Never Be Intimidated | Hacker News Reader

Never Be Intimidated

nancyhua.com

130 pointsnancyhua72 comments

That was an interesting read, I can't figure out if she believes it or not.

The people I've met who were easily intimidated by wealth, power, intelligence, or money seem to share a common fear of being judged. Clearly just anecdotal evidence is useless here but the heart of the intimidation on those people (when I asked about it) was fear that they would be judged and found wanting. That fear intimidates them, not the intelligence or the power or the money.

As a random part of my life growing up I spent quite a bit of time in Las Vegas (there is an Air Force base there). And people living there had a really non-chalant view of money, after all you could be down to your last quarter, play it and suddenly be up a few hundred thousand dollars. It didn't "mean" anything, so having it or not having it didn't "mean" anything. But I went to school in LA and in LA it seemed that having money "meant" you were better than people who didn't have it. Which I rejected out of hand, after all I knew people who were complete scumbags who happened have a ton of cash back in Vegas, so clearly there wasn't a correlation here. But for the folks who had grown up believing in that correlation they were out to 'get money' so they could improve their standing in society. And that I found a very crazy notion indeed.

So the author is intelligent and she understands that she had nothing to do with the particular gene mix that brought her particular brand of intelligence out. That's great, some folks aren't so lucky and they fear being judged as "dumb" or simply "not smart." Is that wrong? Well I certainly consider it wrong to judge someone that way. But are they wrong for fearing they will be judged that way? Probably not, there are plenty of people it seems who would be more than happy to point out to them a relative deficit in IQ. Is that healthy? No of course it isn't.

So at the end of the day when I was feeling crappy because I had been teased at school for asking "stupid" questions like how birds fly upside down. My Mom would say "Oh honey, they are just jealous." Which, while I'm sure she meant well, didn't really help me with how these "jealous" kids seem to be looked up to by others and I seemed to be looked down upon by them. Thus I can't see how telling someone who is feeling intimidated to not feel that, really helps all that much.

One of the best techniques for reducing the fear of being judged is to 'level the playing field'. You simply do this by finding something you're good at that the other person isn't. No matter how arbitrary it is ("I'm better at chess than you!") there is a still a nature tendency for people who have more power/wealth/intelligence to want to compete. Thus they focus on the one thing that you're better at and judge you less on the million other things that you aren't.

I like this idea, and I think it's helped my confidence greatly over the years because of my disparate hobbies (he's a better coder than me, but can he do a backflip?).

I've been pondering lately, if I defined my own decathlon, would I win the world championship? Maybe the state championship at least?

indeed. here's a good video that describes a similar idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO1Q7F23DxM

Boxing training helps a lot, too. Knowing you can send that 50 pound bag flying can really boost your confidence around anyone, even if you'll never actually use that strength.

She says strength doesn't matter, but try being around a bodybuilder without feeling at least a bit intimidated.

This makes a lot of sense.

Your physical body is your "user interface" with the world, so if your body is weak and sickly, it's hard to project force and confidence into your interactions with other people.

I'm not talking about being a bully, of course. I'm talking about standing up and being confident being assisted by the deep, body-centered knowledge that you are able to effectively 'handle' yourself and your physical environment.

>> She says strength doesn't matter, but try being around a bodybuilder without feeling at least a bit intimidated.

A very large muscled man will really distort a social setting. Men will offer to buy him drinks. Women want to touch him. It commands immediate respect from everyone around. It's very strange.

It's not that strange. We're all still just primates after all. Being the physically dominant male in the room will probably always carry a bit of cachet.

"It commands immediate respect from everyone around", certainly not from me, I think a bodybuilder is just someone who spent a lot of time a the gym building muscle for the sake of building muscle, and my gf says they are "gross". My prejudice says I could easily outrun those guys, I'd be more intimidated by a martial arts expert although usually they are on the non-violent side.

We're still wired to assess potential danger and the strength/weaknesses of our surroundings, especially people and animals.

The first thing that the brain thinks when seeing a bodybuilder is that it would not win in a fight, nor would it be able to run (no, you can't outrun them - they may have no endurance, but in the first 5 minutes they can outrun and outmatch almost anyone), so instinctively, it's afraid and more careful/respectful in order not to anger that person.

