People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge
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opensociet.org
There's so much out there. I actually picked this up from reading Hacker School's user manual, "no feigning surprise"[1] and of course an xkcd comic[2].
It was a comfort to see an engineer who I highly respect (Dan Abramov) post a list of things he doesn't know[3].
Never been on the receiving end, but what I've seen you don't want to be on the receiving end.
I was once was hired as a "career-changer" because I had worked in one of my early jobs as a science museum staff-member doing demonstrations for school groups. For some reason, the hiring manager thought that was indicative of communication ability and curiosity. I guess it was, but I never thought it to be very important nor formative at the time.
If you lasted at that job it meant you already had those attributes.
I was listening to some Christian on a video criticizing atheists and saying something related to the god of the gaps fallacy.
He commented something along the lines of "you have to have an answer to these things!"
No. No you don't.
You don't just invent some fairy tale just because you don't understand something.
Often the best answer is "I don't know"
The entire sum of scientific knowledge is based on unprovable axioms, just the same as the entire sum of religious knowledge is based on unprovable axioms. Faith is a belief in something you can’t prove, and people have faith in scientific knowledge in exactly the same way that others have faith in religious knowledge.
A wise person would understand that scientific knowledge and the various forms of religious knowledge are based on completely different foundational axioms, and as a result, any attempt to debate the merits of one over the other is entirely pointless. A wiser person might understand that criticising somebody for what they choose to have faith in is both pointless and hypocritical.
Science is rooted in empirical evidence. It may be with imperfect models and imperfect measurement, but there is indeed fairly reasonably-measured evidence.
Of course the arguments and evidence that you use to prove your truth must also be proven themselves, and so and and so forth. No matter what it is you’re trying to prove, there are only three possible outcomes. Circular reasoning, infinite regression, or stopping at an arbitrary point (usually described as an axiom). This is known as the munchausen trilemma.
Although this question has lead me to see that my previous argument is incomplete. It is possible to believe a truth without faith. That is, through ignorance. A failure to scrutinize your belief sufficiently to understand that it is based on an unprovable axiom, and is thus an act of faith. People who debate the merits of science vs religion tend to be ignorant of this, equally on both sides.
Nothing about what I’m arguing is even remotely controversial. It would be a part of any entry level course on logic at any university.
Equally, if the topic of the discussion is what makes a certain decision wise or not, as it happened to be the case here, I don't see how pointing out that a suggested methodology does not qualify due to fallacious reasoning in that methodology is either rude or a flame. That is, unless you consider the start of that discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20129547) a rude flame, which you possibly could, even though I don't think it was intended as such.
Unless it’s for a very senior role, I think attitude and personality are greater predictors of success than technical competency, so long as their technical competency is ‘good enough’ to begin with.
I think it doesn't matter only in cases where you were the guy who started it all or you're some crazy skilled mercenary for hire brought in only for emergencies. You can treat people like crap for as much as you want if you're in control like that. Maybe it's even necessary for those unicorn situations. And yet, even Linus Torvalds has said that he needed to change.
Finally, I'd say poor attitude and personality lends itself to arrogance, which also makes technical people hit a wall because their arrogance decreases their technical curiosity. Improving one's skill really does require a certain intellectual humility.
Yeah I’d agree. But I think somebody with a good attitude, who can get on well with others, has a greater chance of being able to quickly fill in any competency gaps they have in non-senior positions. For senior positions, the baseline is higher. I’d hire somebody with good character, but inadequate competency (within reason) for a lower IC position, but for a senior position, I’d want both.
For instance, students (during campus interview) would at some point reach a dead end while explaining process scheduler. However after encouraged to work it out about 70% ended up with some version of timer interrupt. It was fascinating to watch them go through the process.
In many cases the popular algorithms were carefully designed by Computer Scientists as part of their research. People don't pass that type of test because of the ability to derive solutions on the spot, they pass based on their skill at rote memorisation and application.
(I absolutely agree that if despite not knowing they show signs of being able to reason their way towards something sensible - robust, likely to be efficient, etc - that is a very good sign.)
I don’t really get it. I can perhaps understand that some candidates might have gotten good feedback from blatantly guessing in the past, but that’s why I now explicitly tell them to disclaim guesses. If anything it looks more impressive when you honestly don’t know something but intuit the substantially correct answer (as long as it’s something that could be realistically intuited).
Yet even with my disclaimer, I’ve still conducted phone screens and onsite interviews where the candidate eventually started bullshitting. It’s one thing to say you don’t know and give a wildly incorrect answer - at least then I can try and steer the interview towards another of the candidate’s strengths. It’s even okay to preface your wild guess with an, “I think...”. But the cavalier way in which people will just spout nonsense is disturbing. Even if you’ve been performing well up to the point, engaging in bullshit is nearly immediate grounds for me to discount you as a candidate.
