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Could you expand with examples?

johnsonjo 8y ago
I’m not the parent commenter but I’ll chime in, because when I was younger I recognized what the parent is talking about. One way to think of humility is as the ability to see that you may be wrong and having the courage to accept it take action and change your thoughts and self to become right. Now you may say so what I do that all the time I learn new things and am corrected occasionally, that’s good, but sometimes learning and reason fall to dogma. Really humility brings about a great opportunity to learn and steers away from dogmatic thinking. This doesn’t mean thoughts coming from dogma are always wrong it means reason with yourself and others for truth and be open to change your mind. When your humble you are curious to learn from others, because you know you don’t know everything and separately you know that almost anyone can teach you something important if you just listen. I think one indicator of humility is empathy in a sense trying to put yourself in their shoes emotionally. A big part of humility when it comes to casual debate is understanding the argument of who your conversing with and finding common ground so that you can relate. In my religion humility is often related in different terminology as “an open heart and mind” where the opposite pride is described as being of “a closed heart and mind”. So, that shows you that it has both a feeling and thinking aspect as described above. Honestly I feel if people were truly and fully humble then we wouldn’t have as much toxicity in online debate like there is spread all across my Facebook feed and in other chat streams all across the internet heck we might even learn a lot more from it too. By the way one thing humility is not is thinking less of yourself as too often people might think. You can be confident and humble. In conclusion, humility is a catalyst for learning whereas pride (in this context) just helps you stay where you’re at and stop progressing to further knowledge which may even lead to degradation of knowledge. Of course it’s not binary there is a continuum.
hyperpallium 8y ago
Of which part? I thought you meant of the smartest people I've known, but another replier addressed humility. You might also be requesting examples of other issues, that I feel are interesting, of how I know they're smart if they don't act like it; or of how they do act. I find it self-evident that people who are aware they don't know something will be more likely to learn something than somebody who believes they already know it. But you might be askimg for examples of that. People who try to display their smarts are focussing on something other than learning. That can be helpful if their goal is to impress potential mates, competitors, opposition, colleagues, employers, investors, customers, clients, audience, readers, followers. It's social conduct, and it's just that it's not helpful for becoming smarter. I'll give some examples anyway. Someone who listens to you and watches you like a hawk (somewhat predatory). Someone who easily says "I don't know" because they have a crisp delineation between what they do and don't know, and similarly "you could be right". In my personal experience, it's incredibly rare to directly experience someone being smart. An example is when I just barely managed to articulate a hazy problem clearly, only to have a smart person solve it without missing a beat. The issue is (I think) there just aren't that many opportunities for actual smarts to be displayed. For one thing, you have to be confronting a new and difficult problem. And you have to be there. And of course, you have to be less smart than the person, to be able to appreciate it! Smart people I've known tend to speak slowly. BTW I'm clearly not speaking as someone supersmart, but as someone who has been the opposite type on occasion!

I’m not the parent commenter but I’ll chime in, because when I was younger I recognized what the parent is talking about. One way to think of humility is as the ability to see that you may be wrong and having the courage to accept it take action and change your thoughts and self to become right. Now you may say so what I do that all the time I learn new things and am corrected occasionally, that’s good, but sometimes learning and reason fall to dogma. Really humility brings about a great opportunity to learn and steers away from dogmatic thinking. This doesn’t mean thoughts coming from dogma are always wrong it means reason with yourself and others for truth and be open to change your mind. When your humble you are curious to learn from others, because you know you don’t know everything and separately you know that almost anyone can teach you something important if you just listen. I think one indicator of humility is empathy in a sense trying to put yourself in their shoes emotionally. A big part of humility when it comes to casual debate is understanding the argument of who your conversing with and finding common ground so that you can relate. In my religion humility is often related in different terminology as “an open heart and mind” where the opposite pride is described as being of “a closed heart and mind”. So, that shows you that it has both a feeling and thinking aspect as described above. Honestly I feel if people were truly and fully humble then we wouldn’t have as much toxicity in online debate like there is spread all across my Facebook feed and in other chat streams all across the internet heck we might even learn a lot more from it too. By the way one thing humility is not is thinking less of yourself as too often people might think. You can be confident and humble. In conclusion, humility is a catalyst for learning whereas pride (in this context) just helps you stay where you’re at and stop progressing to further knowledge which may even lead to degradation of knowledge. Of course it’s not binary there is a continuum.

hyperpallium 8y ago

Of which part? I thought you meant of the smartest people I've known, but another replier addressed humility. You might also be requesting examples of other issues, that I feel are interesting, of how I know they're smart if they don't act like it; or of how they do act. I find it self-evident that people who are aware they don't know something will be more likely to learn something than somebody who believes they already know it. But you might be askimg for examples of that. People who try to display their smarts are focussing on something other than learning. That can be helpful if their goal is to impress potential mates, competitors, opposition, colleagues, employers, investors, customers, clients, audience, readers, followers. It's social conduct, and it's just that it's not helpful for becoming smarter. I'll give some examples anyway. Someone who listens to you and watches you like a hawk (somewhat predatory). Someone who easily says "I don't know" because they have a crisp delineation between what they do and don't know, and similarly "you could be right". In my personal experience, it's incredibly rare to directly experience someone being smart. An example is when I just barely managed to articulate a hazy problem clearly, only to have a smart person solve it without missing a beat. The issue is (I think) there just aren't that many opportunities for actual smarts to be displayed. For one thing, you have to be confronting a new and difficult problem. And you have to be there. And of course, you have to be less smart than the person, to be able to appreciate it! Smart people I've known tend to speak slowly. BTW I'm clearly not speaking as someone supersmart, but as someone who has been the opposite type on occasion!