Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Shitty pop-psychology is shitty pop-psychology.

A more realistic "impostor syndrome" is the IT idea of 'fake it till you make it'. In other words, its a tacit admission you dont know shit and you're googling for ideas until you get something that sticks. And yeah, most IT is like this. Even Stack Overflow is a meme - search here and copy/paste regardless the quality.

And, well, it's not impostor syndrome if you're a know-nothing idiot.

And the crap about Dunning-Kruger.. It just serves a way to shut experts up and dismiss their experiences and knowledge. Its basically the pseudo-science crap way of saying "My quiet ignorance is better than your direct assurances".

Then again, business types also believe in shit like forcing all employees in Myers–Briggs Type Indicator crap, and then comparing that across everyone. And if you know anything about psychology, you don't do longitudinal comparisons of this sort of crap.

importantly, not all risk is equal and part of the evaluation shouldn't be feel good quotes but rather an examination of the level of risk involved. To give a crude example.

- Your partner says they're ok with trying a threesome.

- Your partner says they're ok with trying that new restaurant.

to bring it more inline with tech.

software developers need to be able to safely break things, that's why they don't work directly in production. a hotfix bypasses the normal processes and goes straight to production. It's not that you don't do it, you don't do it without an acknowledgement that the reward outweighs the risk and because you respect the risk you take care to minimize mistakes.

> 90% of my projects are failures, and the 10% which are successes would have never happened if I was too afraid to start them.

You should definitely try things that might fail.

However, failure within those projects should be actively avoided.

These pithy quotes that try to remove any downside from failure are misleading. In business, failure has consequences. You need to understand what's at risk and make a best effort to steer the project toward success.

These over simplified quotes that try to strip all of the downsides away from failure are a cheap trick. Yeah, they convince some people to get past their fears, but they also mislead other people into thinking that there are no consequences.

You need to understand the risks and consequences, not just wave them away with pithy quotes from someone's blog.

words have connotation and failure does not mean mistake.

This is a personal anecdote about this topic so feel free to ignore, but I recently had one of those epiphanies that you only see in movies that is somewhat relevant here.

Background: I'm a software developer that has worked for 30 years professionally and has used computers for at least 40. Languages and technologies range across pretty much everything popular (and many that were not).

I've always considered myself intelligent to very intelligent. I own lots of books, love learning, etc. So much so that I considered it a deep part of my self-image. Except while attending a very good engineering school, I generally considered myself the smartest person in the room (yes, insufferable, really).

Now, internally (stored in one of those places in your mind that you know are there but you just pretend isn't), I knew this wasn't the case. I have a terrible memory and have always seemed to have to work at least twice as hard in math and sciences and still only had a vague understanding of what was going on. Even to this day I can tell you a lot of findings about the fundamentals of computer science theory but I couldn't explain them to you except in broad sketches. And if you asked me specifics about a book I just read I would likely draw a blank. That said, I've had very successful career as a developer.

Recently, I began playing Go more seriously after playing casually for years with another (much higher ranked) player. I've joined a local group, play online regularly, study books, etc. While I previously thought I was a pretty good amateur I was quickly disabused of this notion. I was beaten handily by almost everyone I played. Worse, studying made almost no difference. This caused me a bit of a intellectual breakdown. It was as if what I always knew deep down was actually true: that I'm NOT particularly smart or gifted. That I'm at very best "average" if not below. Go shined a big, bright floodlight on all of those insecurities that I hide from myself. My entire self-image was shattered.

I'm still picking up the pieces of this realization but over the past few months it has radically changed how I deal with other people as well as how I perceive myself. I think I'm a little more understanding, a lot more humble, and maybe a bit more "human". I'm still a successful software developer, but now when I'm studying something new I'm not doing it out of some misguided belief that learning it will somehow make me better than other people, but because it will make me a better software developer that can help solve problems better. I don't treat knowledge as something that I can lord over people to show that I'm smarter than them. And I seem to assume better of people than I did before.

And I still play Go, poorly.