The Case for More Intellectual Humility
nautil.us
nautil.us
Google's Laszlo Bock described hiring for intellectual humility like this...
"What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’ You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time."
Strong opinions, loosely held.
Instead assuming good faith - you and I are no oracles. Even our strongest arguments will have gaps, things we hadn't considered. Our arguments will sometimes have flaws - incorrect assumptions or other faulty basis we hadn't realized we'd made. It's the cost of being human.
It's not so much certainty of belief, but being able to move forward with confidence, and argue for, the best path you can discern - yet aware that even the best of us will be wrong at least some of the time. It's about being able to recognize and turn on a dime - to course correct - when that stronger argument is made for a different path, even if you were damn sure about the one you were on not a moment before.
[1] EDIT: Err, arguing only for the side you don't believe in at any rate. Arguing for both sides or explicitly playing devil's advocate if the other party seems to be arguing your own viewpoint sufficiently seems perfectly fine though.
As somebody slightly on the autistic spectrum, I find it hard to understand why a lot of people don't operate like this.
There is of course a difference between factual information and emotional response or differences in taste; I assume this discussion is only about empirical facts and not personal preference.
"When my information changes, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Against this, you might pit an ideal bayesian reasoner tracking a degree of belief in all possibilities. But that's too hard. It is possible for humans to roughly track a few possibilities; if you pick simple ones, none will be exactly right, but you can learn from how they go wrong or not. It's like "try the simplest thing that can possibly work" in programming: you expect there's a good chance it won't, but it can be the most productive way forward to figuring out what will.
"What, probably, more than anything else marks the true leader is the power to clench his teeth and hang on, the ability to impart to others a confidence that he feels himself. This he can do only if he does feel it. Never, until the very last moment, must he despair of his own genius. Above all, he must be willing to accept for the men under him, no less than for himself, sacrifices which may be productive of good, rather than a shameful yielding which must remain for ever useless" - Marc Bloch "Strange Defeat"
This quote really hit me because I have been thinking about my own failures as a leader and as a businessperson; I approached leadership as you would approach a technician job. Honesty is important. Openness to new ideas is important. Humility is pleasant. Confidence is irrelevant.
It is great for a technician to say "I'm happy to do everything I can to make the project at hand succeed. I see it as my responsibility, though, to tell you that it will probably fail anyhow, for these reasons."
That makes you a good technician; But a bad leader. It's interesting, because I think that you are a bad technician if you act like a leader and show confidence when the chances don't warrant that confidence. You are, then, lying, and while people will follow a lying leader to the end of the earth, if s/he is good enough at it, a lying technician is nothing but a liability. A lying technician is worth less than nothing. A lot less.
Leaders, of course, have been selected for and trained for leadership, so they are attuned to those qualities. They end up picking confidence and other leadership qualities over honesty, humility an other technician qualities, even when they pick technicians. This is one of the big reasons why I thought I could be a leader, and one of the reasons I was able to pay my rent in that role, even though I couldn't approach opportunity cost profitability... I really am way better at selecting technicians than someone who thinks like a manager usually is, mostly because I don't give points for confidence. Unfortunately, that is only one aspect of management, one that is not particularly profitable on it's own.
I personally think that as a technician, the best way to handle this, the best way to project confidence to the boss while still maintaining the honesty and humility required is to always act confident around the boss, because otherwise they won't listen to you, but then to give percentages "I'm 65% certain that solution Z will solve the problem at hand" - that way you maintain the actual honesty, while still projecting the confidence that some bosses require.
personally i think, the person who can't change his/her mind in light of new facts (which is what seems to be emphasized here) is dangerous.
i have _heard_ / _read_ that steve-jobs was known for changing his mind instantly in the light of new facts.
not sure, why this would be misconstrued as _weak_
Whether that's weak, I can't say.
Most people are one or the other (or somewhere in between) but to combine both in one human personality is quite rare. This may be a reason why people find it hard to work around and for such people.
Which is to say, be flexible, in your understanding, but resolute in your current belief.
Too many people get emotionally invested in their business or idea instead of listening to the facts.
> The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.
Similarly, if you haven't said these words to anyone for a long time, it's likely you're not intellectually humble (or you're just always right :P )
I'm not being flippant or scoring a cheap shot. Intransigence was the entire strategy, the core messaging of their campaign and the reason for their popularity. They don't do compromise. Any concessions are simply treated as a sign of weakness.
Negotiators like this often are really insecure. They're often playing some lame poker style bluff and brinksmanship strategy. If you have some insight into their insecurity, the counter is really easy. You introduce some minor "wrong", let them run and while they are busy puffing around making noise, you have an opportunity to screw them later.
Some folks have a knack for acquiring wisdom with age - some don't. It's not a matter of articles - I'd say it's mostly a matter of personality.
Some are curious and want to see how things work - others only want to know how to get that specific thing they want, come upon a stumbling block, rationalize it as 'outside of my control' and spend the rest of their days in complain-mode :)
I'd say the ratio of philosopher vs complainer is maybe 50-1? If not 100-1. Either way, they're rare birds, them folks who seek wisdom it seems.