You are able to identify these over-confident people and prevent them from being a toxic influence on a team.
The top comment is literally someone bragging about how they once got a job with their superior applause-worthy character of saying "idk".
> people with greater humility have superior...
It's a contradiction in terms. It makes humility look like a tool. One could instead just say "try to be humble".
I don't think it comes off as bragging at all, but just an observation of what worked, and how it's interesting that people will go into levels of nonsense to avoid saying they don't know something.
1) I am willing to admit if I don't know something.
2) I like to compliment others on their intellectual strengths.
3) I try to reflect on my weaknesses in order to develop my intelligence.
4) I actively seek feedback on my ideas, even if it is critical.
5) I acknowledge when someone knows more than me about a certain subject.
6) If someone doesn't understand my idea, it's probably because they aren't smart enough to get it. (reverse)
7) I sometimes marvel at the intellectual abilities of other people.
8) I feel uncomfortable when someone points out one of my intellectual shortcomings. (reverse)
9) I don't like it when someone points out an intellectual mistake that I made. (reverse)
Critique: I can see some confounding problems right away. When I was younger I was pretty painfully shy, so (4) I would not seek feedback, but not out of a lack of humility. Also (3) I don't get, because while I am extremely motivated by intellectual curiosity, I have maybe zero motivation to "develop my intelligence" like it was some kind of fitness thing. Also maybe I'm a wierdo but I don't think so much in terms of people being "smart", I think it is something you do. That is, it's hard work.
And with (8) and (9), it takes training to not feel uncomfortable or to not dislike it when someone points out your mistakes or shortcomings. I don't think that is really related to humility. In fact if you are super critical of yourself and judge yourself poorly compared to other people, you still hate it if anybody else points it out.
In any case I think it makes me an unenjoyable person to be around. I more or less don't engage in opinionated discussion with people unless I'm intimately familiar with the topic at hand. Then it's no longer discussing opinions but trading facts. When I do engage, it's usually to ask questions of the other person's opinion without really challenging them. While I might agree with their opinions, I'm reluctant to refute them unless I can systematically prove them wrong. That's usually not possible, because they often know more than I do about any given topic. When I am asked questions directly I hedge my answers extensively.
When I was younger I used to take pride in this, but now I find it isolating. It's difficult to relate to people like this.
More likely people find me difficult to take seriously because I’ll passionately argue for something I don’t necessarily have the best evidence for and then immediately give up and say I’m wrong when someone gives me the evidence I’m looking for.
There's a thing called.. hmm .. positive negotiation ? when you interact with someone by always aiming at finding a middleground/compromise, rather than arguing for the sake of it.
Your point reminds me of something that I'm seeing (IIUC). A lot of the time people will assert more than they know (I do that sometimes too[0]) and the discussion will stop. By insisting even at the risk at being wrong, you force everybody to show their hand and sometimes they'll realize that they may be wrong or off point and that they need to reevaluate the situation. .. We're tribal, even in scientific fields.
If this was more common, I think the world would start to become a much better place surprisingly quickly, at a cost of people suffering a little minor intellectual humiliation until they started to be more disciplined about their beliefs.
I like having _good_ conversations, and can still have them about controversial or opinionated subjects. If I don't know enough about a topic to offer my opinion I like to ask questions that will offer some insight as to why the person feels so strongly. Usually (not always) when someone feels very strongly about something, there is some kernel of truth somewhere that will at least be interesting. It's fun to at least figure out _why_ people think they way they do.
I used to have a bad habit of being a devil's advocate. I'm sure it was annoying when I was even younger, but I've found that faking (exploring) an opinion can help give the conversation some depth. Nowadays I do that less, but can get away with it if I preface it nicely enough.
The "hedge my answers extensively" bit is spot-on, as is the isolating nature of this "trait", unfortunately.
That is- dealing with stubborn, close minded people, is incredibly difficult to stay open for me- in the best case I just move on.
That's when you should play the part of being stubborn and close-minded yourself, if this is what it takes to ensure that your points are heard. Intellectual humility is the best case, but sometimes it is best to cut one's losses.
> That's when you should play the part of being stubborn and close-minded yourself, if this is what it takes to ensure that your points are heard.
Do you honestly believe that this is an effective technique in spreading your ideas?
Questions to ask yourself if you feel that way regularly:
Have you considered that various shortcomings might hold different weights to people depending on their background, experience in other adjacent domains, etc? That what is factual for you might not be so to others?
