Willingness to look stupid • Hacker News Board

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#791

Post by rd11235 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

terabytest wrote: post #27

I 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…

Agree. To put it in the context of the article, if the author looked at getting desired outcomes as a video game, then this article is just a rant, and time would have been better spent analyzing the situations for how to improve. The recurring failure mode is ineffective communication.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#792

Post by vagab0nd » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

I think willing to look stupid is easy, because you already figured it out. So you know you are not stupid and you are kind of showing off in a weird way.

The one step forward is willing to be stupid. That is you know you are stupid but still not try to hide it. And most of the time it'll just be that: you are stupid. But once in a while you discover something deep.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#793

Post by boxfoxdox » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

If there is one thing I learned is that what makes you being pervecived as stupid is the way you are asking the qestion, rather than the thing you dont know.

For example for some bizzare reason I am percieved as strange bu very inteligent and yet when I ask the questions they are rarely percieved stupid.

Why I am not going out of my own way to sound smart or anything I display depth of knowledge at certain areas and the way I'm asking questions is in an honest inquisitive matter of fact way.

The other side of this is the way one perceives the reactions, for example they might not reacted as if one was stupid as much as they are confused at disparity between the question asked and the knowledge one has showcased before that question.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#794

Post by indymike » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

lowercased wrote: post #738

TimTheTinker wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 Whys is great for getting depth into one causal subtree, but based on a paper I once read, answers can lack breadth when there is more than one cause (which is often the case). It said that "Why" is often best answered with a directed acyclic graph of causal relationships. (Though when I tried to use a causal DAG for root cause analysis of an incident at my current company, I was told that I was wasting time and no…

Similar here. Was pumped in an RCA with "why?" multiple times. The 'root cause' was I fucked up and missed something. But that was because "prod was broken right then, fix ASAP!" and no one else understands the problem, and we're understaffed, and people 'reviewed' the code without understanding what it was doing (or why) and one 'fix' led to another problem, and that 'fix' led to a third, and trying to explain this…

> The 'root cause' was I fucked up and missed something.

It's really hard to do RCA when people are blaming themselves. It had to suck to be in that meeting. A really good RCA isn't about finding a single actionable thing, it's about finding our what the root cause of the problem is... which in this case, might have been whatever originally broke production and caused an emergency fix that failed three times.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#795

Post by jbjohns » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #237

jbjohns wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amusing how many people are literally offended that they didn't explain why. But the answer we have is: because they wanted the smaller box. They are paying for it, no further explanation is required to the employee or anyone else. The employee should get the smallest box as requested and then they can try something like "may I know why you want the smallest box? I might be able to provide better help".

I'll try my best to alleviate you bewilderment. I think people are offended because there is a certain "contract" to social interactions that people are expected to comply with, and this behavior broke that unwritten contract. Furthermore, it's not apparent to readers what could be gained from breaking the contract like that, so it seems like breaking the contract for no reason.

I'm not even sure the actual behaviour broke any contract. What people are complaining about is a short entry in a list of short entries.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#796

Post by ree-san » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #441

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…

this is also part of a coterie of non-threatening communication most women implicitly learn while growing up, to realize desired outcomes without negative pushback.

Am woman, hard agree!

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#797

Post by chefandy » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

ManBlanket wrote: post #469

chefandy wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this guy is clearly smart, and willingness to ask simple questions is a worthy quality that many people possess, this is an article about what happens when decent intelligence and a good instinct is accompanied by narcissism and delusions of grandeur. Being right about something feels even better if other people thought you were wrong about it. With his COVID action— people disagreeing with him, at first, wasn'…

I was enjoying this article right up until he started shaking his fist at the heavens. As it meandered into rambling he undermined what was shaping up to be a good read. Losing me with foregone conclusion his roommate's hesitance to go all-in on masks was the reason she got, "long-covid". Seems he glommed onto the mask because it was something an individual can control in the face of an ultimately nihilistic reality,…

At the point he started wearing masks, there was absolutely no significant knowledge of how SARS-CoV2 spread. In fact, I saw a well-constructed paper a few folks were passing around in February noting that surgical masks were no less effective at protecting health care workers in actual clinical settings than N95s during recent respiratory disease outbreaks. We now know that such is not true for this one, but to claim that your sole ability to power through the haters and champion the truth was the reason you took that path, rather than just having taken a bet, is bizarre.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#798

Post by codr7 » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:38 AM UTC

This rabbit hole goes a lot deeper.

I've found that the less I give a damn about what other people think at all, the more enjoyable life is.

The thing is; if you have no authority, you have no responsibility; and I'm clearly not in control of other people's thoughts.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#799

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 6:37 AM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #427

Narann wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such behavior can be a good thing, but you could fall in your own bias thinking you know the problem better than them, to finally realize the problem outpace your scope and you are just impacted as anyone in the room. It happen for me once, and this was an humility lesson. Now I keep in mind I can feel I understand the problem then realize later I was all wrong too.

For sure! Another comment noted that this might be a sign of a dysfunctional organization, and I think there's a lot of truth there -- where systems have grown to such complexity that people involved in a larger project can't keep the whole thing in their head, and you get groups of people sort of faking it, assuming other people can fill in the details, and not wanting to appear ignorant about areas outside of your…

[deleted]

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#800

Post by joeberon » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #745

joeberon wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like an incel. Anyone who cares about this stuff is already weak.

Attractive people generally illicit more empathy and cooperation in work settings, and are generally more successful in their careers, than those of average or below average physical appearance. It's not the mark of an "incel" to take note and think this is important.

Yes it is