Stupid by choice
alexmolas.com
alexmolas.com
My intelligence takes the form of what I like to call "clever". I'm quick to figure things out and it's served me well in my career.
I've worked with many people who were, in most ways, smarter than me, or as I like to call it "smart". But it takes them longer to come up with a solution or to figure things out.
Very often, their solutions are better.
I think if you are in the second category of "smart", this definitely could be an optimal strategy for not spending lots of time on things that don't matter. Personally, I'm not spending much time on these kinds of things in the first place.
> Things go faster. Like in the example of the ATM you won’t lose time learning things you don’t want to learn. You can use the knowledge of an expert on the topic to accelerate the process.
This is actually an example of the opposite. How much time does she spend going inside the bank, waiting in line, and asking a person for help over the course of her life? Is it really less than the amount of time it takes to learn to use an ATM?
That is, say tP = (time it takes to get personal help), tA = (time it takes to use an ATM), tL = (time it takes to learn), and N = (number of times she'll withdraw/deposit over her life, after making this decision).
Is it true that (tP x N) < (tA x N) + tL ?
tA is definitely smaller than tP. And I don't think tL is a colossal number, so I think it probably isn't true.
Second,
> It’s extremely easy to do.
I don' think that's always true, either. It can actually be much more difficult at times. Not everyone wants to help, not everyone is good at helping, not everyone can help. It gets easier the more you practice/learn the skill of asking for help, though.
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sidenote: The article could use a bit of proofreading; I noticed several grammatical mistakes
Well it appears the author is likely from Spain. So probably English is not their native language.
- "...and how [it] isn’t trivial for people.."
- "...argue that you don’t have to worry about looking dumb and [to/should] ask questions..."
- "If you don’t want to do something[,] make another person do it for you, and playing like you’re dumb [is] a great way of doing so."
- "...maintain focus on one thing at a time, [so/and] removing tasks that distract you..."
Yes, you're right that for the common people, it would be faster just to learn how to do it and get the money yourself. Maybe this wasn't the best example. The idea I wanted to transmit is that sometimes the process you need to learn is too complex, so tL >> N x tA, either because tL is big or because N is low. Maybe a better example is to fix a broken car engine.
I guess the ATM example caught me because I feel ATMs are such a big time-saver!
I'm not sure how to do that, could you show me how that works? I'm just an old grandmother, you see, I've never used a spellchecker...
One issue with these technologies is, they are not 100% reliable and there's a non-zero chance that you would need to fallback to a human in uncovered edge cases. Speaking of ATM, I personally experienced 20% or higher failure rate when depositing cash via ATMs. Sometimes a retry would work, sometimes not.
Same problem with self checkout in grocery stores, airport self check-in kiosk, courier dropboxes prepaid self-printed shipping label...etc.
Polar opposite of what I want to be.
But asking neighbors to set up hose for watering too many times will likely make them start rejecting the requests (or they'll mysteriously disappear if she approaches them with the hose). Refusing to do boring chores during group activities will likely cause her to stop being invited to those activities, and so on.
"Need" is a pretty amorphous word. He may not have needed pictures to understand the docs at all, but he could be said to have needed pictures to understand the docs in the timeframe he had available. Calling it deceitful feels untrue to me. I would only say it's deceitful if the intended use of the pictures was something other than understanding, like he wanted to steal them for another purpose.
Heck I wanted to replace a dozen light switches awhile back. Could I do it myself? Sure. Did I pay someone else to do it? Yes.
Instead I hand them a big box of switches.
What point are you trying to make exactly? Paying someone for services has absolutely nothing to do with manipulation or deception.
I don't have to pretend to be an idiot for this transaction to be efficient. Learned helplessness is a manipulation technique used to fudge the numbers when the value gap is very small: by adding the good feeling of helping someone in need to the mark's side, you create an efficiency where none existed.
If you are doing this so that your co-workers end up having to do parts of your job ... maybe it's not a good thing.
The given example (going to the bank teller instead of learning to use the ATM) is a weird one because the bank teller is much slower and requires more cognitive load than using the ATM.
I suspect the ATM example was given because the bank teller isn't losing anything by dealing with a customer. It's their job and they're on the clock anyway. In practice, people who use the "stupid by choice" strategy are usually dodging tasks at work or getting other people to do things for them, in which case the other party is actively losing time and energy.