How do you know that your analysis of the shortcomings are correct/pertinent? That the person you're talking to hasn't delved in it as deeply as you have and just reached a different conclusion? Are you the close minded one for having decided early in the conversation that because you've thought about it in a certain way in the past, any interlocutor who thinks of it differently is necessarily wrong and stubborn?
I do give the benefit of the doubt for as long as I can. I admit to understanding positions that are premised on different values. I have a hard time when once I understand the values, inaccurate steps are taken to reach a false conclusion.
What I’m talking about is more akin to talking with someone making a mistake in a proof, being pointed out the mistake, but still digging their feet in to not admit the mistake.
I’m fine if assumptions aren’t shared, but not when conclusions don’t follow logically from assumptions.
Being open minded isn’t akin to listening to everything and anything- there are limits.
So no, it is not that ‘I enter conversations with a pre-made idea of what [I] want the conclusion to be.’
Not all humans present that. They have reasons, some of which may just be their nature.
Well sure everyone does, to some degree. But I thought dyarosla's clarification was quite sound, particularly this part: I admit to understanding positions that are premised on different values.
In my experience, a lot of people are completely ignorant of this important idea, that values (or axioms) are a crucially important part of disagreements, that someone may be approaching the same general topic from a very different perspective than you. Not only do some people not know/appreciate this, I've encountered several people who completely reject this idea if you point it out to them.
That statement on "values", coupled with the other ones, all support strong self consistency.
How people evaluate things can, does, will vary from a highly rational POV.
I’ll concede that some people don’t value logical consistency - but that doesn’t make them more rational in their arguments.
If there is subjectivity in a ‘logical inference’, I’ll err on the side of being open to it.
However, people are often not entirely rational creatures.
Advocacy, for a very effective example, is a combination of reason, emotion and character.
How people feel matters. Who they are interacting with and or referencing matters.
Roll all that up, and we are likely to encounter people who are not self consistent.
That is OK, human. I just noted that being a predetermination, that's all.
Secondly, there is no requirement they be more rational in their arguments. They may not even see something as one, depending on what it is.
They may, for example, seek better mutual understanding.
It's not that someone can expect you to feel differently because they've presented a logical argument. That's not likely or expected.
The OP said they did not predetermine, and I just pointed out that they do. (And I do not care)
No worries, just information.
Understanding others helps considerably when having conversations IMHO. My comments here speak to that.
Just know others may, or may not make the value judgements presented in this thread, that's all.
It is far more likely than you think. Consider a politically charged issue, some matter where religion is involved...
This all just is not the set piece implied.
I don't think of this in terms of intellectual fitness, but when I realise I made a wrong step in my modelling of the world I generally take a moment to reflect on where I went wrong and what I could do differently in the future to avoid similar pitfalls.
What's the difference between curiosity and a drive to develop your (crystallized) intelligence?
Like I don't read to be well read. I don't listen to news to be informed. I read and listen out of my interests.
I don't think anyone literally thinks, I need to know this to improve my intelligence as it is a weakness. It's usually more abstract.
Given the amount of cognitive bias each of us has, I'd say an important part of intellectual curiosity is making effort to learn to think better. I mean, a flat-Earther 9/11-truther astrologer could still claim to be primarily motivated by "intellectual curiosity".
The interesting question is whether that specific bit of rotten reasoning is still accessible to alteration after one has passed through that specific phase of neuroplasticity.
One of my friends called me a genius the other day, but I'm just really nerdy about something that makes money. He's really into comics and is a walking encyclopedia of characters, timelines, stories and arcs, but wouldn't consider that "smart stuff", even though it is to me.
It would be more apt to, if you were writing code that has some level of networking involved. During this you think "I don't remember/know much of the OSI model, so I should go read up on the model to better understand the code I am writing". Instead of just trying different things and adapting examples not understanding what it is actually doing.
10) I accept that someone with less experience may have better ideas than I have, even in my own field of expertise.
11) Even if I am not certain of myself, I am willing to suggest and defend my ideas because they deserve equal treatment.
12) I am willing to forgo new ideas when they hurt momentum too much.
13) I am willing to forgo momentum when the benefits of new ideas outweigh the costs.
14) When I feel it is right to assert my position, I am able and willing to back down if I receive feedback that changes my assumptions.
15) I know when to humbly defer decisions to the team even though I believe the team's decision is less than ideal. People are more important than problems to be solved.
There are also people who assume their ideas in fields they don’t have experience in are good, precisely because of that lack of experience. They think their “outsider’s perspective” significantly increases their likelihood of being correct because they “think outside the box” or some such. It’s the opposite of humility, and supremely frustrating to deal with!
One of my high school teachers said something like: if someone doesn't understand your explanation, then you don't know it as well as you think you do.
