There do exist groups of people who like being corrected, and seek out their own mistakes. e.g. critical rationalists (see the philosophy of Karl Popper).
if interested, email me (see profile).
Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#32People are social animals. I think as analytical people we forget this aspect of our humanity a lot. So you need to feed that social part of yourself without doing, time-consuming and mostly pointless things, like getting drunk with the guys and watching naked women dance. If you dig naked women dancing, get HBO. Or just surf the net. As a consultant, I go through phases of alone down-and-working hacking, when I'm no…
Agreed. You (the OP) need to be socialized. :-) There is a phenomenon I call the "Engineering Dance", where engineers and similar types go through a kind dominance ritual on first meeting, probing to see who is the most expert. This doesn't work in most social situations; most people dont like it. My SO has a masters in math and a minor in CS, but we dont talk about my work much at all. She's a painter; we talk about…
Let me say: I think that getting a girlfriend who will up and tell you when you are being an ass (later on, in private) is one of the best things you can do!
"Engineering Dance" -- Guilty as charged! Brilliant name for it.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great response! I didn't read this until after I made my response, but I couldn't have said it any better myself. Daniel, sometimes (not always) when I read your writing, I wonder if we were separated at birth. Sure looking forward to meeting you someday.
What can I say? I'm a karma whore. I just restate the obvious and bask in the upvoting love. ;) Seriously though, I thought long and hard about hitting the submit button. Too many times somebody comes to the group with an honest question and then we rag all over them. It's easy to be critical! As hackers we are really good at finding faults. But I tried to put myself in his shoes. After all, he came for some feedback…
> > give up the I'm-so-smart routine. Trust me, you're an idiot like the rest of us
> What can I say? I'm a karma whore. I just restate the obvious and bask in the upvoting love.
It's weird that insulting the OP and myself is a method of karma whoring. Anyway, downvoted for being so pessimistic and then calling your ideas "obvious" which is arrogant (and moments after you implied the OP is arrogant by saying he overestimates himself). Also "trust me" is a non-argument that makes you sound slimy.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#34I believe that I can relate. I have a deep interest in various permanent and ephemeral topics that I simply have no idea who I would discuss them with. I am far more interested in these than most front pages of the newspaper, but the wonderful people who are my friends wouldn't sit still for the hour or so it would take them to get up to speed on the issue.
That's not to say I am particularly smart or anything, I'm just a specialist in terms of my interests more than a generalist. People also fit different amounts of thinking into each day, and I probably do more than most. That thinking may well be of low quality, but the quantity ensures that I would probably get blank stares from almost anyone.
So, I work on being a generalist where possible to help fit in, and I develop the skill of tailoring my conversation content and style (and speech) to different scenarios. That's fine for casual social situations, and great for work, but I still yearn for someone who has read all the articles I just read and wants to talk about them. I know from the web they are out there, but our paths never cross.
The funny thing is, I blame RSS. I think that RSS really did enable the computer to be a "bicycle for the mind" and that you can tell quite quickly now in a social circle who uses RSS and who doesn't. I guess that your friends don't. A well-stocked news reader expands your world and your interests and your knowledge of current events so quickly, that it almost creates two classes of people.
I have had people comment favorably on my breadth of knowledge on current events and I almost laugh - I just skimmed a relevant article in my reader that morning, so I happened to know what they are talking about. I guess they are also used to "dumbing it down" for others.
I finally convinced my wife to use RSS and now we have so many more good conversations. Her eyes glaze over quickly when I mention Tokyo Cabinet or Wolfram|Alpha, but that just means I have to work harder to make it interesting and relative.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally, I try not to say things like "dumbing down" I know exactly what you mean. That's why I put in quotes. It just makes it easier to talk about. Usually, "dumbing myself down" in my case means suppressing knowledge that I have. I can't fault other people for not knowing things that I do because as you say different people have different interests, and beside that I spend much more time on the internet that…
If someone say "we only use 10% of our brains", do you really view it as "dumbing yourself down" if you hold back a long lecture about the actual structure of the human brain? If so, I would say you simply lack social skills. This is not a bad judgement on you in itself, not everybody was born with equal endowment in social skills, and they can be learned. However, the way in which you ascribe your lack of ability to…
Walking around making constant negative judgments about the intelligence of your peers is hardly a good way to get along.
I posit that this is mostly due to the very incomplete first-hand/direct understanding most of us have of intelligence. Most of us only know one or several slim slices of intelligence. This may make it very hard for us to recognize intelligence in another.
I am reminded of an encounter with the clerk at the comic book store the day before yesterday. He was trying to make me out like I was some sort of illiterate because I didn't know who everyone in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was. (I know the major characters only.) As it so happens, much of my interest is in music and not literature, but I am sometimes moved by literature. He seemed positively smug that only he was curious enough to Google all the minor characters.
