Hey, I wrote something similar along these lines a while back ;) https://docs.monadical.com/s/ask-stupid-questions
Willingness to look stupid
641–650 of 811 posts
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#642One of the most intelligent people I went to college with just always seemed to ask the dumbest, most simple questions to the professor. I know now, that what he was doing was establishing the ground floor so to speak of his knowledge. The first principles. Once he had those in hand, he knew he could use logic and deduce most of the rest. Especially when grounded in the mathematical equations that went along
with the first principles.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#643> 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…
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…
>"my questions are not really stupid, I'm just so smart that others don't realise"
Sounds like this was the point of the blog post. He also drops that he was "very good" at Overwatch and "#1 in the world". Usually the people who want to tell others about this in public are not very good.
The ones who are very good are the ones who only tell you after you've tried teaching them. Since bad players in games often can't tell what good players look like, or how they play.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's not wrong, many cities defunded their police and then quickly reversed that decision, many adding more funds to their departments. It was a pretty big event so I know we all remember it as long as you follow current events, but it's easy to find articles mentioning it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-reverse-defunding-the-po... https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2021/february/minneapolis-re... https://www.washi…
Have you evaluated, or even bothered to seek out, the literature that disagrees with you?
That doesn't make any sense. It's not a philosophical view, it's an event in history and a matter of fact.
Cities defunded police departments, crime went up, some of those same cities then later re-funded those departments, and even increased budgets.
The crime statistics and city council laws passed support these claims, I have not found any claims disputing these facts.
Even the left most leaning sources agree with these claims.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#645I think the conclusion I draw from this is that, on the margin, there should be more times when people think I am stupid. I can’t think of a good example off the top of my head of this happening.
I think the car insurance example is perhaps an example of the three-part explanation talked about in the article because sometimes comprehensive cover is cheaper than third party cover (the argument goes 1. Comprehensive is better because it covers everything, 2. Third party is cheaper because it covers less, 3. Actually comprehensive is sometimes cheaper for weird reasons like riskier drivers self-selecting for third party cover) but I could also be wrong here. An obvious way would be that the author’s case is not one where comprehensive cover is cheaper and a less obvious way would be if comprehensive cover is deceptively cheap (eg maybe if you get into an accident where the insurer covers first-party damage because you have a comprehensive policy, your future premiums under any policy are higher than if your insurer had only paid for third party damage.)
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#646Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who has been deplatformed for questioning the status quo? Isn’t literally all of BLM challenging the status quo?
one example: vaccines are the status quo, I presume you agree on that. Most platforms are removing content that cause "vaccine hesitancy". YouTube has even expanded their this to apply to all vaccines [1]. Furthermore, it seems relevant to point out that dictionaries have updated their definitions of "anti-vaxxer" to include anyone questioning even the government mandates themselves [2], which has opened the door to…
> dictionaries have updated their definitions of "anti-vaxxer" to include anyone questioning even the government mandates themselves
Merriam Webster has used that definition since they added the term to their dictionary in 2018: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/may/17/viral-imag...
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#647Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the best people I've ever worked with used this approach. "I'm going to ask stupid questions now." and "Just so I'm understanding the problem, ." were two phrases she used all the time . I am surprised at how difficult it has been to emulate her technique. Feeling comfortable asking the obvious questions is one half of the battle, but the other, more difficult half, is knowing what obvious questions to ask. Mo…
One thing you learn in sales is the value of open-ended questions. Until you consciously look at it, it's hard to realize how bad the questions we tend to ask are. Yes/no questions are the worst. But even questions like "What did you do?" aren't great because the answers can often be rather short. A better question is often posed like "Tell me about X" or "Describe how you did Y". Of course this isn't universally tru…
A similar technique is demonstrated in the old Video Arts So You Want To Be A Success at Selling? video series starring John Cleese, in the Part 2 video ("The Presentation") iirc, in a scene where a salesman uses the Five Whys (or what is effectively that, though the term isn't used) to prevent the loss of a customer account.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#648This is something I'm working on. It's a lifelong process, especially when you get into the mindset of thinking you're smart (a problem for most folks on HN, and not necessarily because they're wrong).
Nobody knows everything, and even if you're a hyper-conformist who always tows the line and parrots experts instead of evaluating ideas from first principles, you ought to find peace in the fact that 500 years from now (and perhaps even some in our lifetimes), people will look back at many of our most fundamental, passionate, and obviously true opinions with a mix of disdain, pity, and fascination.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#649Earlier quoted context omitted.
I identify with this situation but my feelings about it are a bit different, although not intentionally. This mirrors my general disconnect with the article. In this situation I feel some anxiety or hesitation about asking these questions, but I don't feel it as a fear of appearing stupid. Instead the anxiety seems to come from worrying that I am annoying or offending everyone with questions about things that are obv…
I did support when I was in my late teens and I ALWAYS started at the very bottom, with the questions that seemed obvious, and worked my way up. Most callers thought it was annoying, so I would often prepare them for the silly simple stuff I was about to ask and ask them to humor me. It was especially painful if I was the 3rd person they had talked to. I guess I still work this way although I've fallen out of the hab…
The "humor me" tier 2 or 3 tech support people are the best. By the time I've called in I've already done the usual stuff, that's why I called, at least they crack me up "what color is the light on the left side" or whatever, not just silence and clacking and background yelling of tier 1 while they "wait for me to power cycle".
Turns out I absolutely cannot do tier 3 support, but I can do 1 and 2 for friends and family and I'm the "whiz" or whatever. Tier three, for me, was basically me in a bad mood talking to me in a bad mood, in order to gatekeep the poor dev/DBA/NOC that had to actually fix things. No thx!
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#650This reads like this flip side of Paul Graham's essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular" http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html Spoiler alert: he thinks it's because whereas most people try really hard to be popular, nerds focus on other things. Like understanding the root cause of an issue, even if it involves making yourself appear stupid.
I can't say it's news: I'm like that myself. It has it's downsides though. I focus so much on the real world, things like spending hours on personal grooming to impress others just don't happen. My wife thinks I'm a slob. I'm a very tidy & clean slob, but it's true.