Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

As a senior developer, avoid cultivating learned helplessness. You can push back on this in a couple ways:

1) Instead of answering questions, give a nudge to where the solution is documented ("Hey I'm swamped, but I'd recommend checking X for more info. If you haven't read through X yet, that's a good resource to skim"). Keep tabs on how much your junior team members are expected to know, nudge them harder if they aren't taking the time to ingest the gestalt of what's there (it feels like a waste of time to do so sometimes... Reading isn't getting code written. But knowing what's already there saves work in the long run).

2) When something isn't documented... review the docs a junior team member writes, don't write them yourself. This both encourages them to have ownership over the system and will probably generate better docs in the long run (everyone has a notion of what docs should look like, but communication is two-way: seeing what someone writes down clues you into what you missed is necessary to record. Can't tell you how many docs I've seen for cloud systems, for example, that assume the user is logged in with proper credentials when that step alone usually requires handshaking across three services and maybe an IT team).

3) Prefer mistakes to silence. Don't bash a team member for making a correctible mistake, even in production; use it as a learning opportunity both for them and for you (if that mistake was possible, you're missing a guardrail). Actively communicate to junior members that wrong code that exists is preferable to no code; wrong code can be talked about, no code is work yet to be done. And be aware that for a lot of junior devs, the reaction to making a visible error is like touching a hot stove; cultivate a soup-to-nuts environment that minimizes that hot-stove reflex.

1. Your beliefs and assumptions are facts and logic; other people's beliefs and assumptions are emotions and biases

2. If someone describes an experience you can't relate to, it's an anomaly and you should ignore it

3. You know more than other people (except for third-parties who agree with you: they are an unquestionable authorities)

4. Never engage with issues in the context of real events; only examine issues in contrived, hypothetical scenarios

5. Avoid debates with real people; instead, make up imaginary people and argue against the make-believe opinions you give them

6. If you do debate a real person, your primary goal is to make them look foolish (not to change their mind, or yours)

7. Your understanding of other people's feelings and beliefs is more accurate and nuanced than their own

8. Your wild guesses and baseless estimates are valid statistical data

9. It's ok to bend the truth when necessary to prove a point

10. If someone disagrees with you, it's because they're less rational than you

The 10 Decrees of Rationality:

1. A person's wealth is a direct measurement of their contribution to society

2. The best way to help people is by getting rich as fast as possible (it doesn't matter how)

3. When helping people, it's best to ignore their input and feedback (if they had sound judgement then they wouldn't need help)

4. When someone does something good, they're probably secretly doing it for terrible reasons

5. When rich people do something terrible, they're probably secretly doing it for good reasons

6. Believing in your favorite unproven conspiracy doesn't make you a "conspiracy theorist"

7. Stereotypes are based in truth, except for the ones that you find personally offensive

8. When people say your research is bogus, it means your research is really so profound that they're scared of its implications

9. Super-intelligent AI is the greatest threat to humanity

10. Capitalism is a natural, fair, and sustainable system that makes our world a better place

> I’m glad that some people never develop epistemic learned helplessness, or develop only a limited amount of it, or only in certain domains. It seems to me that […] they’re also the only people who can figure out if something basic and unquestionable is wrong, and make this possibility well-known enough that normal people start becoming willing to consider it.

I think there’s better framing here as well: he is glad that a few people direct their own bounded resources towards what I’d call high-risk epistemic investments.

I’m also thankful for this. As species, we seem to be pretty good at this epistemic risk/reward balancing act - so far, at least.

What always struck me about famous philosophers is that almost none of them ever changed their minds. They grasped a main idea, turned it into a supreme principle, built everything around it, and defended their system against all critiques their whole life. I know this is simplifying but I think it's pretty close.

And yet when I read their works, it's easy to see flaws in their position. So I've always wondered how they could have such tenacity. I'm glad they did though. But it feels like they sacrificed their own life for the rest of us, so that we could see where one idea goes: what it looks like when it's fully developed.

When I play chess, I can never go very deeply down a single line before I get distracted by alternatives. But I guess some people are doing a depth-first search. I don't get it, and they may be wrong, but it's like a service to us all.