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Willingness to look stupid

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Re: Willingness to look stupid

#131

Post by bonoboTP »

socalgal2 wrote: post #76

I'm not sure this is the same thing but I waffle between wanting to not look stupid and also not wanting others to think I'm not trying hard enough. Let's say there is something I need to do at work. I could read docs in the company internal site. I could read the code. Maybe the thing I need to do is figure out why a test is failing. It's possible it's failing because there's a bug in the code. It's possible it's fa…

It's also not clear from the other side. Do you give a lot of guidance, so the intern becomes reliant on always having someone telling them what to do exactly on the micro level? Or let them work it out slowly, and during that process get familiar with the systems more closely? I find that having a clear task to solve actually gets me more of an understanding of how everything works, than reading a top-down documentation where I don't have any context of "why".

Also interns can differ a lot. They can need different levels of guidance and can come with widely different levels of prior experience, even in unrelated debugging and troubleshooting like fixing network ports for LAN gaming or whatever kids these days might be doing. Setting up VPN to evade geoblocking or whatever. Others may have no idea what to even do. And those who can do it may take widely different time.

I think an internship is, in fact, a good place to learn these meta-lessons too. You ask for some guidance, then you see it was maybe too much. Another time you don't and spend a lot of time, and have your supervising engineer say "oh I could have told you XYZ very quickly", then you update and recalibrate. There is no single short message that can convey this. That's why experience is valuable.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#132

Post by israfilc »

onion2k wrote: post #59

It's easy to look stupid with no one around (editing your own writing), or with someone you trust deeply (choosing what to put on a cake with a friend), or if you're a jellyfish apparently. Those are spaces with people, or jellyfish, who you trust. What's much, much harder is being willing to look stupid in front of people who have an interest in proving your competence (e.g. a manager or a customer) or who would be…

So true! If you are in a relation focused environment/culture , looking stupid may harm your success. Context is really important as you explained.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#133

Post by atoav »

austin-cheney wrote: post #130
21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #78

This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…

That isn’t really correct. Fear of observation is highly correlated with neuroticism. Creativity, on the other hand, is a component of openness which is highly correlated with intelligence. The most creative people are those who measure both high intelligence and low neuroticism, which simultaneously are the people least concerned by impacts of increased observation. Furthermore, high trust social environments only c…

I teach at an art university for 8 years now. I would highly doubt that: The most creative people are those who measure both high intelligence and low neuroticism.

In my experience that isn't the complete picture. I have met highly creative people who are extremely (unhealthy so) concerned with what others think, yet go their own path anyways. It is true that creative people often tend to do things in a way that appears as if it is outside of the frame of normal parameters. But this isn't so simple either, because maybe it is context dependent. A punk musician may live in disregard of the aesthetical conventions of society, but they also may have a traded canon of styles and works their own subculture. So maybe that punk doesn't care what society thinks about them, but they may care about what other punks think.

My experience with hundreds of art students is that there is no correlation between how independent someone works and how creative their output is. There are many ways of producing interesting ideas and the lone (usually: male) genius being the only true way is by this point a well-refuted idea.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#134

Post by dominotw »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #78

This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…

recently execs in companies think software dev isnt creative work because llm can churn out equivalents. So they are openly tracking all sorts of metrics on devs now.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#135

Post by xorcist »

alwa wrote: post #17

If you haven’t had the pleasure of Los Angeles public-access television’s Let’s Paint TV… https://www.letspainttv.com/ Or, to save your eyes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_Paint_TV For more than 20 years, Mr. Let’s Paint TV (artist John Kilduff) has encouraged viewers to “EMBRACE FAILARE”—charitably put, to pass through the valley of incompetence as it’s the only path to the slopes of mastery. Just do the thing…

> “EMBRACE FAILARE”—charitably put, to pass through the valley of incompetence as it’s the only path to the slopes of mastery

Instructions unclear. Have pushed secrets to github. When will slope to mastery commence?

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#136

Post by xorcist »

eucyclos wrote: post #71
danpalmer wrote: post #16

> Some of the best research ... has come from surprisingly young people. ... They're not afraid of looking stupid. Young people aren't doing things without worrying about looking stupid, they just don't know that they look stupid. I say that as a former young person who was way more naive than I thought I was at the time. This is good and bad. Also I think this point ignores that as people grow in their careers they…

There's also the fact that there's a lot less social pressure for young people not to look stupid. If you're the senior subject matter expert and get a question you can't answer, people still expect you to make an educated guess. The junior guy they expect to ask someone.

That does not match with my, very much anecdotal, experience.

Real subject matter experts are generally very clear about where their expertise ends. Less experienced people, not so much.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#137

Post by zimpenfish »

eucyclos wrote: post #71
danpalmer wrote: post #16

> Some of the best research ... has come from surprisingly young people. ... They're not afraid of looking stupid. Young people aren't doing things without worrying about looking stupid, they just don't know that they look stupid. I say that as a former young person who was way more naive than I thought I was at the time. This is good and bad. Also I think this point ignores that as people grow in their careers they…

There's also the fact that there's a lot less social pressure for young people not to look stupid. If you're the senior subject matter expert and get a question you can't answer, people still expect you to make an educated guess. The junior guy they expect to ask someone.

> There's also the fact that there's a lot less social pressure for young people not to look stupid.

Also also they tend to be less financially "tethered" for want of a better word - mortgages, families, children, etc. - which makes it easier for them to be risky (consciously or not) about what/who/where they work on/with.

Probably not likely to be jumping from your stable 9/5 to a startup when you've got your semi-detached with 4 kids.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#138

Post by noisy_boy »

mvrckhckr wrote: post #129
21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #78

This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…

I find that restrictions not only don't kill creative work, they enable it. Measuring anything makes you consider constraints, which helps foster better creativity - at least for me, and I see the same in others as well.

Restrictions have dimensions. I have enjoyed working in highly cooperative situations where we had restrictions of resources and rules but no restrictions in terms of allowing us to find solutions. Infact those solutions were celebrated by my manager who had to work within the confines of rules and resources defined for him. It was great fun.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#139

Post by austin-cheney »

atoav wrote: post #133
austin-cheney wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t really correct. Fear of observation is highly correlated with neuroticism. Creativity, on the other hand, is a component of openness which is highly correlated with intelligence. The most creative people are those who measure both high intelligence and low neuroticism, which simultaneously are the people least concerned by impacts of increased observation. Furthermore, high trust social environments only c…

I teach at an art university for 8 years now. I would highly doubt that: The most creative people are those who measure both high intelligence and low neuroticism . In my experience that isn't the complete picture. I have met highly creative people who are extremely (unhealthy so) concerned with what others think, yet go their own path anyways. It is true that creative people often tend to do things in a way that app…

I did not base my comment on personal observations. It comes straight from psychology and the big 5.

I was also once an art student myself. Creativity extends far beyond individual contributions, which becomes evident in resource and personnel management. Creativity is highly correlated to openness, as is intelligence, and is least restricted by those who are most eager to exercise decisions and try new things without fear of consequence, whether real or perceived.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#140

Post by nom »

alwa wrote: post #17

If you haven’t had the pleasure of Los Angeles public-access television’s Let’s Paint TV… https://www.letspainttv.com/ Or, to save your eyes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_Paint_TV For more than 20 years, Mr. Let’s Paint TV (artist John Kilduff) has encouraged viewers to “EMBRACE FAILARE”—charitably put, to pass through the valley of incompetence as it’s the only path to the slopes of mastery. Just do the thing…

Looks like he is still doing his thing here

https://www.instagram.com/letspainttv/

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