Why?
First, because far more things can be explained to an intelligent lay person than most of us realize, and figuring out how to do so improves our own understanding. Therefore it is worthwhile to make the attempt.
Second, because it is far too easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we're making a succinct explanation that requires domain knowledge when actually we're spouting just enough jargon to remind those who agree with us of shared and possibly unexamined dogma. There is a real cost to mental habits that make such mental mistakes easier to make and sustain.
So yes. The other person may be too ignorant/stupid/whatever to understand you. But the alternative explanations should be disproven before you conclude that.
if someone doesn't understand your explanation, it might be that you don't understand the person well enough or you don't know the correct way to explain to that person in a plain language
My answer always changes since I haven't narrowed down a way to describe "cloud engineering" to people.
I've heard this saying before and every time I think, "maybe I don't know what I do".
To fix such a things in a questionnaire there are 9 questions. Maximum score you could possible get is 9 times 7 = 63, but probably not many people would get so much. Even those who are super humble.
> Also (3) I don't get, because while I am extremely motivated by intellectual curiosity, I have maybe zero motivation to "develop my intelligence" like it was some kind of fitness thing.
So you do not reflect on your weaknesses in order to develop intelligence? Or you are doing it sometimes, when it is obvious for you that your task needs more intelligence from you? Maybe 3 as an answer would fit?
> I don't think that is really related to humility.
Good questionnaires are not like a random internet ones. There are special methods allowing to ensure that questionnaire is measuring what we want to measure, not something else. For example, you can measure intellectual humility based on the interviewing a participant, and then ask participant to fill a questionnaire with a 50 questions (or maybe 150, as much as your creativity could devise), that you think might be good. Get 50 participants, or maybe 100. The more is better, but it is a long and difficult task, to interview 100 people, and if you used a several PhD students as interviewers, than you need to control for interviewer also, because different people could get different results even when asking the same questions. So you would need even more participants to get a statistical significance. Number of questions itself also increases the number of data points needed.
After you gathered data, you would run it through R to find questions that are the best fit, to reduce questionnaire to bearable size. Probably after it you should test your new questionnaire by the same tactic you invented it. You even might need to do this, if at the first stage you got insufficient number of participants. But now you would need no factor analysis or something like, just a correlation would be enough. Or maybe chi-square.
I didn't read an article itself, but it is a published paper in a reviewed journal, so I bet it is done good, not just authors picked 9 questions on a random. Therefore I bet, that if you don't think that it is really related to humility, than you probably should change your mind and think the other way around. If it somehow important for you, I'd suggest to find a full text of paper describing methods used to devise a questionnaire and read them through. Maybe you are right after all. There might be a statistical mistakes, mistakenly used statistical methods for example, or some issues with the data gathering.
Answer yes or no AND write a short explanation of why.
Then the judge of the answer sheet should decide if points for or against are awarded for each question.
As an example, I just am really bad at complimenting others. Both because my own overall standards are so high and also because that was never a skill I learned; so I'm actually very shy at doing so. Maybe I should have been complimented more, and better trained as a child to compliment others.
I explained 6 in a different reply under this thread. However a different way of getting the data (which would be better and yield a clearer view) could be to ask: "If someone doesn't understand my idea what are the possible reasons?"
7) This one is just painful. It really depends on who you're exposed to on a daily basis and how you relate to them. I _have_ marveled at how smart, driven, or successful some others are... mostly the successful and driven parts though.
8/9) Emotional reactions are different from how you try to handle emotional reactions.
There are alot of discussions which basically come down to how humans interact and communicate with one another, and what works and what doesn’t.
I noticed I compliment others quite a bit more since listening.
The only people who would deny those things are phonies who aren't in touch with themselves. Accept it, acknowledge it, account for the bias it brings. Then maybe one could work on it.
Some people like being uncomfortable because it motivates them.
Being comfortable for some people can lead to complacency.
Weirdo in a good way. Thanks for this one - sometimes I forget that thoughts/actions are smart, not people.
From The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
I've never heard of this happening can you give examples on this site?
This caused a lot of people to not want to work with him and, in the end, was a major part of why I ended up quitting.
In times where I'm invested in being right, it's harder to accept learning that I had been wrong, and I'm certainly not seeking out more information with which to challenge my understanding.
I would point to cryptocurrencies as a rich source of extremely wrong takes: how bitcoin would replace paypal and credit cards, how government conspiracies would try to fight it, etc. None of those predictions came to pass, to put it mildly. What I can't offer is specific instances of people pivoting from "it's a currency! It even has 'coin' in its name!" to "it's not a currency! It's a store of value". But I'm sure there must be some.
