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Are You Intellectually Humble?

oa.mg

21–30 of 112 posts

Re: Are You Intellectually Humble?

#21

I’ve noticed in myself and anecdotally in others that a lot of stubbornness in conversation simply comes from the desire for validation. Having someone acknowledge what I’m saying is generally enough to get a conversation moving forward, where ignoring or not responding to my input can cause me to fixate until I recognize what I’m doing and break myself out of it. But if I feel mild validation, even if it is conclude…

Just to be contrary, it's possible that you're reading too much into other people's responses if you're actually beating yourself up in the middle of the night about what someone meant or didn't. Check out existential therapy. I'm not saying this to pathologize or minimize what you're saying, just that it's something I used to suffer from before I realized via (said therapy) that everyone else is just a narcissistic…

'People think about you enormously less than you think they think about you' was a really important realisation for my mental wellbeing! It's quite easy to demonstrate too, pick a random person in your life who you don't have a close relationship with and try and remember some random anecdote they mentioned a month ago.

This should be drilled into schoolchildren along with reading and writing I think, many people's teenage years are intensely stressful partially because of this false notion other people remember things you did in perfect detail.

Re: Are You Intellectually Humble?

#22
post #19

The only advantage I see at beeing humble is that it does not offend people with low self-esteem. One only needs to say to be good at something or to be proud of something to trigger some people. More so in Europe than in the States I think.

It also helps you brainhack yourself into learning more thing, and being more open to other people's perspectives. Not all of these will be valuable, but some of them will be, immensely so. If you have success based solely on your own perspective, it's easy to think you have it all figured out already and overlook where there's room for improvement and outside input.

Not sure about it. To set higher standards for yourself than for others is already a form of arrogance but you will ultimately improve faster.

Grasses are not so happy when a tree starts to grow between them.

Re: Are You Intellectually Humble?

#27
A bit unrelated, but one pet peeve of mine these days is the explosion of humble brag.

It used to be a little annoying, but it's now everywhere. Name dropping, inserting casually possessions, social status or achievements, using "I'm humbled by" all the time...

Doing your best to not sound pretentious is great. I wish I worked on that way sooner.

But faking humility, often badly, is such a mood killer for me.

I also think it comes with 2 trends that are rampant in social media, and runs especially deep in the US culture:

- adding virtue signaling to every interaction.

- using superlative for the most mondain things.

It's an instant credibility killer for me. But the problem is... for a lot of people, it seems to work.

Re: Are You Intellectually Humble?

#29

"The outcome of too much humility is that you end up listening to the counsel of some mediocre individual." Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)

Very true. I try to stay humble but at work I definitely have lists of people I always listen to and a (longer) list of people I generally never listen to. Maybe they have a good thought from time to time but I don’t have enough time to listen to all bad ideas to maybe find the one good idea.

Re: Are You Intellectually Humble?

#30
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly don't get the concept

Unsure if your own comment is sarcastic, but GP's quote is from Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy.

I like the quote in its use of sarcasm to emphasize a point.

I completely dislike that its apparent value also comes because it's a quote from a comedic character in a comedy film. I mean, that diminishes its value as sarcasm, and it becomes just a canned answer.

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