The same goes for martial art experts of course, but it may not be immediately obvious that the person is stronger/faster. If you are the MA expert, you'll be confident that you can take on anyone in the room, which makes you calmer and increases your outwards confidence, as well.

It's all really interesting, indeed...

The thing ppl are missing here is that it the muscles matter much less than the confidence/energy the body builder is projecting. Imagine the same bodybuilder after punching a baby. He won't command respect. He may gain internal confidence through his bodybuilding efforts, and he may further boost that through social approval of those around him, but it's all based on his internal confidence, not a fait accompli of having muscles.

There is some truth in "finding something that you're good at that the other person isn't" - but not all "somethings" are equal. Certain things are flashier, and more intimidating than others - for example, you could be the world's best software engineer, but you'd be way less intimidating than a bodybuilder, boxer, hot guy/gal, movie star etc. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but this is the way the world seems to work.

My father gave me a good piece of wisdom on that subject.

He told me that when you face someone who would be "intimidated", you have to realize that when this person is going to have to go for a crap, he will be sitting on the same seat everybody sits, and will be ejecting stinking shit like everybody else.

We are all humans.

This reminds me of a similar strategy of dealing with intimidation from the Upright Citizens Brigade. Probably NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO1Q7F23DxM

OP makes some really smart points, but I can't shake the feeling that they're living in some kind of alternate reality fundamentally different from mine. Yes, if most people around you are very smart, or very wealthy, then intelligence or money are not really defining characteristics anymore. Intelligence and money define you in as much as they are vectors of power, but how much power they bring you over your environment is directly a function of how much more you have than others around you. When everybody possesses these things equally, they don't confer you any power over others anymore.

Yes, it's true that in the science-fiction world described by the OP, which might become a reality in 200 years, or maybe not, intelligence and looks will have been commoditized and won't mean much anymore. In exactly the same way that in the post-scarcity economy (if such a thing is ever to be), money won't matter anymore. But that is not the world we live in. In my world, really smart people are extremely rare, and they hold enormous power over the world due to their understanding, learning and problem-solving abilities. Wealthy people are few (the 1.5%) and possess monstrous power over the 98.5%. Just what kind of fairy tale does OP live in? Is SV really such an alternate reality?

It's pretty obvious that she does live in a very rarified world, but the advice is solid.

Why? Because in the 'normal' world, no one has beauty, intelligence nor money. So you have to judge people absent those things.

> "how much power they bring you over your environment is directly a function of how much more you have than others around you"

Sure, for now. Be aware, though, that this is not true in the steady state -- only so long as one defines their environment via social relativity.

Variable simulation speeds can universally resolve this for actors who are willing to recant social influence. cf `Uploads Economics 101`, Robin Hanson

"Wait til I get my money right, then you can't tell me nothin, right" - Kanye West

"Cash rules everything around me" - Wu-Tang Clan

In America money rules everything. Anyone with an Ivy League education and access to Billionaires obviously is not going to be intimidated by other status symbols.

It's only the people who need access who are intimidated by the gatekeepers.

Interesting juxtaposition of those two lyrics. Wu-Tang's is too often misinterpreted.

This is just not true. Most Ivy Leaguers maintain their high school level anxieties and fears no matter how much money they make or networks they break into. They are, generally speaking, still intimidated by the same fear of inadequacy that dominated their campus when they were undergrads.

Heh, America is nothing compared to the rest of the world when it comes to money ruling everything. Try talking to a billionaire in Brazil, Russia or even Germany - no can do ken.

Most modern men cannot run a marathon. Physical strength is still quite useful. Based on such principles, it's no wonder the author delves into ridiculous banter about singularity. At least she could have gotten some basic facts straight.

I don't think that specific factual inaccuracy undermines her basic point in that part, though. Physical ability isn't really a very big personality differentiator in most cases.

It's an odd claim that is way wrong. Was it a typo? A braino? Or just wrong?

I guess that this article got voted up so much is a strong indication as to how young this site really is. Nothing she said was very insightful, and any of the 'gate keeping billionares' could have told her everything she was talking about.

Of course, being told something isnt the same as learning something. Lessons like this are usually pretty hard ones, and not everyone gets the chance to learn them.

Her hypothesis is that physical ability doesn't matter. It does matter though. It matters in virtually every facet of life including personality and relationships. It matters in politics, power, money, work, status, and well being. It defines the personality of many people, especially men. It most definitely matters when it comes to attraction regardless of any argument one might make against that. Biology doesn't respond to intellectual banter. She seems either delusional or intentionally out of touch with reality when trying to make her point, blatantly ignoring facts for the sake of an argument that doesn't follow.

