Are You Intellectually Humble?
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But if I feel mild validation, even if it is concluded with a “no”, I’m far more likely to consider myself having reacted “humbly” and more openly during the introspection I am forced to have at 3:45am the following morning.
Maybe this was all a tangential comment, but that’s the thought that was sparked by this post.
Check out existential therapy. I'm not saying this to pathologize or minimize what you're saying, just that it's something I used to suffer from before I realized via (said therapy) that everyone else is just a narcissistic fuck living in their own narrative and they literally don't even remember what you said six hours later. It's very liberating once you absorb that. (obviously, what you write on the internet is forever, but that's kind of why you should be so much less anxious about your conversations IRL).
It’s a way of closing the loop, mentally. It allows me to move on and not have this subconscious stress nagging at me for weeks after a significant interaction.
But yeah I’ll look into existential therapy. Thanks!
This should be drilled into schoolchildren along with reading and writing I think, many people's teenage years are intensely stressful partially because of this false notion other people remember things you did in perfect detail.
And since they don't think a lot about you it means that you wont be able to make them flip that switch back unless you find some rare trigger phrase for it, or a very long time passes, or you can somehow make them think a lot about you.
This is believable right up until they relate to you what someone else said or did last week or even last month. Then you know that they remember things and are willing to share what they remember with others.
ME: We need to load the catalogue data into the app for this feature.
SOME IDIOT I WORK WITH: Well that's in the database of course, so that's easy.
ME (inside voice): It's not in the database. Why would you assume it was in the database? Because you are an idiot who makes assumptions.
ME (outside voice): Ah, well if the system was well-structured, of course you would be perfectly correct, but in this case, there is an unfortunate quirk, so, to my great surprise, that data is stored in XML files on this tape archive ...
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
The people you listen to is always right and the ones you don't listen to are always wrong?
Let's not talk about classifying an individual as "mediocre". It just seems the old "noble blood" fallacy as if some people is just "better" than others instead of everyone being being complex and with flaws.
Yes, it happens just now in America.
We should be doing everything we can to embrace and encourage children to excel. Not reduce every student’s education down to bullshit.
Edit: We couldn’t afford to move but we HAD to. We sacrificed, we saved, we went without. It was rough and the living conditions weren’t the best to start but we were forced. We couldn’t sit idly by and watch our son become another statistic.
If it’s about filling your sons need for intellectual stimulation there are many great online options (and books!).
This may be my own biases but pushing your offspring to skip a grade or take extra AP classes or graduate from college years early focuses too much on credentialism and external validation (particularly for you the parent) rather than helping the child build a rich, balanced life.
You would tend not to notice except in conversation when you add things up and realise they are unusually accomplished.
Personally I think it's weird making people learn in lock step by age rather than allowing them to progress at their natural rate.
There are a few different underlying assumptions there when you think about it, eg that a) people of the same age have equal "maturity" b) socialising with people older than you is harmful (or less beneficial) compared to socialising with people the same age as you c) socialisation mainly happens in an institutional context d) the purpose of higher education is socialisation as much as learning.
Any or several of those ^ can be false for a particular student. Of course the institution and other students matter too in terms of outcome.
"Pushing" and validation chasing are bad tho, with you on that one.
If you fight a drunk person throwing random punches, there might be still a probability to get knocked out because within that randomness there is a probability of a perfect punch.
Experts are often right but occasionally they can be wrong. Skilled competitors often win but occasionally they can lose, even to beginners.
Experts can make mistakes just like non-experts can occasionally contribute at an expert level or prove an expert wrong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun
… are unclear translations revealing biases?
It used to be a little annoying, but it's now everywhere. Name dropping, inserting casually possessions, social status or achievements, using "I'm humbled by" all the time...
Doing your best to not sound pretentious is great. I wish I worked on that way sooner.
But faking humility, often badly, is such a mood killer for me.
I also think it comes with 2 trends that are rampant in social media, and runs especially deep in the US culture:
- adding virtue signaling to every interaction.