I also remember when here (and, possibly, on slashdot before HN) one overdone "meme" was criticising CSI-style shows for "enhance!" making low-res images of license plates readable. "You cannot recover information that isn't there!" the comment would go, and it was the easiest upvote to get.
Today, there are plenty of AI demos that can, indeed, reconstruct license plates from low-res. Turns out the information wasn't actually lost. Unfortunately, I'm denied the gratification of all those people writing apologies, and I can't prove that they are the ones posting "It's not intelligence, it's just statistics!" today.
Nuclear power might be another example on a pretty good multi-decades run of varying other reactor technologies (pebble bed, fusion, etc) always on the cusp of breakthrough. This example is especially funny, because the actual scientists working on energy, and even the supposedly stupid politicians, have now created alternatives that are safe, clean, and close to competing with even coal in economic terms, let alone the far more expensive nuclear tech. Yet the wider tech community disregards this economic argument, and insists on fighting the public on safety. They just can't let go because they feel they were wronged on that issue in the 80s and 90s. Which is at least plausible, but it just doesn't really matter any more. There's a strong undercurrent of cultural grievances here, as if people were forever living in the science fiction of their youth.
well yes, I was being sarcastic but I'm glad it sparked this high value comment you wrote. It is easy to see how the 'consensus narrative' changes, as the accounts are censored and their comments are in fact promoted by the collective community. But it is impossible to see who was part of that collective community.
Or is there something deeper from the book that better explains the point?
The chapter about the author's wannabe hustler friend described them like it was a biography.
It often feels like this, "everyone is dead inside but me", and when we make these sweeping generalizations we'll find plenty of instances to justify them. But we really can't peer in each others' heads, and over time I realized that when I acted on these kinds of assumptions, I behaved like a fucking tool.
It can be a bit uncomfortable to realize that what we think of as "us" these thoughts and feelings we internalize and think of as unique... aren't so I can understand some resistance to recognize the depths and thoughts of others... or being like everyone else.
Also make sure you're not overly invested in having the attitude of NGAF.
I spent some time trying to dismiss that before considering that if he was right I'd already missed out on a lot, and that certainly humbled me because when I started looking for it I found he was right.
The flip side to this is sharing what you know when it contradicts what others are envisioning as a result can result in those same others responding with animosity.
Of course, if I told him "So, you can browse facebook all day and be better off?", he would probably say "You know what I mean."
Real "wisdom" is knowing when to be dismissive and when not to be, either extreme is bad, but being able to discern is tacit knowledge that no one can really say anything useful on without being super specific.
Ralph Emerson’s secret of the true scholar.
That is exactly the approach I've learned to take. I honestly started out trying to disprove the notion because I was full of myself. But it really didn't take long to prove it and then doing that soon became a goal.
Canoeing is a good example. My first shot was with my wife on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. I was working my ass off and about 2 hours into our float the guy who shuttled us to the dropoff came gliding by with his wife pretty much effortlessly while I floundered and ricocheted from bank to bank.
Awhile later I saw them sitting on the bank chilling out so I paddled over and flat out asked him "How do you make this look so easy?"
He told me everything I needed to know in just a few minutes and the rest of that float was a joy.
She addressed the questions with a grace, and insight, and empathy, that was awesome to watch. I'd not have thought it possible. I wish now I knew who she was, and had video. If anyone knows of this skill set being taught, I'd love a pointer.
So I no longer think of the quality of a question, and of a questioner, as being a worthy bound on the quality of an answer.
Or it could be that neither is true, and it's really that both characteristics are engendered by having a curious temperament.
At a certain point in my development, I got in the habit of asking myself "how do I know that" and Googling if I didn't know. Which is to say I think the more intellectually humble someone is, the more likely they are actually verify their ideas through research.
The thing about all this is, it is happening in the era of Google, where if one has some humility, nothing keeps you from learning more (though having a basic background is needed to filter out idiocy also). Pre-Internet, the situation might have been different.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" - The Second Coming (poem).
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell
Bad thing;
Bad thing;
Bad thing,
Bad thing, and
Bad thing;
Good thing, and Good thing!
This can be quite fascinating and intellectually humbling. Instead of viewing politics as something for dumb people who want to clan (which it can be for many), you get a personal feel for how much each of us relies on definitions and language that prevents us from doing much introspection. And if it's true in the political arena, it's certainly true in all of the other parts of our lives.
But that's just the first step of the journey. It leads naturally to questions like "How do we 'know' things?" which is a great adventure on its own. Eventually you lead to questions like "How do people of vastly different cultures and background communicate on anything? If I were dropped in the middle of a neanderthal tribe 40k years ago, could each of us learn the other's language and culture? If so, how?"