It's manipulative and dishonest, despite the arbitrary (and nonsensical, tbh) example going to a bank teller instead of learning to use an ATM.
However, if you hide a feature you have in order to not be solely judged by it, its more difficult. I.e. a prince hiding his lineage or an artist hiding his craft.
A good measure is probably, to ask yourself if the other would feel betrayed if you told the truth.
And this is something that I've actually been doing
For example I cannot perform handwriting. I've never put effort into it because it felt useless and apparently I were right since as an adult the longest thing that I have to write on paper is probably my phone number
This works maybe if you are legit smart. Otherwise, you are just affirming what people believe ( correctly) to be true, which is that you're not that smart. And why would you want to do that. Terrance Tao can pretend to be dumb when it comes to maybe using an iphone or something, but no one will question if he is actually smart or not.
Modern inverse variation for corporate life:
"Avoid excelling at tasks you despise, as doing a commendable job may bind you to undesirable work."
I originally came across it in context of men getting out of doing housework by intentionally doing it poorly to not be asked to do it again.
Another, related way is to appear to already know it; this is especially useful if the "it" is supposed to be a secret.
> Her recommendation was to actively look stupid to avoid learning about things you are not interested in.
The flip side of this strategy is that you become a "help vampire": Someone who preys on the kindness of others to do their work for them.
The "help vampire" phrase was coined in 2006 with this blog post: https://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/
The blog describes an actively malicious person, but several of the points apply to the exact strategy described in this blog:
> Is he obviously just waiting for some poor, well-intentioned person to do all his thinking for him?
> Can you tell he really isn’t interested in having his question answered, so much as getting someone else to do his work?
This isn't so much "stupid by choice" as it is taking advantage of other people to offload tasks you don't want to do. The blog highlights positives such as "You have time to dedicate to other interesting things" which is another way of saying that someone else has lost some of their time in exchange.
The given example of going to a bank teller instead of the ATM is harmless enough because the bank employees are getting paid either way, but the example also doesn't really make sense: Standing in line and conversing with a bank teller is much more demanding and time-consuming than simply learning to use the ATM.
There's a lot about this blog post that either doesn't make sense or advocates for manipulating others. It was written in a kind, light-hearted way, but it's not good advice.
If the mark is able to detect the deceptive manipulation, then the mark should weight the pleasure/burden of adopting a particular style of patronizing teacher treating the lazy manipulator like a dimwit idiot, insofar as addressing said stupid as if it were a toddler.
If the burden is too much, then best to cut it short, apologize for the lack of time, and postpone to the 33st of Neverember.
You cannot pretend to be dumb and not lose credibility if the ask is a basic expectation of your gender. A man can't get away with pretending to be dumb about finances (mortgage, debt), a woman can't get away with pretending to be dumb about cooking or raising a baby.
What I mean is that the bank example worked for the article author's grandmum because she was a woman.
Delegate these tasks to experts on the topic and focus on your priorities.
I like the advice in (IIRC) High Output Management: if you have a choice or delegating two things, choose the one you know best, as that's the one you'll be able to effectively delegate. If you 'delegate' something you don't understand, you're actually abdicating.
I don't think that is true, even in general. In general, experts can figure out the details and get it done entirely without your help. My corporate taxes for instance. Or my furnace upgrade. Or my companies new data infrastructure ...
In the specific case of software development, this can often hold true because you are not delegating something to an expert, since it is new to everyone.
Just because you hire a professional doesn't mean they are honest.
> my furnace upgrade
I can tell you from experience that even large commercial HVAC outfits are ripe with fraud. I even have receipts and a verdict in my favor as evidence. The only reason I have them is because I took the advise of GP and made time to be involved with that contractor and notice their deceit.
I absolutely am not. It's bad enough to be moving the goal posts, please don't insult me by insinuating I am naive and stupid.
> I can tell you from experience that even large commercial HVAC outfits are ripe with fraud.
Which is why I got a recommendation from a trusted general contractor and then was onsite while they did the work.
That's oversimplified and overgeneralized, yes. But perhaps there's a little nugget in there that's useful for someone.