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What I've Learned About Smart People.

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Re: What I've Learned About Smart People.

#91

Post by EricDeb »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #75
edw519 wrote: post #42

Going to Harvard means I have the very unique opportunity to be around a lot of smart people. Good for you. Even better for you is the fact that you recognize your opportunity. How sad that so many people in your situation never do until it's too late. Now, when I say “smart people,” I don’t mean that guy who always wins trivia night. I mean, blazingly intelligent individuals who are regarded as the pre-eminent schol…

I agree that his post smacked of branding - his first sentence read "Going to Harvard means ..." - and he's clearly impressed by branding - "Based on the research and findings of so many of the students and professors here, it’s clear that this trend is no accident." But your response seems kind of disproportionate. Even if it did take him a while to learn that asking questions at the risk of seeming dumb is a good t…

Agreed, the branding was a bit much. Congrats buddy you go to Harvard and learned to ask questions!

Re: What I've Learned About Smart People.

#92

Post by c0riander »

Smart people ask questions because they have enough confidence that they are smart to expose their ignorance.

Acting like you know everything doesn't come from a place of intelligence - it comes from a place of fear, that the other person knows more than you, that they will judge you, that a "smart person" would know what you don't know. I've forced myself to ask questions many times in meetings when I thought the answer was probably obvious to everyone else - only to discover that others had been wondering the same thing.

Re: What I've Learned About Smart People.

#93

Post by zeynalov »

I think it's a paradox. What does smart mean? Smart = knowing as much information as possible (or knowing how and where to get information when it's needed) + gifted with normal logic. So if smart knows best, why does he/she need to ask? If he's smart enough, doesn't it mean that he/she must be least asking one?!

Edit: I remembered something. There was a man called Said Nursi in Ottoman Empire in 20th century. He is recognized as one of smartest people ever. When he was in his 20s, after graduating 4 universities he opened a bureau in Istanbul and wrote on it's door "Here will be all questions answered and no questions asked" After answering most paradoxal questions ever he was already famous in Europe. In first days of Turkish republic people invited him to parliament, and then to be the president of Turkey. He rejected and started to write his famous books. Nowadays there are 300 millions of his students calling themselves "Nurcular" in turkish.

Re: What I've Learned About Smart People.

#94

Post by Natsu »

edw519 wrote: post #42

Going to Harvard means I have the very unique opportunity to be around a lot of smart people. Good for you. Even better for you is the fact that you recognize your opportunity. How sad that so many people in your situation never do until it's too late. Now, when I say “smart people,” I don’t mean that guy who always wins trivia night. I mean, blazingly intelligent individuals who are regarded as the pre-eminent schol…

I've long noticed something in the same vein: people who are uninterested or who don't think they're smart aren't just uncomfortable asking questions, they're uncomfortable seeing other people asking questions, too. It's probably related.

Re: What I've Learned About Smart People.

#97

Post by agumonkey »

mark_h wrote: post #77
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #35

What the article doesn't mention is that the smartest of people perpetually ask themselves questions regarding what they believe they understand. It is remarkably easy to convince yourself you understand something - a mathematical proof, the Halting Problem, advantages of some programming framework/style/language, when you're really just going through the motions and remembering what others have said, kind of memoriz…

I think this is also why "the best way to learn something is to have to teach it", or at least that's what I've found. When you start imagining what questions you might get asked, you begin uncovering all sorts of holes in your understanding, even if it's something you thought you understood but suddenly realise you couldn't explain.

Keen to 'you dont know something til you have to program it'

Re: What I've Learned About Smart People.

#98

Post by csallen »

redschell wrote: post #47
csallen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the article doesn't mention is that the smartest of people perpetually ask themselves questions regarding what they believe they understand. It is remarkably easy to convince yourself you understand something... when you're really just going through the motions This reminds reminds me of a good quote from Charlie Munger: "Above all, never fool yourself, and remember that you are the easiest person to fool."

Hey, did he take that from Richard Feynman, or was Feynman first with the quote: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

It's very possible (likely) that it originally came from Feynman. Munger quotes him often.

Re: What I've Learned About Smart People.

#100

Post by pjscott »

EricDeb wrote: post #91
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that his post smacked of branding - his first sentence read "Going to Harvard means ..." - and he's clearly impressed by branding - "Based on the research and findings of so many of the students and professors here, it’s clear that this trend is no accident." But your response seems kind of disproportionate. Even if it did take him a while to learn that asking questions at the risk of seeming dumb is a good t…

Agreed, the branding was a bit much. Congrats buddy you go to Harvard and learned to ask questions!

Let's not be petty; it's reasonable to take his post at face-value and assume that he just wanted to pontificate about something that interested him.
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