I read it as meaning that most modern humans are physical capable of running a marathon, if they trained. I think that is a defensible statement.

I think it's worth noting that non-modern humans could mostly run a marathon too (and were more likely to at least walk that far than modern humans).

> it's no wonder the author delves into ridiculous banter about singularity

"Post-singularity society of Silicon Valley" was facetious.

I don't know, I'm a couch potato and I completed the Marine Corps Marathon a few years ago. My training started 6 months out, I ran struggled through 3 miles twice a week. My training ended two weeks afterward when my partner got ill. Yet somehow, I still finished the marathon well before they shut down the crux of the course (a ~1 mile section of roadway they only keep open for ~6 hours at the ~20 mile point).

If my lazy, out of shape body can complete a marathon, I don't see why "most modern men" wouldn't be able to.

I took that to mean "most modern men could train themselves into sufficiently good shape to run a marathon" and not "most modern men could get up off the couch right this minute and run a marathon". The former statement, I think is probably true. The latter almost certainly isn't (I think).

Honestly I didn't really get this article. It seems to make ad hoc distinctions for traits based on some possible future reality, that may occur after we are dead. And none of it relates to why people get intimidated.

tl,dr: future so bright we'll need shades, so let's pretend we care about other things--after all, all us rich people will be unable to signal using our jetpacks and bodymods anymore!

"Now when I meet someone with intelligence, beauty, or wealth, which is basically everyone in the post-singularity society of Silicon Valley, I automatically delete those qualities from my perception of their Real Identity. I still recognize intelligence, etc. as a property they possess, but I don’t define them by it."

is this person as insufferable in real life as she is in her writing?

From what I can gather, monkishly so.

This text is nothing more than an aspirational humblebrag: "Look at me, I am so intelligent and have so much access to intelligent, wealthy, attractive people that I don't have to care about intelligence, wealth and beauty any longer! I have become blind to such superficialities and am now closer to enlightenment than any of you!"

Furthermore, for someone with a "Bachelors [sic] of Science in Writing" her writing is remarkably poor (e.g., "A millennia ago", "Lamborghini’s").

But she's totally killing it in the Valley, right?

Changing the world through A/B testing.

Consider John Wayne's advice in 'The Shootist': It's not always about being fast or accurate, it's about being willing.

Add another quote (from Feynman): you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

Now no one can intimidate you.

Didn't see much of the title in the article. Also, while I agree with most of it, this part seems to be the most important:

> I try to define people by their ambitions, creativity, drive, perspective, attitude, inspirations… that soft gushy core inside the genius billionaire playboy. Love, values, interests, goals.

After an article about how intelligence, prestige, and beauty don't matter, what do you define people by? I'm not seeing the pattern here. What ties these things together?

I'm not sure if this is what you're trying to say, but the only message I'm taking away is: the traits people traditionally respect don't matter as much as they think.

Presumably, "intelligence, prestige, and beauty" are things people are born into.

Meanwhile, "ambitions, creativity, drive, perspective, attitude, [and] aspirations"... are things people are frequently still be born into, but society doesn't think about it that way. (My riches for a world where "drive" is viewed as biological, rather than a matter of "character"...)

'derefr, meet the head of this nail. I think you'll hit it off.

ahem, enough terrible puns. You're right on here though, but I think "drive" as a concept is (like most things to do with humans) a mix of biological and "character". I think it leans more towards the former, however. I mean, I have struggled with depression since I was a teenager: there's a nice biological factor that destroys any and all drive I normally have.

> My riches for a world where "drive" is viewed as biological, rather than a matter of "character"...

We have this now. It's not necessarily a popular opinion, but it's the one with all the documentation. (On the other hand, who says your "character" isn't biological? There are plenty of ideas that directly contradict that. cf "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" "blood will tell" etc.)

Drive would be the "conscientiousness" axis of the big 5 personality traits. From memory, I think it usually shows about 70% heritability?

You kind of remind me of something Scott Adams wrote: (paraphrased) "Thin people believe that there is something called willpower and that they have more of it and fat people have less of it. They don't realize that they just don't like food as much."

