Comment by lanstin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lanstin | Hacker News Reader

>I mostly try to head this off by trying to be self-aware about my knowledge level on a topic, and saying “I’m not sure…” when I’m not sure about something.

This excellent tactic for avoiding pointless debate and inviting helpful replies is sadly beyond many people in the software field. Software folks are used to the past where you could master things completely. With the continued growth of knowledge and the growth of the worlds complexity, it is quite impossible even for one super intelligent person that was present at the dawn of creation to keep up; failing to consider disagreement as a potentially useful pointer to the situation where you don't have as much knowledge as you think is a risk. (edited to add "is a risk" so that was a sentence.)

I have seen multiple projects led by extremely smart people fail because they didn't listen to key information from less smart people that were nonetheless better informed about the particular technologies involved.

Yeah, there's a really odd all or nothing kind of attitude with knowledge, experience or skill, as if "being smart" is like a linear growth Pokemon level-thing rather than being more like a radar chart of skills and experience.

Which I find so odd and absurd in a profession that's full of esoteric knowledge. Being experienced and smart obviously is a huge asset, but if you just aren't familiar with library X but new guy with no experience has been doing nothing but library X, the latter guy is the one to take advice from.

Software development strongly self-selects for people who like black-and-white, all-or-nothing, binary reasoning.

Few people have patience for a tool that will fail to even attempt to run a several-million-line program because there happens to be a trivial typo in one line in one file. It should be no surprise that kind of people for whom behavior like that is reasonable are the kind of people to think intelligence is all-or-nothing, and that are too happy to point out true but irrevelant inaccuracies in a piece of writing.

Something I often reflect on is the trend of engineers of all kinds being somewhat overrepresented in extremist movements. I think it's related: discomfort with inconsistency and uncertainty can push you to extremes in any domain. And the extreme viewpoints are where black and white thinking is closest to correct, and may be useful or valued.

Someone who thinks they know more than they do is a lot more dangerous than someone who doesn't know much but realizes it.

It's quite common for someone to be just smart enough to be very dangerous but not smart enough to be very useful. Especially when it comes to sophisticated technology.

These people may have decent raw intelligence, but they're NOT smart!

Actually smart people know what they know and don't know, constantly test their understanding, and are HAPPY when proven wrong, since that means they learned something new.

I'm always waiting to be corrected and it's difficult since I correct myself and others don't know it.

It just takes an incredible level of self-awareness and vulnerability.

Everyone thinks that the way to convince people to trust them or acknowledge them is to be know-it-all, but the truth is just being authentic and help will come.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com