20 ms·

I assume I’m below average (2010)

376 points by enigmatic02 6y ago

cheschire 6y ago
Going hand in hand with this sentiment, I strive to feel I am not entitled to given end states, regardless of the effort I put in.
- TheUndead96 6y ago
  This also means that you do not need to feel guilty for good fortune.
oconnor663 6y ago
As with many things, this goes both ways. Some people are overconfident and need to practice humility. Other people are underconfident and need to take more risks. The trick is figuring which group you're in on any given day.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  > this goes both ways. No. It goes one way more than the other. Did you read the article? Statistics the author references show that people are more overconfident than underconfident.
  - watwut 6y ago
    People who start with unsupported conviction that they are good in tech, interact with tech a lot more. They over time really learn a lot and meantime end up blaming everything except themselves. But, people who start with conviction that they are not technical kind of person, never learn and just give up. Drivers who assume themselves to be bad drivers tend to drive very little or not at all and never improve. They are parallelized by fear, their assumption they cant do anything rubs on others who are in car with them who then start to give them advice - making situation worst. I have seen that dynamic a lot of times, because in my country it is quite frequent with women drivers. Not most women or something, but there is certain kind of woman who assumes own incapability and it is self-fullfiling prophecy.
  - username90 6y ago
    90% thinking they are above average could still mean that almost 50% underestimates themselves. All it proves is that people who are less than mediocre rarely realizes it.
  - odessacubbage 6y ago
    our sense of averages is also greatly skewed. if you are a degree bearing professional in a competitive field, the amount of time you spend measuring yourself against the 50th percentile and below is in all likelihood close to zero. you see this in review scores as well. there is a strong cultural bias towards the upper third, an album/ movie or game is often considered a critical failure if it scores a 7 or below even though that would, broadly speaking, mean it is better than average.
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      Average ≠ Mean (though not always). And average (or is that median?) score is pretty much 7/10 : https://www.polygon.com/2014/10/28/7083373/look-at-this-chart-of-average-metacritic-scores-what-happened-in-2007 https://www.polygon.com/2014/10/28/7083373/look-at-this-char...
- lwhalen 6y ago
  the days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations... Well, I have really good days
Dylan16807 6y ago
At what? At everything? I can point out things I'm clearly above average at, and things I'm clearly below average at. I can also point out areas where I have no idea, like driving. If I start assuming I'm below average as a baseline, when I wasn't assuming I was above average as a baseline, I'm pretty sure that will make me less accurate. Thinking about things as just practice is good advice but I don't see how it has any connection at all to whether my skill level is above or below average.
- byecomputer 6y ago
  I totally agree. The different and sometimes complex ways people are good at some things and bad at others is a reality that actually exists. The idea of playing mind games in order to act less self-important seems... kind of self-important. The context of it being sold as a new idea in a blog with the person's name at the top in capital letters doesn't help that perception. I think Socrates might have the jump on this guy's routine by a few years.
roenxi 6y ago
The illusion can be summed up in a single pithy phrase: "I remember everything, because I don't recall ever forgetting anything important". If we were aware of our mistakes, we wouldn't make most of them. So generally we will appear to be the only person doing nothing wrong in a sea of people who are constantly screwing up. People who fight against that illusion be creating safeguards around themselves and testing things they think are obvious have a chance of outperforming. Never underestimate the ability of someone to get amazing results simply by not making any obvious mistakes. All that doesn't explain the cancer patients though.
atoav 6y ago
Ithink it is always good to stay realistic. This could mean you are not as good as you think you are, but it could also mean that you are better than the average (e.g. most people on this site might be better with computers than the average of the world population). Assuming other people are idiots is never a good thing, even if it was true. I'd rather assume they have a bad day, or misunderstand what you mean because they dont have the same mental map unrolled in front of themselves as you have, and that can also be due to miscommunication. Whether someone really is an idiot will come to light through repetition.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  Exactly, we can all to some extent look at our outcomes and compare to see where we stand. It's what grades are for, after all. A humble attitude in a completely new environment isn't a bad start though.
