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Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

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Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#141

Post by rawgabbit »

agentultra wrote: post #105

Pre-computing responses. If I am to give a presentation or am invited to a meeting I prepare by taking the position of my interlocutor. I write down their arguments. Then I write down my responses. Then the day of the meeting I have prepared responses for what they’re going to say. When I am caught with an argument I hadn’t thought of I pause first. Then I repeat what they said in my own words. And then I use implica…

In my experience, a dishonest debater will withhold information. That is you don't know a key fact which will sway the decision one way or the other. No amount of preparation can help you when you don't know all the facts.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#143

Post by electrondood »

c0pium wrote: post #117
KaiserPro wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YEah, pre-caching is very much what I do. If you combine it with empathy skills: "What motivates this person", "What are their goals", "what are their interests/specialities" then you can work out a list of stock answers before hand, and alter them to suit the situation later on. You still need to listen, as there is a non trivial risk of your mental model being wrong.

I loathe talking to people who rehearse the conversation ahead of time. They invariably don’t respond to what I actually said but rather change what I said to line up with what they practiced in the mirror. Or they say some version of “I expected you to say foo, to which I would have responded bar”. Cool story, but totally irrelevant. If you don’t have an answer at the time just say so and follow up later. Waiting fo…

> You still need to listen

I think you missed this part of the parent comment.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#144

Post by datadrivenangel »

rawgabbit wrote: post #130
chris_wot wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Waiting for your turn to talk is disrespectful and painful to watch.” I’m not following… surely you don’t mean interrupt the person speaking?

Citizen asks a question, "Why are rents increasing so rapidly?" Politician sticks to his prepared talking points and riffs for fifteen minutes about something else. Citizen feels disrespected.

Years ago I went to a thinktank event on drone policy, and the congressmen they brought in spent 15 minutes saying that we needed to start discussing the important conversation of beginning to plan our policy creation dialog.

Nothing but hot air.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#145

Post by electrondood »

osullip wrote: post #29

Don't speak. People fill voids and awkward situations by saying stuff, even if that stuff is wrong. It's OK to be quiet. It's also OK to say 'Let me think about that'. Lose some arguments. And unless the situation you are in that requires a quick decision is life or death, it probably doesn't need one.

This is the correct answer, and actually addresses the question.

I tell people "I don't make decisions on the spot," or "I need to consider it, I'll respond by end of day," etc.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#146

Post by vineyardmike »

gopher2000 wrote: post #136
reddiky wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally, do your best to avoid situations where a "quick decision" is needed; this is good advice even for "quick thinkers". Fast decisions are often poor ones - the counterpoint to that is dragging something out over many weeks or across many meetings - but putting yourself in a situation where the unknowns become knowns or the scope of the landscape and weight of the decision can be properly assessed is important…

It's a fair point but I'd caution that making the "smallest possible good decision" really needs emphasis on good and not smallest or this results in just delaying. And there's a ton of people that cause delays. Especially in the corporate world.

I think delaying is the point. You delay the “immediateness” so you can form a nuanced opinion without urgency.

I know we can’t always change the world we live in, but we can at least acknowledge it. In the corporate world people really like to pretend there is a fire, when few things are truly urgent. If you can keep the sky from falling down with a quick and small scoped decision, you free up time to make big and long term decisions slowly.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#147

Post by faeriechangling »

cdrini wrote: post #102
orng wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only insight IQ tests can give you is that anyone who gives them any merit is either a moron or uninformed.

I recently shifted my opinion on IQ tests a bit after watching a recent Veritasium video. He goes into the background/history/controversy of the test as well as some of the concrete impacts of the test and places where it's used. For example did you know the US military has an IQ minimum cutoff? And furthermore they have a second 'soft' cutoff, where only 20% of the military can have an IQ under a certain value. In t…

IQ tests being invalid is more politics than science. Among other things, rejecting the existence of cognitive inequality is necessary to justify systemic racism via the continued existence of Asian quotas (Affirmative Action). Since lots of people benefit from this racism, there’s a huge interest in denial. In western countries, when there’s a few billion people in Asia, and you let a tiny amount in gatekeeping them on the basis of education/wealth/skills, it isn’t really all that much of a shock that they and their children are smarter then average. The only way this could NOT happen is if Asians were LESS intelligent than other groups on average.

IQ tests are hilariously predictive of success if you’re doing a task which is similar to taking an IQ test like academics. They strongly indicate certain mental disorders. Low IQ is more predictive of success than High IQ. Maybe people take the difference between scoring a FSIQ of 110 vs 140 entirely too seriously, but the difference between somebody with 60 vs 90 is staggering.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#148

Post by kouru225 »

I’ve slowly turned from a quick witted guy to a much slower guy. I don’t think it’s a problem actually. My previous quick-witted self was capable of being quick-witted because I made a shit ton of assumptions about the way the world works. Now I’m constantly rethinking and questioning things I wouldn’tve before, which of course makes me a less snappy thinker.

The benefits are obvious to me: while I may have presented myself better in the past, I was prioritizing my presentation over being right, and eventually those snappy comments would come back to bite me. Now my life is much more exciting and varied. I find myself learning a lot more and being a lot more excited about the world.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#149

Post by aorloff »

There are times in life when you have to make a quick decision and that is genuinely hard.

For the times in life when someone wants a quick decision, instead learn a few canned and polished responses that give you a few minutes to decide how you want to answer.

Just because someone wants a quick decision doesn’t mean they deserve more than a quick response.

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