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Comment by Smircio- | Hacker News Reader

Heck yea. Im kind of new here and it can be so intimidating. I feel like everyone is an expert at everything.

Heh. Keep in mind that people are going to be more likely to comment on something which they have knowledge of or an opinion on, so you will see a certain amount of selection bias in that most of the people who comment on something know something about it, even if there are large numbers of people reading and interested who are just keeping quiet (though of course there are people who also make comments on things they know little about).

Also, I know that for some things that I write about, I'm not actually an expert on it beforehand. Instead, I see an interesting question, say to myself "hmm, that's interesting, and I don't actually know the answer", go out to Google, books I own, or just try some experimentation out myself, and then comment on what I found. I usually do try to provide sources and some details about what I did when doing this, but I realize that it may sometimes make me look like more of an expert on topics than I actually am. For example, I have a silver badge in JavaScript on StackOverflow, even though I've only ever written a few dozen lines of JavaSript in my life (in fact, I've probably written more lines of it on StackOverflow than off), since I tend to be good at quickly researching and experimenting with a question and providing a good explanation, not because I'm an expert on JavaScript.

So yeah, it's great the Julia writes down her thought and search process while doing this, as it helps people realize that they too can go through the same process and learn new things.

It's not that, it's just that experts tend to contribute to threads where they can share their expertise.

So while it appears that everyone here is amazing; that isn't the case: we just tend to have something that we're very good at and comment on it.

The good thing is that you can learn a lot here as long as you don't get sidelined by some of the inane arguments and fighting :)

Also, an awful lot of people who sound like infallible "experts" in tech are just people who are dealing poorly with imposter syndrome.

Hang on; Imposter Syndrome would mean that you would come across as a fallible, non-expert, since you believe yourself to really be an imposter. Do you really mean something like the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is sort of the opposite of Imposter Syndrome, people with little knowledge believing themselves to be infallible experts?

Impostor syndrome means that the person thinks of themselves as a fraud, not that other people do. So someone dealing poorly with impostor syndrome might well only chime in when they are exceedingly confident, or only when they do research and can be certain that the information/position they are providing is correct. If you keep your mouth shut except when you're 100% certain, you'll likely look like an "infallible expert" because you're always correct from an external perspective, even if you are quietly filled with self-doubt.

Pretty much. Some people who lack self-confidence seem afraid to ever admit "I don't know" lest it somehow reveal their "fraud" to the world.

Don't be intimidated. I've got 30 years of being in the business of software development, telecoms, networking etc under my belt and every day there's still something new to learn, sometimes too many new things :) Also don't be frightened to ask about things you don't understand, I find the folks around here are generally quite an affable bunch.

The trick is figuring out what you don't know to ask the question in the first place. Often not trivial.

It helps to try to tackle a project that you don't already know how to accomplish. Then the Q&A can work like a reverse dictionary. You know the answer, and work backwards to find the question. Every stumbling block is a question to ask.

A lot of people have discovered that speaking confidently can be a solid substitute for actual expertise.

They're called "consultants"

This is how everybody feels at one point or another. It's called imposter syndrome[0] and it's extremely common!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

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