A response to Jamil Elie Bou Kheir's comment on Facebook (presumably jamilbk on HN), because I do not have Facebook:

> hello from hacker news. thoughtful article! i think it's not the mere intelligence, beauty, or wealth that defines someone. perhaps it's the reasons and difficulty through which they are achieved. suppose i endure years of hardship and suddenly, in a flash of creativity, uncover a specific life path which i choose to follow. if the journey down that path necessitates an increase in intelligence, then wouldn't that conscious pursuit of intelligence qualify as a viable aspect of my identity? similar points can be raised about beauty and wealth.

> accordingly, i think no real identity is assumed when an individual gets these things "for free". enthusiastically expressing one's beauty, intelligence, or wealth that have existed since birth (or a lucky event) is actually rather distasteful... so yeah delete those qualities kthx.

You've made negation your identity the same way that others define themselves through beauty, intelligence and wealth. This is neither unique nor particularly useful, and I've found it to be generally unhealthy.

Entrench yourself in any region's activist scene and you will be surrounded by this mentality. Despite being a higher level abstraction than beauty, intelligence and wealth, it is equally commoditizable given enough time and positive feedback. For instance, consider the phrase "social capital".

The original post does not strike me as a rejection of one end of an axis in favor of its converse. Rather it is a dismissal of the axis itself, of an entire model of thinking, its conclusion resting in rational, subjective passivity. To ascribe any particular aesthetic about how things "should be" or how people "should act" is to miss the point.

I would summarize the original post's conclusion thus: stop projecting; question abstractions; remove inconsistencies from the bottom, up.

That conclusion invites a plea. We all have a utility function, and it will eventually fail; how do we best extend its (and our) relevance, and do we even want to?

The entire article is built around a false premise: that we're all going to be genius supermen, and struggle with what to identify ourselves by.

Another major thing from the article that is false, and destroys the conclusions that rest upon it: intelligence, wealth and beauty used to seem like notable qualities.

It's fitting then that the 2014 SI Swimsuit edition just came out. Remind Kate Upton that beauty isn't a notable quality. I can't figure out how someone like that makes millions of dollars off a non-notable commodity.

The author seems to suffer from an intense privilege bias. Try telling someone in Romania that wealth isn't a notable quality, and they will laugh in your face.

Intelligence has been commoditized? John Carmack, to name one very easy example, proves that isn't true, and isn't going to be true in our lifetimes.

A millennia ago the strongest person was also the richest (because the 'dude' could bop you on the head and steal your cow apparently)? What? That's not even remotely historically accurate. Now strength doesn't even matter! Well yippee, we've all been liberated from our primitive past, apparently. Unless of course you're one of the hundreds of millions in China, or billions globally, that still use physical labor every day to earn a living. Again, intense privilege bias.

The only thing this article has going for it, is an appeal to emotion: it's the type of world the author wishes exists, but in fact does not.

> "For me, maturation has been a series of realizing what doesn’t matter."

Best part of it, for me! I recently realized that I'd be way ahead of the game if I had a garage full of cans of "Don't give a fuck" and could just open one up whenever I need it. All kinds of things I get hung up on would stop holding me back.

Many financially successful people are socially awkward. This gets amplified by people putting up a barrier because of the intimidation. This manifests itself in CEOs who lose contact with new hires in their firm, and famous speakers standing alone before their presentations. In this case, the level setting behavior is being the person willing to make contact, whether it's via small talk or something they care about.

The original article is interesting. I wonder if the author is willing to not just go beyond things like physical appearance and intelligence, but to also ignore them entirely. (Are the first two "necessary but not sufficient" or just "unnecessary"?) My experience in life has been the former, not the latter.

Also, get a writing sample from them. If the word "I" dominates the single-word histogram, run like hell. (OP fails magnificently).

A good read. This article resonated with me because my Dad is a member of the national academy of science, and I grew up around lots of very well known and successful people. This exposure to famous and gifted people early in life really helped my career since I usually felt comfortable just walking up to people in power and talk with them and potentially increase my network.

BTW, I had never read any of Nancy's stuff before. I also really liked http://nancyhua.com/2013/02/05/what-to-work-on-when-you-dont...

A rich daddy's "nerdy hehe" girl manifesto on how she goes out with male models and doesn't feel inferior to them? This is just wrong on so many levels. As someone who has developed social anxiety because of spending most of my life in poverty and the stigma that you have to bear with it, especially as a child, I'm rather offended by this.