Seems to me that allowing science to win out in the 'market of ideas' is the healthiest solution.
But the inherent humility and uncertainty of rigourous science is often no match for snake oil and demagoguery, as we know.
In the long run, maladaptive beliefs will die out and useful ones will survive, head start or no.
As to what should win out: Truth is a fine ideal to work towards, but one should never expect that it's what will actually win. "Should" is like "deserves". They're nice to think about, but not always realistic.
For Americans, this is shocking (it was to me). "I can't homeschool my own children?!? That isn't freedom!" But in practice, the vast majority of homeschoolers are evangelical christians or other religious extremists. For the good of society, I would gladly take that trade.
Think about this another way: in the US, homeschool parents can impart any view they want on their children. They "win by default" because there are no competing viewpoints. In the EU, parents are still free to try and impart their beliefs on their children. But in this case, they need a stronger argument than what the school is providing. They will not "win by default" like in the US. I can't see anything "unfree" about that.
I think my point is still valid though, especially because in many of those countries, yearly inspections are mandatory (unlike the US).
The inspections ensure that your parents can't fuck up your life. I think it's a good middle ground between allowing everything and nothing.
But, think of it in terms of the original argument. Are you still "free" if you are forced to teach what the state wants? The OP would say no, I think.
Sometimes homeschooling is just better because the public school system isn't very good.
Pretty sure this is wrong. You can homeschool your children, as long as they pass an exam every year (or every 6 months maybe), to prove that their knowledge/skills are good enough (e.g. at least at the level of a public school attendee of the same age).
So while I agree that there is no alternative better than the market-place of ideas; that's still compatible with saying its morally wrong to indoctrinate your children with falsehoods.
Being sloppy about your beliefs -- i.e. just going with your gut and not questioning -- is OK when it's just yourself. But maybe you should only teach kids about the things you have considered more carefully.
It's not an alternative, it's what happens now, and will always happen, unless there is some major disruption in education.
I don't expect most HackerNews readers to agree with that argument (I am of two minds on it) but I would hope it recommends to them a bit of intellectual humility.
Don't think too hard about that one.
You might end up a nietzschean catholic, like me on Tuesdays.
The entire adult population is conspiring to lie to children, and it's up to the child to challenge it based on their own logic and observations.
It's a way to teach children to not trust authority blindly and to develop their own critical thinking skills.
I never felt betrayed by my parents about it. I remember feeling proud that I figured it out, and when my mother told me that everyone did it as a way to honor the memory of the real Saint Nicolas, I understood that.
The truth is just a Google search away now. I wonder if the Santa myth will recede into history for my kid's generation.
I believe that the primary issue is the formation of heuristics about knowledge sources. e.g. Person B provides person A with knowledge of class "low-value in domain D" N times and knowledge of class "higher-value in domain D" K times in some time period T. At some time T_n A internalizes a heuristic about Person B's overall knowledge set. Depending on internal characteristics of A, all subsequent knowledge expressed by B may be ignored.
This is problematic. Not only does A ignore that the difference set of A and B's knowledge (even in D) is likely nonzero, it effectively assumes that A's knowledge is a superset of B, and that A's rate of knowledge aquisition is greater than that of B for all T. It ignores that A and B are dynamical systems.
In my opinion, formation of these kinds of heuristics and being dismissive of knowledge is a sign of intellectual weakness. It's akin to internalizing knowledge to the point of belief and belief is bounding.
Of course, what I describe is just a special case of what you describe.
Given that we're human with a finite amount of time and attention at our disposal, it strikes me as intuitively sensible that we tend towards (but never firmly settling on) this outcome, especially where instances of N >> K...a sort of "survival of the fittest" feedback loop, if you will. I think Johnny Lee's analogy framed in the context of the user experience[1] is applicable here.
>> ...it effectively assumes that A's knowledge is a superset of B, and that A's rate of knowledge aquisition is greater than that of B for all T.
Sounds like narcissism. Surely we can have our pragmatic feedback loop without deteriorating into such a state.
This might be intuitive if A weighted each N of some class equally, and N>>Kevin for each _class_, but observation indicates this is not the case. Also certain N tend to be overweighted regardless of the knowledge class to which they belong.
IRL I have observed that B can work around A's bias by framing knowledge expressed as a question.
> Sounds like narcissism.
I think this is a common bias with implications in the "machine consciousness" question, but I'll have to wait ton finish that point. Look for an edit.
this is absurd, in my opinion. do you honestly believe that dissociation from emotions is actually possible in most people? emotional dissociation is a psychiatric disorder.
can I suggest an alternative approach that is less dehumanizing? The goal should be to promote positive emotions and a sense of personal confidence when acquiring and verifying knowledge is accomplished. in most social situations this is not rewarded at all. in-group conformity is the most readily rewarded experience. a shift towards providing encouragement and emotional support for knowledge verification seems like a healthier response than emotional dissociation.