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Willingness to look stupid

danluu.com

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Re: Willingness to look stupid

#671

Post by TheCoelacanth »

SilasX wrote: post #534
the__alchemist wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what the author was getting at here - a compelling reason is that the value of the payout to fix your own car x the probability of it happening is lower than the total premium extra. Eg the "Insurance is only worth it for things you can't afford" mentality. This also checks with the OP in this subthread: The insurance seller will always push for more coverage for self-interested reasons.

That's opposite my experience: I took an appointment a few weeks ago from my insurance agent (Texas) who wanted to review my existing insurance vs my needs. On the call I laid out that same logic -- I can afford repairs to my car out of pocket, so it doesn't make sense to insure it, so maybe I should drop it (just keep liability) -- and she agreed, and was happy to tell me the savings! (I didn't go through with it on…

Salespeople have different strategies, so you aren't always going to get one who tries to sell you a bunch of stuff you don't need.

Some will try to milk you for all you're worth. Others will try to stick to things that you plausibly need and hope that selling to more people and having a higher renewal rate will make up for the extra amount that they aren't squeezing out of each person.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#672

Post by genewitch »

entropyie wrote: post #70
threatofrain wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Dan Luu isn't obviously motivated by a desire to antagonize the Apple employee, and neither is he socially or morally obligated in the slightest to explain his consumer intentions during a purchase at the Apple store. And was the encounter really antagonistic? Dan Luu is the one who left looking stupid.

Consider that the shop is unlikely to have the laptops stored or annotated by box size. Dan was asking the employee to expend considerable additional effort to find the smallest laptop box when he potentially knew the model number, or least had a reason that would justify the extra work. I would have just said "I'm really tight on carry-on space", not to avoid looking stupid, but to assure the employee I wasn't break…

So you'd lie to the employee?

He touches on this later in the article after comparing thoughts to another person (who is block quoted) who seems to wonder the same things as a lot of commenters here...

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#673

Post by anm89 »

andrewla wrote: post #338

This has happened to me frequently at my current company. I get pulled into a meeting about something that I have no context on because it touches my area of expertise, and the discussions have apparently been stalling out. I brace myself to be the idiot. I'm going to waste everyone's time asking questions that everyone knows the answer to, and I just got looped in, so everyone's going to feel like they need to walk…

This is such an eye opening experience, especially when you are new to the corporate world.

It's amazing how frequently fancily dressed, well speaking, high paid people sit in rooms and essentially role play being adults while just having absolutely no clue what is going on.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#674

Post by philosopher1234 »

hunterb123 wrote: post #644
philosopher1234 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The interpretations, not the facts, are what I’m referencing.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#675

Post by genewitch »

misja111 wrote: post #59
bjarneh wrote: post #45

This post seems like some sort of humble-brag about not really being stupid, but being "willing to look stupid" to people who are actually stupid. To be honest, this entire post make him look stupid, but we all know now that he doesn't care what we think. I'm probably stupid for falling for another one of his clever schemes where he's just pretending to be stupid.

Exactly. E.g. this: "Although there are some downsides to people thinking that I'm stupid, e.g., failing interviews where the interviewer very clearly thought I was stupid" This isn't just looking stupid, this is being stupid. Why in Heaven's name wouldn't you at least adjust your behavior when you're in an interview? Acting stupid can be a convenient way to hold up your belief that you're smarter than the rest. Nobo…

I don't change anything about myself when I interview for jobs. I can't even fathom why I would, in this industry (or really any not customer-facing industry, really).

They saw my weird resume - it always gets a comment. It was revised and edited under direction from a retired entrepreneur and CEO who explained how employee employer and employee/employer/HR/hiring managers interactions work "in real life".

They did a phone interview. They called me in. The only times I get the "thanks for interviewing, but" calls is when the recruiter or headhunter obfuscated the job description to prevent poaching and/or losing their commission/bonus and I had literally no idea about any of their stack/business/whatever.

I could just be lucky, I guess, not having to lie or embellish or present a facade.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#677

Post by hunterb123 »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #674
hunterb123 wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The interpretations, not the facts, are what I’m referencing.

Such as?

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#678

Post by lugged »

andrewla wrote: post #338

This has happened to me frequently at my current company. I get pulled into a meeting about something that I have no context on because it touches my area of expertise, and the discussions have apparently been stalling out. I brace myself to be the idiot. I'm going to waste everyone's time asking questions that everyone knows the answer to, and I just got looped in, so everyone's going to feel like they need to walk…

This happened to me recently,

A team I work with sometimes was blocked on a couple of PRs for about a week. I needed one of the team members for something and their lead wasn't doing much to help remove his roadblocks to helping me so I stepped in asking my really basic questions about what they were trying to achieve.

Within about 30 minutes we released one PR and deleted the other. The one we deleted was blocking the other but there wasn't actally a need for it due to some spec change that happened earlier, just nobody could figure out why it was needed or what needed to be finished before it could ship.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#679

Post by reidjs »

indymike wrote: post #624
Zababa wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends. Yes/no questions are great when you want to quickly validate something. Open-ended questions are great when you want to get a lot of information. Yes/no are for confirmation, open-ended for exploration. Different goals.

Hmm. Often times, an open ended question results in a much more accurate answer. Humans tend to approximate or even lie to force an answer to fit a limited choice question. Example: you want to know if water is falling out the sky. You ask: Is it raining? Response is no. You walk out the door and are rendered unconscious by golf-ball size hail. Better to have asked, "what's it like outside?" or, "what's the weather r…

I think his response meant in situations where you just need to figure out which project management tool they use so you can log in for the first time, binary questions are the right tool for the job (information gathering). But I mostly agree that, in the big picture, the broad questions are more helpful for solving the complex problem you’re facing.

and nobody is going to say it’s not raining when it’s hailing outside… but I understand if that was just a metaphor. You’re probably asking that question to figure out what kind of clothes to wear, and they would probably infer that. It’s so contextual though.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#680

Post by eBombzor »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #435
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…

>humblebragging that you're an unrecognized genius and this is why this article is popular. Everyone has to deal with looking foolish or telling a doctor they know their body better than them. I think playing it up this way and in this format really sells this idea of being this underappreciated genius in a sea of stupid people, which unfortunately a lot of people relate to, instead of attacking the social and system…

Agree with everything you said.

The unusual level of hostility the author encountered didn't seem right... Like you said, there's some over-sensitivity, a lot of jumping to conclusions, and hostile thinking from the author himself that led him to believe that so many people thought he stupid. Definitely some social anxiety in there as well, which is fine, but letting that turn into hostility is not.

It's a shame because the articles overall message isn't bad at all. Have the willingness to feel stupid for personal improvement is good advice but he just comes across it the wrong way.

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