You end up with a profound sense of ignorance, but that's okay because most stuff works most of the time and we don't have to go around poking at the foundations of knowledge simply to drive to the grocery store. But then you see one of us tech folks make some dramatic and overly-confident statement like "C++ is obviously better than Java" and you think across the panopolpy of human experience you're able to have a good conversation without feeling personally threatened.
Intellectual humility is not only learnable, it's the first step on a grand adventure of realizing where we all fit into the universe.
Using their ‘gut’, not logical reasoning.
I believe this to be the natural state of affairs. I think the brain is as maximally lazy as it can be. This translates to clanning with a large-ish group of people, then trusting that group to make a good collective decision. Act immediately on social observation and emotion and then if absolutely necessary come back and revisit the action to figure out "why" you did it.
If this is the way it works, then the default viewpoint regarding anything we do or say should be highly suspicious from a rational standpoint. It also means that we tech folks have spent a lot of time and effort trying to create artificial intelligence that reasons from logic to action, the complete opposite of the way real intelligence works.
I'm not sure this is necessarily a mark of my humility.
But no, being the one who doesn't know in a room full of those who do shouldn't stop you from learning. There are two different cases here, though.
If you're in a sane (not too political, and not too toxic) environment, just ask when you don't know something. (Don't do it so often that you hijack the meeting, but do it once or twice a meeting.) You will often be speaking for others as well who don't know but are unwilling to admit their ignorance (unless you're the only junior person). Your asking can free them to also ask and also learn.
If you are in a toxic or political environment, you still need to learn, without getting destroyed. That's harder. You need to try to find out who it's safe to ask. But the bigger task in that environment, in my opinion, is to not learn to be political or toxic yourself.
शुष्क काष्ठस्य मूर्खश्च न नमन्ति कदाचन् ||
Namanti phalino vrukshaah namanti gunino janaah.
Shushka kaashthasya moorkhashchas nsa namanti kadaachan.
Meaning: noble and virtuous persons are always humble and and are always committed to help others and compares them to a tree bowing down with the weight of its fruits. In contrast dull and foolish persons are always rigid and unadjusting like dried wood.
A certain amount of overconfidence is an integral part of being a healthy, thriving human being. People who are depressed have more accurate self-assessments than healthy people. Humility exposes a person to a lot of unpleasant, aversive feelings that can convince them that their energy is not being well spent, making it hard to continue investing at a high enough level to achieve much.
I think it's good to learn the ideas and skills of humility. I think it's important to recognize that it's unpleasant to find out that we're wrong, and we have a natural tendency to avoid unpleasant things, so we have to consciously and actively compensate for our tendency to preserve our own mistaken assumptions. However, I wonder if it's really healthy to internalize humility, to give up a subconscious way of thinking associated with high functioning and adopt a subconscious way of thinking that is associated with depression.
Ideally we'd all have such unassailable emotional security that we wouldn't be bothered by an accurate degree of humility. In reality, I think we have to fake it, and I think a lot of the people preaching this gospel of "you shouldn't feel bad when you find out you're wrong" are faking it too. But that's okay. Our full being is a combination of our messy human psyche that isn't designed for the things we try to use it for and the conscious ideas by which we interact with it. Sometimes these parts are compare to an elephant and a rider — the tiny rider on top is the part of our mind that we consciously control. I think it's okay if that's the only part that really practices humility.
I think there are different levels of "feeling bad". When I'm wrong about something, it certainly doesn't feel good, and in some cases it really sucks, but I don't then generalize that feeling to represent something intrinsic to myself. I think the crux is separating the bad feeling of the instance from an overall bad feeling. Ie - I got this one wrong, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid.
Refactoring can be a costly operation, so it makes sense that the mind shouldn't take on that task too often, especially if one's mind is more likely to suffer net harm from an unsuccessful or partial refactoring.
However, if a person is gifted at learning in the broadest sense, then it would make a lot of sense that their mind would undertake this process much more gladly, and as a result, form a very strong model of the world.
(I don't consider the mind to be digital, and the brain even less so)
how can you know when you have completed a refactor?
I don't think you ever 'finish' a refactor! But you get to be able to deal with your everyday without bumping into conflicting information that causes you to have to refactor every day.
I think a partial refactor would be bad because you're working on an inconsistent model, and if it's wildly inconsistent then it can cause you issues, and might not be a complete model.
For example, imagine you just learned that sugar is bad for you! But thats the sum of your new dietary knowledge. So you start going for fatty foods with lots of preservatives. This isn't going to be any better for you. And you'll have to 'refactor' when someone points out your new diet is still bad for you.
how can you know when you have completed a refactor?
