It seems telling that this post has struck such a nerve within the HN community. I suggest there is a predominant hypersensitivity amongst this crowd to the perception of being "smart", "stupid", or perhaps even worst of all, "average."
Willingness to look stupid
631–640 of 811 posts
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#632Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to say this part (and quite a few other parts of the post) come across as quite arrogant. I mean if he really wants the computer with the smallest box, why can't he explain why. I agree with the general gist of the post: don't be afraid to ask stupid questions. However, the post has an underlying "feeling" of "my questions are not really stupid, I'm just so smart that others don't realise". I know that I ask p…
I frankly had the same impression. It felt it was less about the willingness to look to stupid, but rather the stupidity of people who surrounded him and their inability to see this individual's brilliance. Perhaps this is an unkind reading, but particularly the laptop scenario felt telling that this person might feel above explaining why they might prefer a laptop which comes in a smaller box. On the surface that is…
On the other hand, if I was in a situation where I wanted the computer with the smallest box for whatever reason, I would find it really difficult to ask for that because I would be embarrassed by how it doesn't fit the expected pattern of what I should be looking for. I will often wimp out and not be clear about my preferences in situations like these because I'm afraid of awkwardness. So I do admire the willingness to speak up about unusual preferences.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#633Earlier quoted context omitted.
In would say it goes even further than humblebragging, and ventures into narcissism and an inability to handle criticism, explain oneself, or accept help. If the car insurance salesperson disagrees with you, maybe you should try to understand why? Did you really consider the possible that a tree branch could fall in front of your car or that you could get caught in a hail storm? If the Apple store employee doesn’t un…
> explain oneself I hate this, the idea that I should have to explain myself to a random stranger in a shop as if they are entitled to know anything about me. I buy a lot of sweets on Friday for the weekend and regularly the clerk behind the till will make a comment, "Thats a lot of chocolate! Who is going to eat all that! You must be having a party whats the occasion?". In front of a line of customers who are eager…
> I hate this, the idea that I should have to explain myself to a random stranger in a shop as if they are entitled to know anything about me.
You sound like someone who has never worked in any customer facing position. Many people come in wanting X. They don’t realize X has many consequences. You know if you just give them X then they’ll come back another day, leave a bad review, or say, “but why didn’t you tell me this?!?!”
I mean, ffs - this happens to me as a customer and I’m thankful. Sometimes there are obscene arcane scenarios that you can’t find out about through regular means that only that service rep will know about. They are mostly fine if you just explain what you’re doing - they’re safe guarding the company’s reputation. They have nothing against you asking for weird shit - they just don’t want your bad shit later.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#634When 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…
Whenever I ask questions, I tend to go to the very bottom of it. And I am not satisfied as long as I get a very intuitive and fundamental understanding of the topic. I have seen, however, that this can be tiring. Unless you are having the conversation with someone who has the time, willingness, and the knowledge to satisfy my curiosity, it is pointless to keep probing. People would often be exasperated or would be un…
Sometimes there are details one doesn't need to know to make a good decision. All of mathematics is built on this.
However this only works when there is enough knowledge to know why the unimportant details won't matter.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#635I too look stupid, but not in "so ahead of everyone I look stupid" way, or in a Socratic ironic way, just stupid. It does mean I can ask dumb questions and keep up with what's happening, or propose dumb ideas and sometimes they stick, but I think I'd prefer to not look, and consequently be treated like, I'm stupid.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#636I 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…
Because the answer might take 10 minutes to explain.
Are you really that smart if it takes 10 minutes to justify buying the computer with the smallest box?
Probably not.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#637Stupid questions are a great way to tease out when people seem to be saying similar things but they're not actually saying the same thing.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#638Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's "self deprecation", depreciation is something different. I'm not sure what kind of audience you think it works on. I tend to get (particularly from people under 40) one of two inappropriate reactions to reflexive self deprecation - either exaggerated sympathy for my plight, or treating it as an exposed weakness to attack.
Whoops, yes I meant self-deprecation (I added an 'i' by accident) Yes, some people will pity you, or treat it as a weakness. But having the courage to admit when you don't know something is a valuable trait that most people (in my experience) respect. Also if you demonstrate your knowledge in other areas and contribute value to the meeting, people tend to forgive a few stupid questions in another area.
But "courage" is exactly the sort of response that bugs me. It's not courage, or passive-aggressiveness, it's etiquette. Responding with praise, or pity, or a put-down, it's all a failure to appreciate the formula for what I consider basic etiquette.
It's like when I'm having a meeting with my manager and I want to talk, so I start, they stop, I apologize for interrupting, and they say no, no, go on.
I assume there is no emotional drama going on. If they really want to continue talking, they can do so. That's why I apologize and pause. I'm not sorry, but I need to show appropriate deference.
It would be unfortunate if someone was building up resentment because they're not on the same wavelength about appropriate behavior. The purpose of etiquette seems to me to provide a formula to negotiate common situations without having to navigate emotional complexities.
But when different people have different rules, there's not much that can be resolved.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#639Earlier quoted context omitted.
The explanation I saw was that people who buy comprehensive insurance are by and large regarded as lower risk than 3rd party only buyers & sometimes that weighting can tip the balance to make comprehensive cheaper than 3rd party, if the insurer thinks you’re otherwise a low risk buyer. All insurers have to go on to gauge your risk are the signals available to them & the type of insurance you’re buying is a signal. Wh…
That ... still makes no sense. "Discounting insurance for revealed [lower] risk class" doesn't work if the insured can easily fake membership in the lower risk class, which is trivial here -- just ask for comprehensive! What I think you might be confusing this with, is that one piece of the insurance is cheaper if you bundle it with others. That is, liability-only might be $50, but if you if you get liability + colli…
There's also a scenario where only people who don't look at prices buy liability-only, which signals poor decision making or carelessness and justifies higher cost to regulators.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#640One 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…
The entire post is peak /r/iamverysmart material and I'm not surprised it is popular here because a lot of the HN crowd fits into that category as well.
HN is more like Reddit every day.