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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I think there are at least five. So this is a list of at least five, but not the five I think.

Several of them feel like variations of the same theme: I know I'm right, so I can disregard evidence|opinion|counter-argument because .. an axiom of the system is I know I'm right.

If I had a sixth, it would be the tendency to latch onto a mantra. "think different" doesn't really mean very much, but boy, successful people who get stuff done like to say it.

(I'm not a person who gets stuff done btw. the mantra my get-stuff-done colleagues say which feels apposite is: "do the shit work first" which kind of makes sense: they don't procrastinate about things they'd rather not do)

Another one: seventh might be they believe implicitly they are the smartest person in the room

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>seventh might be they believe implicitly they are the smartest person in the room

As a person with contrarian tendencies who has occasionally been accused of "implicitly believing" I'm the smartest guy in the room, I think it's important to recognize there's a difference between trusting your own reasoning and thinking you're smarter than everybody else. You can mostly avoid the latter by learning strategies that help you estimate the confidence level you should have in your beliefs. A couple of "am I wrong?" mnemonics I've learned to apply include:

- What kind of evidence are my ideas based on? Is it observation, hearsay, case studies, or something more substantial?

- How many silly/unrealistic counterexamples can I think of? Often these will contain hints of a more complicated, realistic objection.

- (if you have time to use the Web) Are there any professional researchers whose conclusion resembles my argument? What can I learn from/about them?

- Am I at risk of wishful thinking, availability/selection bias, or defending a position I previously implicitly committed to? If so, try to apply the same reasoning to a similar situation where the fallacy won't apply.

Love these. Another thing I find useful is asking myself “what evidence would make me change my mind?”

Yes, I listen for words like "clearly" or "obviously" or "unquestionably" and invert them to test the mental water.

But I think you missed that the leaders in this space, get so few contradictory signals that apart from hired geniuses, and they can always fall back on "I have higher social smarts" -these aside, I think they get positive confirmation bias.

I often believe I'm the smartest person in the room right up until I open my mouth...

What if you believe you are the smartest person in the room because you are the only one that questions their own ideas?

What then?!

Why are you even in the room dumb-ass!!

..meta, and just enough so I am not totally sure I got the joke, or that it even was a joke.

There was also a serious side to my question though, that we all have flaws in our reasoning, even in the reasoning we use to question our reasoning. Using heuristics to judge, just never turns out right all the time.

A piece of advice often given to people is "don't be the smartest person in your team", because then you don't have anyone to learn from.

I think that advice is wrong, because:

1) there are many different skills you can improve and you are probably not the most skilled one in the team in all of them

2) even if you are the most skilled, it doesn't mean you can't learn from less skilled people

3) 'smartest' is a strange criterion, because if there is one thing you can't learn, it's becoming more intelligent

However, if you truly believe there isn't much you can learn in your current work any more, possibly because of the skill levels of your teammates, switching to a different job is probably a good idea.

It might not be that they believe they are the smartest person in the room. It might be that all the cognitive distortions, particularly the 7th one that you bring up, might be precisely because they are, generally speaking, the smartest person in the room.

And it might be because they are, in fact, the smartest sort of people, that they get the most done.

We are of course, only sampling smart people who get stuff done. Smart people who do not get things done tend to be astoundingly good at being unproductive.

> Several of them feel like variations of the same theme: I know I'm right, so I can disregard evidence|opinion|counter-argument because .. an axiom of the system is I know I'm right.

This if taken to the extreme is just narcissism and can wreck havoc. My father very frequently just gets possessed with insisting how only his interpretation or memory of the events is correct and ignores all sorts of even the most basic evidence, to the extent of absolutely distorting the reality. Not hard to imagine what sort of chaos and pain it has created in the family. Maybe sometimes this helps in running a business but if one takes it to personal interactions it can be simply ruining.

Also I do believe that the best leaders aren't the ones who insist on being a jerk but are instead those who can objectively evaluate evidence, genuinely listen to others and immediately acknowledge their own folly when their previous beliefs are wrong. Such traits can only be a plus, while distortive stubbornness is only negative and is a trait found in many depressed people as well.

> (I'm not a person who gets stuff done btw. the mantra my get-stuff-done colleagues say which feels apposite is: "do the shit work first" which kind of makes sense: they don't procrastinate about things they'd rather not do)

Sound advice.

> Another one: seventh might be they believe implicitly they are the smartest person in the room

How is this very different from the "personal exceptionalism" thing? Aren't they exactly the same? (The only difference might be that the original author insisted upon "macro-exceptionalism" but I doubt people can easily draw such a line in their self perception).

> "...it would be the tendency to latch onto a mantra. "think different" doesn't really mean very much, but boy, successful people who get stuff done like to say it."

True. But reading you say it now makes it sound less like GTD and more like they do the right (different) things. Things that yield results; which makes the lead up look important. Kinda the tasks are a symptom more than a means, if that makes sense.

I guess "think different" to them means "take risks" or "run counter to the stream on things" or "see threats as opportunities" or something.

IBM had just "think" and I really liked that. The trouble is, it leads to endless ratiocination.

Does that make Nike IBM's polar opposite, slogan-wise?

There is probably a game buried here, to find two company slogans which contradict each other.

Not really a contradiction, but I immediately thought of the following juxtaposition:

U.S. Army: "An Army of One"

U.S. Marine Corps: "For Our Nation, For Us All"

How about:

"Think better. Do best."

Too often, for reasons too many to list here, we humans tend to pounce without stepping outside our confirmation bias and asking:

- Is this the right thing to do?

- And the best way to do it?

We too easily presume the status quo to be our friend, when it's often the enemy.

Fwiw, I think the 5 Whys are a great tool. More critical thinking than traditional GTD. But what good is GTD if the T's are wrong?

I put this together, for fun:

http://5xy.co/

> "think different" doesn't really mean very much

Well, you don't create something new if you don't think different in some way. The "different" part is really generic, but that's the point, it people could say something specific here, it wouldn't be different.

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