Before you've completed it, other people might think you're annoying because you want to talk about one particular thing a whole lot, and they're waiting for you to get over it. Most likely, you'll roll back some of the changes and make some bug fixes, and you'll stop feeling "whoa" and euphoric, and people will start treating you normally again.
The above answers:
why would a partial refactor be bad for the mind?
Probably good for your mind, but an interruption for your social progress.
Since this is done by the DMN instead of working memory, when this occurs I think that the best thing you can do is take a weekend off. When you are learning aggressively, like at a high level university, I imagine that a student will go through several of these a year in various subjects.
having seen many characters in the line of duty, the clear pattern is - if someone is not afraid to say "i was wrong" or "i am not the smartest guy", then there is no doubt who is the smartest guy in the room.
The trouble is most people believe me when I say I'm not that smart.
And so was born the pervasive humble brag.
This is the paragon of humble-brags.
Also, it's intended to be ironic.
That's a brag about being humble.
“The findings in relation to knowledge acquisition were mixed. While an online study involving 604 adults (and using the more comprehensive measure of intellectual humility) found the aforementioned link between greater intellectual humility and superior general knowledge, another involving college students (and the briefer intellectual humility questionnaire) found that those higher in intellectual humility achieved poorer grades.”
"I agree".
Then:
"There's no way the study backing the article is good enough to draw meaningful conclusions. This is clickbait."
Then:
"I guess if i'm going to be intellectually humble I should still read the article."
I think based on your comment I can safely skip the read, and save myself some time. Intellectual humility is one thing, but I can go read something with a higher probability of being informative instead.
Here's a good rule: Don't get so pumped up, that someone else wants to poke you to deflate you.
Measuring psychological concept is far easier then then rigid and if you align one question or answer to one concept there is a good chance you are actually measuring the other, or both. In fact the very concept of general intelligence has been severely criticized for this. To an extend that many psychologist (and laymen like my self) don’t even belief it exists.
There are too many other variables at play - i.e. inherent psychological disposition, environmental and social factors, institutional incentives - to know how cause and effect work in the development of intellectual humility.
But sometimes arrogance in general (and perhaps intellectual arrogance too) is itself just a thin defense against a dominating unexamined insecurity about oneself.
If acquiring more general knowledge helps make you more comfortable with yourself, it might make you more intellectually humble, but it could also do nothing, or even the opposite.
And some of them present very modestly most of the time, but if you're wrong about their stuff, they won't mince words. Nor would they be humble about things to get along with you, or doubt their knowledge just because it's trendy to do so. They don't necessarily shove themselves into everyone's face.
While reading through the article I found this interesting:
> In terms of insight, higher scorers in intellectual humility were less likely to claim knowledge they didn’t have (the researchers tested this by assessing participants’ willingness to claim familiarity with entirely fictitious facts that they couldn’t possibly know), and they also tended to underestimate their performance on a cognitive ability test.
I can appreciate the reasoning behind asking that question, but the fact that it's so useful for judging intellectual humility saddens me. Why would a person spontaneously respond, "Yes" when asked if they're familiar with a thing they know they aren't? What does that say about us as a species, that this behavior is so prevalent?
Myself I've felt compelled to pretend to know-it-all out of fear of being excluded. Being excluded is not a naive thing, it could mean not getting any job, and falling in disgrace and being hated by a majority of people. It happened to me for saying the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong people.
There is also the problem of PR, the post-modern fallacy, people who think they can convince anyone of anything just to get what they want, because truth is relative, and it doesn't really matter if you are good or competent as long as you get a seat at the big table.
Modern western society has a low tolerance for ignorance, which is sad given that many people is ignorant not out of their will, they were just dealt a bad hand. Also, it is very difficult for ignorant people to get out of their ignorance if nobody helps them, there are unknown unknowns which they cannot see without external help.
Dark matter bothers my sense of cosmic aesthetics. I'm not a physicist, I just like reading about how the universe works, so please don't attack my ignorance; there's only so much I can read. I'm painting with very broad strokes here.
Going back to the Forbes article, it provided some good arguments that this was supporting evidence. I had to concede that the blocks making up the argument seemed sound, so I started rearranging mental furniture.
Then there was the correction at the end of the article, and I'm at the position where I can understand how you can provide a situation that can at least provide supporting evidence to support dark matter.
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However, that's not the main point, it's just the foundation for where I'm going.
I used it to show my kids that you can understand/believe something that seems right or is "known" to be true. But when you come across evidence that shows you're wrong, or presents valid evidence to support a differing point of view, then you have to consider it outside of what you desire to be true. Mind, after examining it, poke at holes that exist and shred it if it's garbage, but if it's not susceptible to that, you need to change your world view.
