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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Sounds crazy but I've used this in action. How do you think I got such high karma here? ;-)

Thing is - it works. Both online and in-person. I'd much rather be honest about how little I know (and often am when I'm working long-term with someone), but I've found it's a losing strategy in most situations. If you do know your stuff, you'll just get shouted down by idiots. Better to shout the idiots down first and then do the research to make sure you're not wrong. If you screw up everything, you'll probably get another chance simply by virtue of confidence (look at John Meriweather, who nearly brought down the global financial system three times and is still managing money), but if you appear timid and then screw up, people are all like "I knew he didn't really know what he was talking about..."

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I've found it's a losing strategy in most situations.

Prisoner's-dilemma problem: being honest about your level of confidence is better for everybody, but if other people aren't doing the same, it's worse for you.

(look at John Meriweather, who nearly brought down the global financial system three times and is still managing money)

An important example. Chutzpah beats expertise in that domain.

The confidence thing is probably another leftover from the Stone Age. It probably works better for combat and mammoth hunting.

Actually, I find confident people much easier to evaluate - over time it's pretty easy to tell a bullshitter from someone who knows their stuff. When talking to people who hedge their bets too much (or worse still, don't speak up at all unless I have the time to prompt an answer out of them), I'm left with an unclear idea of their original position, so it's much harder to decide whether to trust them.

My favourite people are still those who state their conclusion, but will happily rattle off the list of assumptions they used to get there as well as how confident they are in that conclusion. But those people are pretty rare.

> Actually, I find confident people much easier to evaluate.

The same goes for why we may like extroverted people more than introverted types. Because with most extroverts, you're getting a relatively good impression of what they're about...because they're putting themselves out there (expressing their opinions); whereas with introverted types, you're using mental cycles trying to figure out what's their view/what do they want

May well be true, although there's a difference between being introverted and not having an opinion.

There are no shortage of extroverts who aren't going to let not having anything to say stop them from saying it. On the other side of the equation, if you manage to persuade your introverts to share their conclusions, you can get a beautiful signal-to-noise ratio.

"A bias for action" - if you try something, you can learn. But if you are (rightly and accurately) timid, you're less likely to.

One might think that bullshitting only works with people, and that if you act over-confident/over-optimistic with the computer, it won't be impressed - but it is. When I've approached programming problems is an aggressive way, I learn more, see better solutions and perform better. There's still a need to clean up the disasters afterwards, and it does make me feel dumb to make mistakes - but it's a more effective way of learning. For me, timidity is a mistake.

Being so timid that I don't try anything until I understand it 100% perfectly is not as effective. But I do like timidity. It's more authentic and accurate.

PS: @nostrademons: that confirms something I wondered about you... :-)

Yes, it's much better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

I mean, become a cocky bastard who also knows his/her stuff, and have all the fun, rather than whining about how the cocky bastards have all the fun.

If everyone actually knew how little they know, they wouldn't be cocky.

There's nothing wrong with being self-assured in what you do know, and honest about what you don't, but cockiness does seems to be a good indicator of an individual's ignorance of his (or her) own ignorance.

+1 for ballsiness

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