One thing that I might say -- it seems that a degree of "emotional intelligence" might have tremendous leverage -- it may well help you find others who are intelligent in novel and interesting ways.
Another situation from the past week -- there's a woman in one of the jam sessions I go to, who's just a terrible drummer! She has no sense of rhythm, except to approximate the beat with random and inappropriate errors. (Which totally wipes out the wonderful push-pull on the rhythm that the really good musicians are trying to share with each other.) It's like she's an incontinent with no sense of smell, inured to everyone's teeth-gritting tolerance of her. Well, there's a definite "flow" to socializing, and many different styles. It's advisable to either learn the particular "flow" of your group, or find another one more to your liking.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#36It's funny how a simple "I find most people intellectually boring, what to do?" got a lot of highly up-voted "get off of your high horse, smarty-pants" replies. I suppose the first lesson here is not to let people know you think lowly of them. Otherwise they get angry and stuff, silly bipedals. You would have had much different replies if you rephrased your question to "Hey, HN is full of great people with interests…
> I suppose the first lesson here is not to let people know you think lowly of them.
You are absolutely correct, at least from my perspective (although I don't think lowly of other people in the way you might mean). If possible, I'll edit my original post with my thoughts on this matter.
> You would have had much different replies if you rephrased your question
I know. The problem is that HN represents a small part of my interests, so it's unlikely that we share the same interests or values (especially considering I'm from a 3rd world country - I don't expect that many of you guys can relate to violence and poverty in the way that I can). The reason I chose HN is because I was hoping for responses with more signal than noise. I guess another lesson here is to choose your audience your wisely. And of course be mindful of how you address them.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#37My friend, you sound like my clone. I haven't really figured it out. We may just be doomed.
If possible, can you explain which parts of my post resonated with you most and how you would have put it in your own words? I'm trying to understand how I should communicate these sort of issues to other people.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
What can I say? I'm a karma whore. I just restate the obvious and bask in the upvoting love. ;) Seriously though, I thought long and hard about hitting the submit button. Too many times somebody comes to the group with an honest question and then we rag all over them. It's easy to be critical! As hackers we are really good at finding faults. But I tried to put myself in his shoes. After all, he came for some feedback…
> > give up the I'm-so-smart routine. Trust me, you're an idiot like the rest of us > What can I say? I'm a karma whore. I just restate the obvious and bask in the upvoting love. It's weird that insulting the OP and myself is a method of karma whoring. Anyway, downvoted for being so pessimistic and then calling your ideas "obvious" which is arrogant (and moments after you implied the OP is arrogant by saying he overe…
I think you misunderstood what I've said, or I wasn't clear enough.
In my opinion, I added nothing much of value aside from simply re-assembling the ideas everybody else already had. Arrogance was never my intention. I'm simply saying I don't see much new that I added. It's a reply to a complement -- thanks, but it wasn't that big of a deal. This type of sentence construction happens all the time in normal conversation.
If you're insulted, I apologize. I'm also confused. Where are you in any of the parents of this comment for me to insult you? You've got one comment on the page, and as far as I can tell, it's not even related to any of mine.
And saying I sound slimy is out-of-bounds. I'll end this here. I replied simply because I have no idea what in heck you're talking about and thought maybe I had done a poor job of explaining myself.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#39People are social animals. I think as analytical people we forget this aspect of our humanity a lot. So you need to feed that social part of yourself without doing, time-consuming and mostly pointless things, like getting drunk with the guys and watching naked women dance. If you dig naked women dancing, get HBO. Or just surf the net. As a consultant, I go through phases of alone down-and-working hacking, when I'm no…
Agreed. You (the OP) need to be socialized. :-) There is a phenomenon I call the "Engineering Dance", where engineers and similar types go through a kind dominance ritual on first meeting, probing to see who is the most expert. This doesn't work in most social situations; most people dont like it. My SO has a masters in math and a minor in CS, but we dont talk about my work much at all. She's a painter; we talk about…
> Most people have a socially adept friend
I don't think this came out very well in my post, but I think I am very socially adept. I'm the "socially adept friend" that you're talking about.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. You (the OP) need to be socialized. :-) There is a phenomenon I call the "Engineering Dance", where engineers and similar types go through a kind dominance ritual on first meeting, probing to see who is the most expert. This doesn't work in most social situations; most people dont like it. My SO has a masters in math and a minor in CS, but we dont talk about my work much at all. She's a painter; we talk about…
Let me say: I think that getting a girlfriend who will up and tell you when you are being an ass (later on, in private) is one of the best things you can do! "Engineering Dance" -- Guilty as charged! Brilliant name for it.
I definitely agree on the girlfriend, but from my experience that's even more difficult than learning social graces. It takes a perceptive woman to realize that underneath is a really good guy that just needs some help. Young women are often as dense in their own way as hackers. It took me years and the experience of a bad marriage to become acceptable to a good woman.