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Willingness to look stupid

sharif.io

161–170 of 273 posts

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The sign of true subject matter expert is someone who has the confidence to say when they don’t know the answer.

    input(“ask me any question”)
    print(“I don’t know”)
behold, Plato’s PhD level expert on any topic.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#162
On top of fear of looking stupid, my bigger concern is lack of novelty in my work. Seems like any idea I have for a blog post or book, or any photo I'm planning has already been explored in depths by someone else. I know the joy is in the process mostly, not the result. But doing something while knowing it is certainly not original make it really hard.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#163

The epiphany for me this week was a long list of rabbit holes from this long post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47324054 https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your... https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E... https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD638... https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/social.pdf https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2021…

> Now I have no illusions about who looked stupid and who were stupid.

Could you expand on what you mean?

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#164
post #57
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"The people I think are smart are those that try to look smart", that is the most plausible. There are probably many smart people who aren't afraid of looking stupid that you think are stupid for that reason. Personally I dislike people who never say stupid things, because they are focusing too much on appearances and too little on trying to figure things out.

> "The people I think are smart are those that try to look smart", that is the most plausible.

The story does not appear to define smart as "not looking stupid", rather something more towards "mastered the creative process".

There is only so much time in the day. An hour spent in interaction where you might look stupid is an hour not spent directly working on your craft. The most plausible explanation is that those who don't want to look stupid turn towards becoming smart as the escape. As in, a tendency to use time spent alone locked up in a room learning how to use a new tool instead of galavanting at an art show is what makes them become smart.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#165

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…

> after a initial proof of ability.

This has just as much chilling effect. At the very least it's gatekeeping.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#167

The epiphany for me this week was a long list of rabbit holes from this long post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47324054 https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your... https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E... https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD638... https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/social.pdf https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2021…

> Now I have no illusions about who looked stupid and who were stupid. Could you expand on what you mean?

Stupid/smart are social construct and illusions.

The reality is different.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#168

On top of fear of looking stupid, my bigger concern is lack of novelty in my work. Seems like any idea I have for a blog post or book, or any photo I'm planning has already been explored in depths by someone else. I know the joy is in the process mostly, not the result. But doing something while knowing it is certainly not original make it really hard.

You shouldn't disregard that even when you have the same intent as someone else, you work your way to get there, and that's usually more than enough to build a distinction.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#169
In this comment I'll use the words useless and "useless". The former's definition is the one we are most familiar with, while the latter, in quotation marks, is the literal definition if you break the word useless into its two components: use + less. So we have of no use whatsoever and of less use. Reminder: I am not using these words as insults, but rather neutrally. Also, I am using the general "you" here, similar to using "one", rather than referring to the reader or the author of the article in specific.

The problem with this article is that you're telling yourself you're not afraid of stupidity, which in this case is synonymous to incompetence or uselessness, yet your endgoal betrays otherwise. You're presenting a bunch of ideas that are 'useless' hoping amongst them is one of more use, hoping it all ties together and produces a wonderful result, as you get to yell "eureka". You do not want to accept uselessness, but to set your expectations of yourself, that either you or another person or persons have imposed, lower, back to where they once were. Or even lower. The reason your or another's expectations of you have risen after becoming older, as many comments have also wrote, is because your effort is being externally recognized by others, either by a Nobel price or a promotion. Regardless, your issue is self-esteem related. To combat lower(ing) self-esteem or insecurity, (and even accept uselessness!), you must love yourself.

Now a question: have you ever loved someone you didn't know at all? I don't mean in the physical sort of attraction, I mean someone that you knew nothing about whatsoever, not even how they look or act. It's impossible, isn't it? It is those we know the best that we feel love for, is it not? Now consider what the opposite of insecurity is. Security in one’s abilities and self, knowledge of one's limits as well as one's capabilities, and an acceptance of who one is. The more one grows, the more they change, so it is possible to know oneself and then not, as it is also possible the view others have make one to muddle their own perception. You won't find confident people who aren't aware of their own abilities or cannot accurately access what tools they have at their disposal. Confidence in abilities one doesn't have is not confidence, but overconfidence, and overconfidence is false confidence, which is as maladaptive as insecurity. I'll focus on those with low self esteem, because you fall into that category; these people are aware of their shortcomings or their potential shortcomings, their 'uselessness', because the higher you are the easier it is to fall, perhaps even inflate how many shortcomings they have. When you accept your "uselessness" you may produce some bad ideas, a few good ones, but in the end the fact that you're ok with it it makes you feel less distress about yourself, does it not?

Tie these together; you cannot love someone you do not know, and people who love themselves know their limits and what they can achieve, to be insecure is to misjudge your achievements, so because of this I assume, could be wrong, you do not love yourself enough. And watch, I said "enough", because knowing oneself completely is impossible. Similar to how reaching the truth is impossible, but becoming less wrong isn't.

Now uselessness. No one likes being bad at something; even babies are afraid of failure. I do not remember my time as a baby, but I remember being frustrated when I couldn't do certain things, like reaching a high place, as a toddler. Perhaps one of the reasons babies cry is because they cannot move their legs by their will. "Uselessness" can be overcome, but sometimes one may be actually useless and never learn how to walk. Does it sting, being called useless? I don't mean it as an insult here. I am using the literal definition of the word; complete inability to do something, rather than partial/subpar. It stings because it has been instilled on one that incompetence is negative, and thus something that should not be a part of you, a flaw needing purification. But if incompetence didn't exist, neither would competence, similarly to how life wouldn't be valuable without death or happiness without sadness.

However I like the gist and the thought behind this article.

Overall, I think acceptance that one might be unable to do certain things, can make one's life easier. The bad ideas you produce are as much of a part of you as your good ones. And accepting both is crucial.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#170
Plot twist: anything original will look stupid, until some cultural event makes the original thing the new "way," then all the small minds will act like that was the only way the thing should have been done all along.

"The emperor has no clothes" is a much deeper story about society and human nature than people realize.

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