Encouraging Self-Doubt
michaeldehaan.substack.com
michaeldehaan.substack.com
>Excessive confidence seems to work to impress some people early on, but total belief in your own abilities and eventual world domination is going to make you think you can do anything, and that gets in the way of making good decisions.
Really, how many people truly reach that stage? The far majority of professional tech people I meet are so humble they barely even question management on technical decisions. Maybe that's just my experience with primarily passive people, but it certainly doesn't reflect what I tend to see here, on Twitter and on Reddit.
I personally like to see a touch of humility in people I deal with. That, too, can be faked, but at least it leaves you with some idea about whether a job is going to get done.
The worst part is that it actually works - at least on scale.
Bullshit artists thrive on the "they look like they know what they're doing" vibe, because for most people, that level of confidence can only be achieved through hard work and dedication to the craft, so we assume that the person that confident must be very hardworking and very dedicated, or simply knows something that we don't.
It's a perceptional shortcut that we use because it works for us most of the time. In an unknown room full of unknown people, we instinctively search for someone who doesn't look lost.
I can encourage self-doubt when I begin to harbour some doubts but when I'm already over-confident - per definition - I am not able to do that. Actually psychologically it is way more nuanced.
Overly confident people by suppressing any doubts can get caught in a trap - a negative feedback loop - where even trivial questions "How was your day?" can cast suspicion. [in the (extreme) edge case of stimulant (mis-)use full-blown paranoia is common].
For someone with a lack of confidence being on the opposite side of that spectrum encouraging self-doubt defeats the purpose [interestingly the edge case can also lead to paranoia].
Normally, most people find themselves neither on the one nor the other extreme (it is simply not sustainable). When someone has a tendency to be overconfident, yeah a cue like "encouraging self doubt" might help but a more sustainable approach would be to take a step back and ask yourself: Where does my tendency to be at times overconfident come from?
Our "traits" are a complex result of adaptations to our environment (limited of course by our genetic contingencies) but by the time we become adults some of those get misaligned (in our "artificial" and fast-changing environment). So asking the question in which way did my overconfidence now served me as a good strategy before it morphed into "over"-confidence is a more constructive way forward because it takes into account both where "I" come from and where I "now" want to successfully go. That's what our prefrontal cortex simplistically speaking is all about. Not easy, it takes patience and long planning in advance but worth the effort to build up the resources. It gets way harder once you are older. This is something I mostly "encourage" young people (<25 yr: before the brain/prefrontal cortex is fully developed) to take into account.
Maybe founders of startups that don't go anywhere fall within the self-doubter camp? They don't survive, so the world never hears about them. Only the successful, over-confident ones.
Maybe there's a time and place for self-doubt, and some people certainly lack it severely, but my extreme levels of self-doubt have always stopped me from trying things and now I realize how much it has cost me.
Maybe instead of "self doubt vs no self doubt" the questions should be:
- Is my project in the 95th percentile, or higher, compared to all projects in this given context?
- Is my project in the 70th percentile or higher, compared to all successful projects in this given context?
- Am I in the 95th percentile or higher, compared to all people in this given context?
For me, it's much easier to answer "Yes" to these questions (and the answer is usually "Yes") than to answer "Yes" to an ambiguous "Is the project going to succeed?" or "Am I going to succeed?"
Some may find this contradictory: If you think that you're above the 95th percentile, then how do you have self-doubt at the same time?
Self-doubt is not always logical. For me, self-doubt is more psychological than rational. I think I'll do a better job than most people, but I still think I'm going to fail, even when I see less capable people succeed.
I don't think questioning a thing is the same as doubting it. In fact questioning it can make me a more ardent believer.
It's just a less controversial way to say "Let's discourage confidence " which is what I probably would have said, because I'm not a fan of confidence culture.
Rather than "encouraging self-doubt", I think he is suggesting a culture of introspection, self-awareness, process-oriented thinking, and especially humility.
Rather than discouraging "confidence", I think he is discouraging hubris, pride, arrogance, and results-oriented thinking.
I am allergic to certainty. When I interact with people who 100% believe that they are correct about something, that is unsettling.
