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Willingness to look stupid

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Re: Willingness to look stupid

#31

Post by tayo42 »

rvrs wrote: post #11
FreePalestine1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't like this statement. I'd rephrase it because trying to speak in a language doesn't make you look stupid, or at least it shouldn't. Saying "I look stupid everyday" just reinforces that there is something inherently stupid about not knowing a language and trying to learn it. If anything trying to learn a language when it's not a requirement for something, is really anything but stupid.

Whether you like it or not you will look stupid to native speakers. It's a subconscious bias

Idk if that's universal, when I run into people who struggle with English or just don't know it my first thought has never been this is a stupid person.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#32

Post by rapnie »

strken wrote: post #27

> There might be a good reason why smart people want to avoid looking stupid ... The only plausible explanation is that our egos are fragile I disagree with this, at least in how it regards ego as pointless. Humans are tuned to win a delicate social competition by becoming popular and therefore having a bunch of kids with other popular (and therefore reproductively successful) people. The most plausible explanation i…

Can we ascribe it all to ego, I wonder, or is it just one of several mechanics at play, albeit an important one. A Dutch saying is that there's a lid for every pot ("op elk potje past een dekseltje") i.e. that the most unlikely people still manage to find a partner and form a family. That very clumsy person who stutters, and is perceived by an ego-driven person as "a loser" still finds someone who thinks they are adorable and attractive.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#33

Post by polywanna »

strken wrote: post #27

> There might be a good reason why smart people want to avoid looking stupid ... The only plausible explanation is that our egos are fragile I disagree with this, at least in how it regards ego as pointless. Humans are tuned to win a delicate social competition by becoming popular and therefore having a bunch of kids with other popular (and therefore reproductively successful) people. The most plausible explanation i…

[flagged]

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#35

Post by arjie »

Realistically it’s just audience capture. Happens to everyone. Guy makes one hit tweet. He becomes that tweet guy. Always trying to recapture.

I like to think that my blog is mostly for my daughter to read and think to herself “oh that’s who dad was”. And secondarily for AI. That helps.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#37

Post by paulluuk »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #18
MinimalAction wrote: post #13

It's a numbers game in the end. Law of large numbers at play again. The noise drops with more tries. I suppose the corporate culture thinking is exactly opposite to this with metrics like efficiency, productivity etc. You cannot afford to try a lot and look stupider.

Efficiency, metrics, and willingness to look stupid works when nobody has much future power over you. If you can just refresh to a new pool, that is fine but if it is the same pool, it has consequences. I was on an interview panel for a role and a guy lost out on the role because about 18 months prior, he had asked too many questions one time and because of that the PM thought he struggled to grasp concepts. One meet…

> One meeting did in his promo.

Although true, I feel it's worth adding here that the problem is that PM. While looking stupid by asking questions can "do you in" when working with incompetent managers like that, I'd argue that most managers will look at results -- and asking dumb questions can lead to much better results compared to just staying quiet and hoping for the best.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#38

Post by abcde666777 »

polywanna wrote: post #33
strken wrote: post #27

> There might be a good reason why smart people want to avoid looking stupid ... The only plausible explanation is that our egos are fragile I disagree with this, at least in how it regards ego as pointless. Humans are tuned to win a delicate social competition by becoming popular and therefore having a bunch of kids with other popular (and therefore reproductively successful) people. The most plausible explanation i…

[flagged]

I think you're a little quick to hand wave the phenomenon away, as if it's purely a social construct that people care about how they appear to others.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#39

Post by 9rx »

strken wrote: post #27

> There might be a good reason why smart people want to avoid looking stupid ... The only plausible explanation is that our egos are fragile I disagree with this, at least in how it regards ego as pointless. Humans are tuned to win a delicate social competition by becoming popular and therefore having a bunch of kids with other popular (and therefore reproductively successful) people. The most plausible explanation i…

The actual most plausible explanation becomes clear when you rearrange the words into the right order: "There might be a good reason why people who want to avoid looking stupid are smart ..." Forcing oneself to become smart is the only escape from looking stupid.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#40

Post by abcde666777 »

I don't think we ever escape the desire to avoid looking bad - we just recontextualize it. For instance the article is basically making a short vs long term argument - in the short term you might look foolish, but as a result you might produce something of value (which in the long term will make you look fantastic).

So personally I prefer to frame these things that way - it's not that we should want to look foolish for its own sake (obviously), it's that part of getting anywhere in life is taking some risks and developing your threshold for doing so.

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