I know you guys like to upvote pretty much anything done by a girl because of some twisted gender equality quota, but why is this here exactly?

Preach it, brother.

> I still recognize intelligence, etc. as a property they possess, but I don’t define them by it.

Why not? I think that what you mean by "define" is that something matters to you. Why wouldn't intelligence matter? Whether intelligence means knowledge, aptitude, or rationality, Don't those things make someone more pleasant to be around? (sorry if I misunderstood what you're saying)

Haven't you ever been irritated by someone saying, patronizingly, "you're so smart," when you do something? Where they only see you as someone who can solve problems, or do things they can't do? Alternatively, are there people in your life you have to get along with but you feel like "they don't 'get' it," like you do? Defining people or yourself by how "smart" you or they are can be shallow, open to misinterpretation and stops you from seeing others as worthy to hang out with. If you really can't stand someone or have legitimate need for certain smarts, then by all means judge by what criteria you need to. But don't stop yourself before you start -- don't filter out some prospect or new connection because you can't measure up or think less of them. You may not have seen things they way they have, but you might find more in common/to like after giving them a chance.

I think you're talking about the costs of being smart, when the question is whether or not you like interacting with someone else who is smart.

But to the question that you bring up, I think you're right - being smart definitely has it's downsides. Ignorance can be bliss.

Very interesting, however i think intelligence is not only related to knowledge but it also resembles how a person thinks and that thinking leads to all the factors you look into a person like ambition, creativity, inspirations etc.

I think intelligence(not only knowledge) as a bigger definition is one important quality i look into a person.

I too agree completely that money, beauty do not matter as they are just attributes

Saying that intelligence, fitness or any other quality does not matter is living in the future, in an alternate universe.

Probably it won't matter in the future, but it matters today.

Probably in the future it won't matter, but if the future is 100 years from now it is not a good strategy to live your alternate reality until then.

Just believing that technology alone will solve all the problems looks naive to me. Imagine for example that a dictator, like Castro could modify their genome with very expensive treatment for living young forever. This does not mean the people he forbids earning more than 20$ a month(everybody in Cuba) will.

Of course, if he does it will be because "he cares so much about his people", or the revolution, not because he wants to, like any other dictator or person in power, they will justify maintaining their power over anyone else.

Corollary: If you have the chance, be a little intimidating, and note the other person's reaction.

What category does HN karma fall into?

Hours wasted in life?

> Love, values, interests, goals.

Perhaps names for one's negotiation of:

- scarcity of imagination and desire

- scarcity of attention and perspective

- scarcity of social context

Even in a post-singularity post-material-scarcity society, under the assumption that all direct desires are met, these tensions remain.

you just blew my mind wow any further reading you could recommended along similar lines to what you wrote? thanks

The premise is false: with all the technologies, she still looks ugly.

Attack the ideas, not the person.

...except there are different kinds of intelligence.

Some kinds are commodities, no doubt.

Then there're the kinds that tell you WHAT you should be studying. That's a horse of a different color.

From the FB comments: "Jamil Elie Bou Kheir hello from hacker news. thoughtful article! i think it's not the mere intelligence, beauty, or wealth…"

Caused me to cringe, now not only calling yourself a hacker is a commodity, but if you can't stretch that far, just declaring that you read hacker news gains you status?

Not pretending like this site is an exclusive club, but c'mon.

>Intelligence, beauty, and wealth used to seem like notable qualities, but now they’re commoditized by technology

Very well put.

Excellent read. Perhaps "Intelligence is a commodity" would be a better title for it.

I read this several decades back but it has stuck with me:

Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude.

OTOH, altitude determines altitude, and causation determines correlation.

More like "After aptitude has been canceled out, attitude determines altitude"

Not many folks are hiring based on attitude these days.

What makes ambition/creativity/drive/perspective/attitude/inspiration any more intrinsic than intelligence/knowledge?

I think the idea would be that those are more complex traits that will be harder to change through new neural technology (compared to simply learning new information) and thus less likely to change in the medium term.

Because a working fool will do more than a sitting genius? I don't remember the saying (English is not my first language).

What about the ambitions, creativity, drive, and inspirations of a fat balding unsuccessful guy?

So until the point of asteroid harvesting we have a reason to be intimidated?

I liked the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com