As I rapidly approach my 71st birthday, I know that I make mistakes and sometimes misunderstand things based on a lifetime of self observation.
It is also so very much more important to examine our own lives and decisions rather than those of other people.
I think problems occur when people view their own self worth as dependent on their intelligence or being “right.” Self worth comes from being a loving person.
The dalai lama last year was asked about this and he was befuddled and left unsure what to say. Not a translation issue as far as I know. It's not something the rest of the world struggles with. If anything, the rest of the world has the opposite problem.
It has something to do with how young north america is compared to the rest of the world. The fake it till you make it stuff, the imposter syndrome stuff. No true stability in knowing who you are.
The author is going down a very bad path.
Someone said to me the other day they were afraid to tell me how they speak to themself and much they hate themself.
I'm getting much better at recognizing when someone says something to me about my life and it pisses me off, it's often because I've been saying that same thing to myself 10x. "You should just get a stable job" when someone else says that, I get angry at them saying it, only to (hopefully sooner rather than later) realize "ah it's because I've already heard that message 10 times today in my own head."
We live in an emotional age and thus it is easy to conflate the two. But they are different.
Not necessarily orthogonal, but the idea is along the similar lines.
But I don't know if these are necessarily true and universal and objective, but rather linguistic tools I've found to help me.
I think there's a certain subjectivity to many of these things and I notice I have somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction when I hear someone ascribe an objectivity to something I believe has much more subjectivity.
milk can cause a sour stomach
milk is not a sour stomach
> Self-criticism is defined as the tendency to engage in negative self-evaluation that results in feelings of worthlessness, failure, and guilt when expectations are not met
I see that quite a few other results in the DuckDuckGo search define self-criticism similarly, which doesn't sound so different from self-hatred. Psychology Today defines it as[1]:
> Self-hatred encompasses continual feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and low self-esteem. People may constantly compare themselves to others, perceive only the negative and ignore the positive, and believe that they will never be "good enough." But every single person has worth and value—and the ability to cultivate self-love.
So maybe I can see a difference in these definitions as self-criticism being the act of attacking oneself whereas self-hatred is thinking the one is worthy of attack? I don't know.
However, I think you may be defining it more along the lines of looking at one's behaviors and trying to be very honest about the impacts of those behaviors, almost a systems thinking approach. "I do X, and Y seems to happen every time I do X, and I don't want Y to happen, so maybe I should do Z instead and see what happens" or something along those lines. This seems more in line with how this LifeHack article defines it[2]:
> It is easy to hear the term “self-critical” and be immediately put off. After all, it’s difficult to be our own critics. However, utilizing self-criticism means taking a more self-aware path to ensure that you aren’t overlooking any possible areas of self-improvement.
> Self-criticism affects your self-esteem and can be a useful tool to identify patterns of weakness that you can look to eradicate by adapting your behavior.
I don't define self-criticism as such, I think it often involves labeling a behavior or more likely, myself, as good or bad, with a tendency towards bad. I struggle to think of "positive self-criticism," and so think that most self-criticism seems to be "You're stupid. What you did was idiotic. You're such a bad person," etc.
If I were to define self-criticism similar to how I think you may be defining it, in terms of taking a more detached approach to honestly reflect on one's behavior and how it may cause harm to oneself or others, then I agree with what you said. I'm just guessing many people don't define it that way.
I'm curious to hear how you define self-criticism and self-hatred and maybe some examples of what they look like to you. I also recognize this thread has become very long and maybe you don't want to reply anymore, and that's OK with me, too. I'm grateful you came this long with me and helped me explore this more.
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/self-critici...
[1]: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/self-hatred
self-hatred would be a potential emotional response to that assessment and may or may not be reasonable. a self-hating murderer may be on the right track, or at least on a better track than a self-justifying or indifferent murderer, although Chesterton would almost certainly make the obvious Christian point here
i am not particularly versed in modern psychology, beyond what a reasonably educated layman would pick up in passing. i think the old timey folks like GKC had a better handle on what makes people happy, in the greek sense of that term, and I view self-criticism as an important aspect of that happiness in order to rationally assess ones situation and make improvements to it