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Fascinating. And furthermore, smart people may be at a major disadvantage with this game; as Bertrand Russell said, "The trouble with this world is that the st

by limist 15y ago

Fascinating. And furthermore, smart people may be at a major disadvantage with this game; as Bertrand Russell said, "The trouble with this world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." Put another way, overconfidence and bravado come readily to those with the least real skill and insight; people who know enough to realize they don't know may often stay quiet and deferential. But at the other extreme, people who have reached mastery in something often exhibit a subtle authority which shows up in body language alone.

fleitz 15y ago
No, smart people are at a major advantage, the cocksure can easily get themselves into difficult situations with this, if you're smart and cocksure then you can lull the idiots into poor positions, and you can defend your own poor positions with some clever use of rhetoric. I was once in a meeting where the CEO was deciding that we should standardize the developer's OS. This was because I had installed Windows on a Java developer's workstation and the CEO was kind of pissed at me about it and thought the developer should have Linux on his system. (The dev was porting C# to Java) So I suggested at one point, by asking the sys admin what would make his life easiest, whether the best way to standardize was to run whatever we ran in production so that it would minimize bugs due to OS differences. The CEO and sys admin who was his trusted lieutenant immediately seized upon this and were barking out orders that we should run whatever was in production. I happend to know that we ran Solaris in prod for these products, now all the Linux developers were pissed they'd have to run Solaris, immediately revolted in the meeting and the result was no developer OS standardization. The key with cocksure idiots is to tell them something that sounds good that they will seize upon which will be laughed at by everyone who is in the know. Then they go away and stop fucking with you. Most people are just looking for someone to tell them what to do, be that person and you can run the show.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Cool story, bro. Are you playing the role of the smart person or the cocksure idiot in this particular situation?
  - fleitz 15y ago
    I think I'm playing the smart person :) Who really knows, smart and idiotic are all perceptions in the minds of others. Semmelweis who was influential in the idea that germs spread disease was jailed for insanity because of it. Was he smart or an idiot? I went into the meeting wanting to kill OS standardization and it worked. I got my way but whether standardization is better / worse, who knows?
- cageface 15y ago
  I've used this technique myself to handle belligerent co-workers. Make them think you're subtly mocking them and it throws them totally off their game.
- usedtolurk 15y ago
  Wouldn't you have been better off explaining the (presumably genuine) need for a windows machine? Your CEO is likely to remember this the next time you make a suggestion.
- ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
  Just make sure there are enough people in the know around, and remember that it takes a lot of people laughing at cocksure idiots to get them to change their minds. I've tried this approach with an insufficient number of "people in the know" and it did not end well.
jessedhillon 15y ago
This is similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect. From Wikipedia[1], "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes." To put it plainly, incompetent people are more confident in their poor abilities than competent people are in theirs well-developed skills. Moreover, and incompetent people are unable to accurately measure the extent of their incompetence. Instead of making us all feel confident and superior to those who are not as capable as we are, I think the better takeaway is that we are all subject to the effect. Because of this, we should be on guard for the situations where we are unjustifiably certain of our conclusions. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

by limist 15y ago

fleitz 15y ago

No, smart people are at a major advantage, the cocksure can easily get themselves into difficult situations with this, if you're smart and cocksure then you can lull the idiots into poor positions, and you can defend your own poor positions with some clever use of rhetoric. I was once in a meeting where the CEO was deciding that we should standardize the developer's OS. This was because I had installed Windows on a Java developer's workstation and the CEO was kind of pissed at me about it and thought the developer should have Linux on his system. (The dev was porting C# to Java) So I suggested at one point, by asking the sys admin what would make his life easiest, whether the best way to standardize was to run whatever we ran in production so that it would minimize bugs due to OS differences. The CEO and sys admin who was his trusted lieutenant immediately seized upon this and were barking out orders that we should run whatever was in production. I happend to know that we ran Solaris in prod for these products, now all the Linux developers were pissed they'd have to run Solaris, immediately revolted in the meeting and the result was no developer OS standardization. The key with cocksure idiots is to tell them something that sounds good that they will seize upon which will be laughed at by everyone who is in the know. Then they go away and stop fucking with you. Most people are just looking for someone to tell them what to do, be that person and you can run the show.

hugh3 15y ago
Cool story, bro. Are you playing the role of the smart person or the cocksure idiot in this particular situation?
- fleitz 15y ago
  I think I'm playing the smart person :) Who really knows, smart and idiotic are all perceptions in the minds of others. Semmelweis who was influential in the idea that germs spread disease was jailed for insanity because of it. Was he smart or an idiot? I went into the meeting wanting to kill OS standardization and it worked. I got my way but whether standardization is better / worse, who knows?
cageface 15y ago
I've used this technique myself to handle belligerent co-workers. Make them think you're subtly mocking them and it throws them totally off their game.
usedtolurk 15y ago
Wouldn't you have been better off explaining the (presumably genuine) need for a windows machine? Your CEO is likely to remember this the next time you make a suggestion.
ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
Just make sure there are enough people in the know around, and remember that it takes a lot of people laughing at cocksure idiots to get them to change their minds. I've tried this approach with an insufficient number of "people in the know" and it did not end well.

jessedhillon 15y ago

This is similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect. From Wikipedia[1], "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes." To put it plainly, incompetent people are more confident in their poor abilities than competent people are in theirs well-developed skills. Moreover, and incompetent people are unable to accurately measure the extent of their incompetence. Instead of making us all feel confident and superior to those who are not as capable as we are, I think the better takeaway is that we are all subject to the effect. Because of this, we should be on guard for the situations where we are unjustifiably certain of our conclusions. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect