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Willingness to look stupid

danluu.com

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Re: Willingness to look stupid

#721

Post by Thorentis »

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 essentially the Socratic method. Arriving at a shared understanding through the asking of questions. I employ this technique regularly and it rarely fails me.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#722

Post by Thorentis »

For somebody who doesn't mind looking stupid, there is a glaring lack of examples of when you actually were stupid.

This seems like a really long example of a typical narcissistic interview answer to "what is your biggest weakness?", of "people think I look stupid but actually I'm really really smart".

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#723

Post by throwaway0a5e »

JJMcJ wrote: post #547
lotsofpulp wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pja made the claim that in some instances, collision/comprehensive + liability can be cheaper than just liability alone. I expressed surprise that collision/comprehensive + liability can be cheaper than just liability alone, since, on the face of it, the insurance company seems exposed to more losses due to possibly having to pay the insured for their car damages. In my comment, I wrote liability referring to the ins…

Possibly willing to buy collision is a proxy for a generally prudent driver. Also, skipping collision happens most often when driving a really cheap car, which can be a marker for a bad driver. Actuaries actually have numbers for this things, but I am just speculating.

> Possibly willing to buy collision is a proxy for a generally prudent driver.

It's a proxy for not being able to afford to fix or replace your car at the drop of a hat.

>Also, skipping collision happens most often when driving a really cheap car, which can be a marker for a bad driver.

Once again, just a proxy for money.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#724

Post by tigerlily »

As an engineer frequently working with high-voltage, in my world there is simply no such thing as a stupid question. I gently remind my technicians of such whenever they come to me with questions they feel are stupid.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#725

Post by entropyie »

genewitch wrote: post #672
entropyie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I would have synthesised a brief approximation of the real reason. Transport being one real possibility.

The point is that this is a two way transaction with a real person, who has their own hidden state, goals and limits that are not always apparent to a consumer.

E.g. company policy on deducing what the customer really needs.

How was the employee to know Dan was the one person who actually knew what they needed, out of 100 over confident buffoon's that came to the shop that week.

This is why I don't hassle the support person fixing my internet when they run through support script.

I don't say "skip this, I have an honours degree blah blah", cause they have enough constraints to deal with as is... And once in a 100 times, I will learn something I didn't know...

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#726

Post by ziml77 »

crispyambulance wrote: post #549
serial_dev wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like to say "I'm going to ask a stupid question". First of all, it feels disingenuous to me, people who say that never actually think that their questions will be stupid. And the second reason is that I think I might even convince myself that my questions are stupid... I know it sounds silly to some but little things like how you talk about yourself (and your questions) is important. I often ask these "stupid…

Yeah, to pretend to be "stupid" and basically dismiss your own question is kind of cloying or may be seen as disingenuous or even passive aggressive. Folks who are good at communicating can always keep everyone feeling engaged and comfortable, while still getting to nitty-gritty WITHOUT resorting to saying stuff like "... this is stupid question, but...".

They're not pretending to be stupid. It's that they think their question might be stemming from not understanding something fundamental that everyone else in the room already knows.

If you think they're being disingenuous because you think they do understand what's going on, then it actually supports why they feel the need to preface their question with that phrase. You expect that they know it, so they make questions around it less jarring by admitting that they probably don't know enough.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#727

Post by ziml77 »

mattmanser wrote: post #617
GordonS wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I like this tactic, but I don't think phrasing it with the word "stupid" is helpful. I prefer to say things like "I'm not fully up to speed on this, so let's go back to basics/fundamentals for a moment", or "sometimes we're so focused on the details that we can't see the wood for the trees - let's take a step back and just run through it at a high level again".

That just sounds like corpratese though, the stupid question is much better in my opinion. With yours it's to easy for someone to switch off and not hear what you said because they think you're talking bullshit. In two sentences you managed to cram in 5 idioms/phrases that are basically corporate babble.

They sound like someone avoiding directly admitting that they don't understand something. Unwillingness to look stupid.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#728

Post by ziml77 »

tombert wrote: post #497
mywittyname wrote: post #360

Earlier 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…

I've stolen a similar technique from one of my favorite coworkers ever, which is to preface my questions but "This might be a silly question, but...". I like this because I feel like it kind of de-stigmatizes asking "obvious" questions. If you acknowledge that the the question might be redundant, but ask it anyway, I think it makes the dialog more approachable.

I think the biggest effect it has is that it stops people from thinking "is he stupid?" and getting annoyed at the question.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#729

Post by lbayes »

This is my not-so-secret weapon and I highly recommend it.

I spent some years at a FAANG, some of them in management, and it was shocking how many meetings could be unlocked by one person willing to risk sounding stupid.

I was also shocked by how many people would approach me after to say they were wondering the same things.

The flip side to this, was that I would also occasionally step on someone's favorite baby, which they usually didn't like much.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#730

Post by h2odragon »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #553

I feel like I could have written this post, even the trouble getting blood drawn, and the response from nurses when you tell them. Except for this part: 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…

Never did find a band widener, but did get to talk to everyone in the radio department...
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