I would have loved for the author to cover the 3rd category - people whose ego doesn't let them post anything even before they're known. Everyone in small towns and cities already feels "known" and exposed vs living in big cities like NYC.
Willingness to look stupid
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Re: Willingness to look stupid
#62> 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 ado…
Maybe not adorable and attractive, but just enough to settle for.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#63Human society is too stifled by expectations of how every should behave, from the people who raise you and you grow up with and shows and movies, so much that we try to match that and be happy/sad/angry/prim/proper/etc. at times even when we don't really feel that way.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#64Just a few sentences in and the author is already comparing himself to nobel prize winners. Love it! Nice article!
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#65Willingness to look stupid and intellectual self-confidence are two sides of the same coin.
If you can find internal (rather than external) reasons to trust/believe in your own intelligence and capabilities, it makes it easier to be willing to look foolish. Also, a lack of knowledge/ability in a new area (or even a familiar area) is not a sign of a lack of capability. There's a difference between being a novice and being an idiot. So long as your source of intellectual self-confidence is strong enough (say, you have made great intellectual achievements in some other area of your life unrelated to the thing you're struggling with right now) its irrelevant if other people think you the fool: they're simply mistaken, and that's no skin off your back.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#66> 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…
Somehow, it always triggers my skepticism when supposedly sociobiological or evolutionary anthropological or evolutionary psychological arguments are brought up. My suspicion is that it is far too easy to simply pack in the story you want to have in there. I can think of dozens of objections to your description. For example, in small groups, the social game in terms of status may not be that complex, and the choice f…
Even in small groups, being respected and considered valuable is important? I'm not sure what you mean here.
I take your point, and I too get triggered when people invoke mate selection and dopamine. I could be with you in being skeptical about that specific angle... but absolutely if you look at lawless or less institutionalized cultures, there is a trend towards appearing strong/tough and hiding any weaknesses
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#67Yeah, I'm not sure if it's the prevalence of AI-generated text on the Internet now, but I feel more motivated to just... type stuff out and post it now without giving it too much thought (where previously I would overthink things.) Could be all the Claude Code prompting I've been doing too? Not sure.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#68Willingness to look stupid and intellectual self-confidence are two sides of the same coin. If you can find internal (rather than external ) reasons to trust/believe in your own intelligence and capabilities, it makes it easier to be willing to look foolish. Also, a lack of knowledge/ability in a new area (or even a familiar area) is not a sign of a lack of capability. There's a difference between being a novice and…
Someone (supposedly) published da Vinci's to do list a while back, and from the snippets I read he seemed to spend most of his time talking to experts about subjects he didn't know much about. Pretty telling if true.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#69Good advice to the younger folks. You can afford to look stupid. So go ahead and do that thing you wanted to try. There's more acceptance because of your age. You're expected to fail in some ways. Once you have a mortgage, a reputation to maintain, an image of competence to uphold at work, you pretty much can't afford to look stupid in my opinion.
Trump and Elon still afford to look stupid, you can do it your whole life.
There's a huge 'Emperor's New Clothes' vibe going on with those two.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#70YES!
happens to me all the time in things big and small. At work, at home, with the kids, my wife, and their birthday presents.
I once talked to a somewhat famous writer who told me this very thing.
He said his worst critic was his inner demon biting him at every thought, every phrase, questioning his wording, waiting for the greatest possible idea, discarding all that was not breathtaking enough.
Why do we have to be great all the time? Who is telling us to be best? And i know that in writing this i am pruning myself again trying to find the best words here.
Imagine that: i want enough points for karma to be able to post here my greatest idea. Which ironically enough, is the best greatest idea i had in a loooong time, and the moment i want to share it i must wait to be found good enough and worth to be heard.
I guess the only thing we can do is to disconnect our feeling of self worth from outside signals and be happy with the little things that made us smile when we did not know nor care about other peoples opinions.