  - atoav 6y ago
    Grades can be misleading as well, because they don't necessarily signify that a person understood what they did, but that they managed to deliver within that grading system (e.g. by learning things by hard, by preparing for a very narrow topic, etc). Working in a very free university/art school (without grades and with little pressure), I often see people who had good grades before completely fall apart when nobody tells them what to do and how to do it. Grades are nice and all, but don't take it for given that they correlate to actual performance. Additionally there are field where this is even truer: how do you grade art? Will a gallerist buy your art because you had good grades in art school? Will a festival screen your film because your professors gave you the best grade? Grades should be taken with a grain of salt unless you know the system within which they were created very well and what these grades indicate. I think actual projects and experiences are worth more. If you e.g. mixed the sound for 10 movies and there are more people asking you to do it for them (and they are willing to pay), this might be a good indicator that you actually know what you are doing.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  Yeah - are you below average compared to the average population or compared to the fantastic people that you might work with? The latter is more likely to be true or helpful to assume in any field in which you have survived for some time.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
"I know that I know nothing" -- Socratic paradox.
odessacubbage 6y ago
for the sake of a counterpoint: 'Talent- don't bother about whether or not you have it. Just assume that you do and then forget about it. talent is a word we use after someone has become accomplished. There is no way to detect it before the fact, or when someone is still grappling with the learning process. It is impossible to predict when or if mastery will click into place. Besides, the thing we label as talent is not a single ability. It is a complex mixture of motive, curiousity, receptivity, intelligence, sensitivity good teaching, perseverance, timing, sheer luck, and countless other things. If any part of it is genetic, God-given, the result of astrological fiddle-faddle, fate, or destiny, that part is not the sole determining factor, All the other ingredients must be present in the right combination- and no one knows the exact recipe. Therefore Dear Reader, don't waste time worrying about if you are talented- and don't blame any failures on the lack of it-that is really a cop out...' - Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting, Richard Schmid >https://imgur.com/a/XSMc1zh https://imgur.com/a/XSMc1zh
- yarcob 6y ago
  Thanks for this citation. I think it perfectly augments the article. I can do both: - assume that I am below average (don't underestimate others) - assume that I have talent (don't underestimate yourself)
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    I have a few doublethink beliefs like this that I find quite useful. It feels like different modes of thinking for different situations.
- ericmcer 6y ago
  I dunno, if you look at untrained 6 year olds, some just are faster runners, have better hand eye coordination, etc. With 0 training. It’s always a balance between hard work and reasonable expectations.
anonytrary 6y ago
> To assume you’re below average is to admit you’re still learning The top physicist in the world deeply knows that he is still learning, but he also knows that he's above average. There are plenty of ways people get feedback in life that tells them that they're above average. I think the real advice is to not assume you're better than someone just because you're above average at X. That person is probably above average at Y. Thankfully, most people who are above average already know this.
- garbagetime 6y ago
  To assume you don't know everything is to admit you still have more to learn
  - Balgair 6y ago
    It's a lot easier to realize that when you are on the bleeding edge, staring at a universe of unresolved questions ... and grant applications :P
- khalilravanna 6y ago
  Sure but why does it matter that one is above average? I can’t think of one situation that isn’t contrived that involves this piece of information. That physicist doesn’t need that info to do research or accomplish great things.
  - morgancmartin 6y ago
    I've used that kind of information throughout my life as a marker to help me determine when it's time for me to move on to the next "stage" of development of my skill. It is similar in spirit to the quote (paraphrasing), "If you're the smartest person in the room, find another room", except substitute "smartest" with "highest skilled" perhaps. Essentially, I see it as a meta-indicator, a way of making decisions in situations where I don't have all of the information. Another way to look at it would be through the lens of game theory. Game theory is absolutely a field of some consequence, and it's all about relative positioning of agents in a system and their likely intentions after factoring in the likely intentions of their peers. In a word, you might describe this type of analysis as simply, "wisdom." I find it to be of particular value in entrepreneurship.