- using superlative for the most mondain things.
It's an instant credibility killer for me. But the problem is... for a lot of people, it seems to work.
I don't humblebrag, and it doesn't win me friends. There's some things that I'm really, really good at, and lots of things that I'm mediocre, to really bad, at. I don't hide any of it.
Most folks on venues like this, assume I'm arrogant (I'm not). I just don't pretend to be bad at stuff I'm good at, and don't pretend to be good at stuff I'm bad at.
That seems to be an aberration, in today's world.
I'm not looking for work or friends. I don't participate in any social media, outside of this place (an occasional update on Facebook or LinkedIn. Almost never Twitter, Instagram, etc.). I just hang out here, because there aren't many tech people around my neck of the woods, and I'm quite impressed by many of you. I participate, because I feel a sense of duty to do so (If I want to be a member, I should act like a member).
I won't share mine (this is a professional venue, and my "viral" post was definitely not professional).
That is a very good sign you are intelectually humble. I see the discussion here veering in many directions but in the end being humble is just being honest to yourself and others about what you know and what you don’t know. Perhaps with the capacity to empathise with people who know less and not making them feel bad for not knowing certain things.
But in my experience, the rare time it was encouraged to say "i don't know" and "I was wrong" were also the times when I was around the most competent and talented people.
I completely dislike that its apparent value also comes because it's a quote from a comedic character in a comedy film. I mean, that diminishes its value as sarcasm, and it becomes just a canned answer.
From the original(?) Swedish: "Jag är inte bara störst, bäst och vackrast, jag är ödmjukast också!"
(Non-standard use of "-est" superlative forms in English for consistency, effect, and fidelity.)
- Humility -
Humility is not letting someone win
or pretending not to care when you lose.
It is not feigned ignorance or polite dishonesty.
Humility is not a trick to gain approval,
nor is it an abdication of your pride.
---
Humility is a stand taken to the end
with passion; an opinion that you choose
and live by with conviction and integrity,
but if shown to be in error in part or full,
and that the truth not be on your side...
---
you change your mind.
---
And furthermore you admit it publicly
and you learn from it internally.
Never let passion to stand up for truth fade.
Don't let desire for becoming right be outweighed
by undeserved pride.
---
Sincere pride,
real humility,
true integrity;
they are one and the same.
---
The true integrity is tough and admits its errors
Value your sincerity enough to live your values
Only then is real pride obtained
or the admiration of anyone,
whose opinion is worth a damn,
gained.
I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else, but I just think there's a lot of overweening fake humbleness going on. "Oh, the universe is so big, how can we be so arrogant that we think we know everything, the universe is a wonderous place and we are so small and limited, and blah, blah, blah." Yeah, I get it already. Heard it the first million times how wonderous you think the universe is and how loudly and strenuously you proclaim to know nothing because you heard it is cool to say that you don't know nothing about nothing.
It's like humble bragging, but humble humbling.
I mean, we know that the entire universe's matter is made up of the periodic table through spectroscopy (not counting dark matter, just "regular" matter). It's not like there's going to be whisky atoms or pizza atoms so that there's just a lake of whisky somewhere. You are not going to be able to have animals made of Xenon or Argon or Neon or any of the other noble inert gases.
I think there is a lot of shit to learn and it is fun and interesting and I love it. But there's no reason to act with such fake reverence and like it is a holy universe. It's just flucking stuff that we need to learn about. It's not a god to pray to.
Do you all hate me now that I'm ruining all your universe reverence?
I don't know, man, it just bugs me to no end the whole "we know nothing" bow your head in fake humility thing so you can fit into the "I don't know crowd" and be a popular cool kid, too.
[1]http://paul-m-jones.com/post/2008/11/07/patterns-of-intellec...
I'm talking about in the workplace, but it's been consistent at every place I've worked. I have to act slightly like an asshole otherwise people come at me like wolves.