But Galileo built a telescope that anybody with a pair of eyes could use, no matter your aesthetic preferences, and he was compelled to transform his world-view on the basis of the facts he observed in it. He didn't really have to make any mathematical argument at all; he just had to explain what he observed, and it directly contradicted the Aristotelian model of reality.
I find this part interesting as it might explain why some communities are so toxic and other... nicer: the niceness can spread between members. So the first few members are very important in setting up the community's culture.
In my experience, the really knowledgeable people tend to be quite opinionated, while also being willing to question their own ideas and receive critical feedback. So, it seems they have both great humility and arrogance, not one or the other.
Personally, I prefer a bit of arrogance so that people clearly state what they believe and why, even if it is a bit blunt. The clarity of this approach seems to lead to better ideas, since my personal observation is that great ideas also tend to be fairly simple and can be stated in a straightforward manner.
Plus, when an idea is clearly stated, it is easier to know if the idea is right or wrong, which is necessary for the humility bit of self questioning.
I like knowledge, so I find value in attaining it. However, depending on your goals, intellectual humility will set you back a great deal. Most people use confidence and certainty as a signal, and suppressing these means they'll pick someone over you (for a promotion, for a relationship, for a contract, for your knowledge/expertise (even though you likely have more of it than the other guy)).
The people who are ahead are rarely the ones who are the most knowledgeable (with the possible exception of academia).
I've been told: "Be humble and tentative on the inside, but self-promoting and confident on the outside".
Especially in an interview or promotion situation, I'm proud of and speak to my accomplishments and the skills and knowledge I've been able to obtain, but I can also speak with real honesty about the mistakes I've made, tend to make, and my own shortcomings. I talk about both without hesitation.
Though I know it's entirely anecdotal, I've found most of the time those traits were taken quite well in an interview context, and certainly I've appreciated people that display those traits when I'm interviewing them.
The key I've always found was the tone in which both your humility and confidence are displayed. After all, confidence is a totally different animal than cockiness.
>Especially in an interview or promotion situation, I'm proud of and speak to my accomplishments and the skills and knowledge I've been able to obtain, but I can also speak with real honesty about the mistakes I've made, tend to make, and my own shortcomings. I talk about both without hesitation.
These are things for which there is no uncertainty: You know your accomplishments, and you know your failures. And it is in a very confined scenario (interview/promotion). What I've found is that demonstrating uncertainty in day-to-day matters can greatly impact whether you'll be considered at all for a promotion/job. My first manager always wanted certainty. If you said "I'll see what I can do" or "I'll do my best", that was perceived negatively. And it would be more negative if a conversation followed where you outlined the reasons for lack of certainty (various risks, dependencies, etc). If you said "I'll get it done", he'd be happy. Over time I noticed it was irrelevant whether you actually get it done. If you said "I'll get it done", and failed, and explained why you failed, things were good. If you said "I'll do my best" and failed, and explained why you failed, his belief was "He didn't try hard enough".
Granted, not all managers are like this (thankfully!). But I've found most people in the general public are like him. Both online and in my personal life, when I've expressed any doubts/risks in an endeavor I'm pursuing, I've been told that I'm setting myself up for failure. And when it comes to non-solo pursuits, they're usually right, but not for the reasons they believe. The key was this:
People who express doubt are less likely to receive help from others.
People who express unrealistic confidence are much more likely to get help from others.
So once again: Hide the humility and fake confidence on the outside.
Ignorance creates art[1], stubborn ignorance guided by personality.
Ps. This might explain why so many artists are narcissistic
[1] https://youtu.be/25kmuPSt60w around 2:48 guy makes a good point about this
this seems to help me avoid intellectual-ier-than-thou attitudes and behaviours. it's simple in its elegance to me:
1) i like to like
2) in order to like something, a manner of understanding is always involved (in maths it's empirical, in watching a magic stage show that fools you it's in a less direct understanding such as 'i understand there's a person attempting to create a sense of awe and wonder even though i do not understand the methodology of the trick')
3) so intention to like -> (as leads to) liking
4) and intellectual humility -> understanding
5) so intellectual humility -> understanding -> liking things
inversely,
intellectual arrogance -> ignorance -> not liking things
i don't want to do that thing. the ignorance and hate thing. it is - at least figuratively and perhaps moving toward literally - the only thing i actively do not like.
At this point maintaining the intellectual humility so as not to descend into idiocy becomes a real challenge.
"The one who knows doesn't speak, the one who speaks doesn't know"
- Dao De Jing
Edit: Adding clarity
People who have superior general knowledge have greater intellectual humility because they are more aware of their own ignorance and the complexities of the subject matter. Those who do not have superior knowledge are subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect.