was causing any trouble, and Apple retail employees never try to upsell, whatever else you could accuse them of.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#163

Post by josh2600 »

dusted wrote: post #50

When I was younger, I often met people who seemed kind of dim to me, at first, and later found the majority of them to be orders of magnitude brighter than me. It was not hard to connect the dots, the reason they were so much brighter was (in part) exactly because of what made them initially seem dim.. They asked questions, honestly. Not the showoff kind of question you ask to show how much you know, but real, honest…

Confucius says there are 3 ways to gain wisdom:

Imitation, which is easiest.

Meditation, which is noblest.

Experience, which is bitterest.

Anytime I learn anything new, I imitate until I can’t anymore, then I meditate to understand why I think I can’t imitate anymore, then I experience my meditation, then I go back to mediating based on that experience.

Repeat until you can’t OODA loop effectively anymore.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#164

Post by akudha »

dusted wrote: post #50

When I was younger, I often met people who seemed kind of dim to me, at first, and later found the majority of them to be orders of magnitude brighter than me. It was not hard to connect the dots, the reason they were so much brighter was (in part) exactly because of what made them initially seem dim.. They asked questions, honestly. Not the showoff kind of question you ask to show how much you know, but real, honest…

I think people who are afraid to ask questions are conditioned to be that way. It is just easy to keep quiet in a team meeting than risk asking/saying something that might expose one's lack of knowledge on the topic being discussed. People also secretly hope that someone else might ask the same question that they are thinking about, so the other person can take that risk.

The environment largely shapes people's behavior. Of course, we can argue that we should work towards changing the environment for the better, but practically, how much influence does a person (who is not in a position of authority) have? In the end, people simply take the easy way out, which is keep quiet and only speak when they're absolutely sure that whatever they're about to say/ask is fully accurate.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#165

Post by blfr »

joeberon wrote: post #153
blfr wrote: post #130

As a man, every condescending comment you get in person only tells you one thing: your deadlift PR is still too low. Get jacked and all these problems disappear. No matter how silly your questions and objections, no matter how dumb they may think you are, all your concerns will be treated very seriously, criticism couched in most polite terms, and weird stuff written off as eccentric. (It helps to be taller, well-dre…

Are these seriously the quality of comments we are happy with on Hackernews these days?

It's a social reality most nerds ignore at their own peril. The way you're treated is very loosely correlated with being smart, having unusual tastes, or asking questions but tightly with how you present yourself.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#166

Post by alexandrerond »

pydry wrote: post #55

One way to prove that he truly doesn't mind looking stupid would be to list times when he risked looking stupid... and it turns out he actually was. It's happened to all of us though we dont like to admit it. I'm sure it's happened to him too and I looked but I didn't see any of those examples listed. Giving only examples of when people thought he was dumb and it turned out he wasn't... that's kind of just a roundabo…

Totally.

There's distance between:

"people think I'm stupid because I'm not scared to show that I don't know about something"

and some of the examples which are more along the lines of

"people think I'm stupid because I act as a self-entitled genius who provides little context or reasoning behind choices and expect everyone to line up behind with no question"

What is the Apple store employee supposed to do to not make someone feel stupid when they ask for the smallest box? What are the chances they're not a clueless customer in need of help and have solid reasons behind?

The boss raises an eyebrow when someome proposes to skip half of the test suite? Means a lack of trust.

The insurance dealer does his job and tries to get a higher premium? Not surprised.

There's quite a bit of narcissism here: "They though I'm stupid but I'm not", " I was right in the end". It's actually arguing how everyone else is dumber in the end.

A more sincere approach would have been to explain how he realized how stupid he actually was and how not being defensive about it helped. But perhaps the author knows better after all.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#167

Post by medstrom »

dotancohen wrote: post #147
HeckFeck wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the simple brilliance of Socrates. He began from the premise that he knew nothing, and would ask all manner of simple questions building on top of the previous answers. It wasn't long before he uncovered how little everyone else actually knew, but what separated Socrates was his honesty: he knew nothing and admitted it. Naturally, the established powers and polite society didn't find this to their…

> Naturally, the established powers and polite society didn't find this to their liking. We all know how his story ended. Socrates was sentenced to death not for exposing how little everyone else knew. The esteemed philosopher was sentenced to death because he was deliberately annoying people - like a fly - with badgering questions that would force the questionee into a corner. Today we call this method of exposing c…

Going by Wikipedia, it's not agreed why exactly he was executed, but you don't execute someone for being annoying. The official charges were impiety and "corrupting the youth". Probably some political groups felt threatened by the idea of lots of people turning to a different set of ethics or starting to distrust authority.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#169

Post by mysticllama »

dusted wrote: post #50

When I was younger, I often met people who seemed kind of dim to me, at first, and later found the majority of them to be orders of magnitude brighter than me. It was not hard to connect the dots, the reason they were so much brighter was (in part) exactly because of what made them initially seem dim.. They asked questions, honestly. Not the showoff kind of question you ask to show how much you know, but real, honest…

this^. it took a lot of intentional practice for me to shake the fear of looking dumb when in front of peers. however, i've since realized that pretty consistently the people who share this willingness to come off as uninformed are the best people to work with -- they openly admit gaps in their knowledge and are eager to close them.

conversely, when interviewing or evaluating people, if i observe someone pretend s/he knows something, that's often a really bad sign…

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#170

Post by soneca »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #121
lolc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered about that story and concluded that the author knew which computer they wanted. They also knew that this computer came in the smallest box. So they only had to give that second bit of information to get what they wanted. It is a bit condescending in my view to withhold that information from the clerk. But then again, I'm only making assumptions. Also, I've done similar things where I refused to let on my i…

If it happened , he purposefully chose a request that he knew would generate confusion and discomfort in a situation with someone he has power over. It reminds me of the high school bully who fake-punches you, knowing you'll react, and then punishing you for how you react. At best he purposefully made things more difficult than they had to be. She was absolutely right to think that he was a "bozo." I generally strive…

I don’t share your assumption that he purposefully made things more difficult.

My assumption is that he really didn’t know which computer came in the smaller box (since, computer size, which is the public info about the product, doesn’t exactly correlate with the box size).

My guess is that he wanted to know which, if any, impact a small box would potentially have on computer components (like different impact absorption on transportation) that would require some CPU design adaptation. Like (speculation here, as I am nowhere near a CPU specialist): is a second memory clip more susceptible to be affected by transportation impact? So the box size is correlated with cheaper computers. Which tend to be larger computers, but can come in a smaller box because they don’t have that second memory clip?

Idk, but I am assuming good intent and reasoning behind the anecdote.

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