That depends a lot on your environment. There are many companies were this happens, upper management nurtures an unhealthy environment were abuse is common and people need to be defensive.
If you ever work in a healthy place, or if you have good friends, the possibility to just lower all barriers and be humble is liberating and it fosters creativity.
> I have to act slightly like an asshole otherwise people come at me like wolves.
I am sorry to hear that. I have worked in both kind of places and the mental health going home is vastly different. I hope you get a better working place that not only is healthier but will allow you to learn more, be more creative and productive instead of losing your time acting like an asshole because is required.
It is different from the standard context of being humble, which is usually to avoid bragging about own's success. Being able to accept own's mistakes, even when you're sure you're right, is another, big, step forward.
https://www.theonion.com/monk-gloats-over-yoga-championship-...
Tim Cook: "We think you'll love this."
vs.
Steve Jobs: "It's insanely great!"
Given Apple's massive success I think they can afford to be more Cook-like, but a bit of Jobs-style fire, egomania, overconfidence and iconoclasm might help out when you're trying to transform an industry like PCs (Macintosh, iMac), audio players (iPod), or smartphones (iPhone). Though Jobs also had the seemingly (but not actually) humble "one more thing..."
I don't see a lot of humility - intellectual or otherwise - in Elon Musk, for example. But Musk's arrogance, like Jobs', is also backed up by ability to actually do things. And the ability to change one's mind, especially in the face of evidence, seems to be important.
I have also observed that effective self-promotion moves some people ahead of their humbler but more qualified peers.
Which is it -- "not in the bible", or "not a provable fact"? Because if it's both, that's a paradox.
Grasses are not so happy when a tree starts to grow between them.
The most common thing people do is the opposite of the above. They are humble with their own ideas and are scared to show them to people, while they are confident in shooting down others ideas so they don't learn that well from listening. Even people who see themselves as humble are usually following this worst of the worst strategy.
There is a process in attaining humility, you cannot just adorn yourself in it from the start.
But that's just culture/language. In the US, saying that you are good at something is expected, in other countries, you pass the same message just by just saying you do the thing. In these countries, if you say that you are good at something, it is the equivalent of saying "I am a fucking god and no one can approach me" in the US, it is just rude.
I've often found this useful to remember when talking to people with different views.
-Data
I think the only positive feedback along these lines (not that it had any positive consequences) was way back when I was a course assistant and instructor during graduate school in mathematics, and it came in the form of student reviews.
Very rarely are accomplishments made traveling a road strewn with flowers.
It's less about "I'm wrong i need to listen to everyone and rethink my opinions all the time", its "I could be wrong. If i see "data" that goes against my opinion, i should consider changing my opinion rather then assuming the data is wrong". Or just agree to disagree and implicitly don't assume the person disagreeing with you is an idiot/morally_bankrupt/etc...
The article touches on this from the perspective of threat but people have a tendency to lie to themselves; which is why so many mechanisms in experiments and medical studies exist to force intellectual humility into the process.
Humility means accurate self-assessment. People will argue this point, I suppose, conflating humility with meekness (and meekness with weakness), but I think a distinction is both correct and worthwhile.
Therefore, humble people can accomplish extraordinary things as well as (or better than) anyone, perhaps because of their accurate self assessments. This leads to interconnection (I'm good at X, not at Y) and complementarity: I strengthen what is weak in you and vice versa, and we develop in partnership in a way that could not be done separately.
But during the process, no, there can be no humility. You have to fight.
This isn't true. Humility is accurate self-assessment, and from here can easily spring conviction, experimentation, and vigorous debate. (I know my opinions on subject X are well formed and tested by trial, error, and experience; that is why I hold such and such an opinion and can debate about it with conviction. It's also why I can take corrective measures and understand what others are saying, etc., etc.)
Indeed, humility is basically a prerequisite to adequate debate. One of the problems of society is that we don't get this.
> Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
If you want truth, understanding or science discoveries -> be very humble (intellectually).