keithnz 6y ago
Assume nothing! If, for some reason, it is important to get an accurate gauge of how you rank compared to others, then find engage some kind of assessment that will determine that. If that's not viable, then it probably isn't important to know (often when it is viable it also isn't important to know also).
bArray 6y ago
I think this is generally not such a great idea, quite a few things end up getting achieved because somebody is punching above their station. I think you learn the most when you steam train into something and get stuck - then figure out how to get out of it. In general, I think it would be better to assume that you're not more intelligent than the person you are speaking to (at least on a particular subject) and that you may not be the smartest person in the room. That's not to say you are below average, but that there is still something you can learn from at least one person in your company.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I’d say both shifts in mindset is a tactical decision. Sometimes you really need to have faith in yourself to achieve something. Sometimes you need to remove your ego to sustain something. Every situation is different, but I would agree one should not give up tactical options in the greater strategic battle of coping with life and the onslaught of dealing with people.
  - Flex247A 6y ago
    I for example, have problem maintaining a balance. Is there really a way of doing this better?
    - runawaybottle 6y ago
      Practice. Relinquish a belief and deal with the fallout (internally with the psychological hit to the ego, modulate the impact it has on you), then strive for something that may or may not be achievable (and modulate again, not letting the attainment be your everything, and not letting failure be overly impactful). It’s tough when you’re insecure because your primary mental fortification is an inflated ego. Just get used to (practicing) inflating and deflating the ego (ideally just keeping it half filled with air) so you literally are not a zero-self-esteem mess out there in the world. If you have no practice with this, every time life gives you an opportunity or challenge, you’ll make judgement mistakes.
kstenerud 6y ago
Not only no, but fuck no. When you have talent, it is your duty and responsibility to hone it and care for it. You have a gift; to squander it in a misguided attempt at humility or fear of trying is the worst sin you could commit. Stop listening to what other people have to say about where you should go and what you should do; their reasons are either selfish or fearful. Only you are sufficient judge of what is your true potential, and that only comes through the continuous experience of discovery and trying. Become your potential, because you're the only one who will ever care enough. This advice will be downvoted to oblivion because very few people can understand it, but I implore you to at least TRY it, take a chance on yourself. SURVIVE and THRIVE!
- mym1990 6y ago
  Not sure you even read the piece. OP doesn’t link assuming that you’re below average with being below average, but rather being more humble in the way we approach other people and other activities. And by the way, I’m curious who bestows this “duty” and “responsibility” to care and hone one’s “talents”? You obviously come off as thinking you have at least one...
  - kstenerud 6y ago
    The piece starts by running off statistics about everyone who has been wrong about being exceptional. Basically "Don't bother; by all wagers you're at best average." It then settles into the comfortable safety of "I'll just assume I'm average." No guts, no glory. Even worse, those statistics are basically about believing without evidence. Talents produce evidence when exercised (provided you're ready to recognize them). If something comes easier to you, you focus and push harder, seeing how far it can go. But you have to believe that you can or else you won't put your full weight behind it. Man's greatest asset and his greatest enemy is his mindset. The lucky talented just know in their bones that they are. For the rest, your mindset determines the success of your talents, and that mindset takes work to maintain.
- yarcob 6y ago
  If you have a talent, you can do with it whatever you want. There is no such thing as squandering your talent. People always told me: "You're so good at maths, you have to go into research. Your talent would be wasted as a middle school teacher." But then it turned out that I hated research. I work as a programmer now, a profession that I do enjoy, but it's so mundane. I wonder where I would have ended up if people hadn't discouraged me from becoming a teacher. I'm slightly jealous of people who get to work with curious kids every day.
tutfbhuf 6y ago
I think if it's important to you then don't assume, measure it. Ask your students, colleagues, partners where you could improve and see where you are already good at (above avg).
thrower 6y ago
The mistake or cognitive error people make is that the potential of an average human is actually extraordinarily high. Being “average” is in itself more than enough to achieve close to anything. Compare the human brain to anything currently in existence, and it should begin to dawn on you that we basically carry around a low energy power efficient supercomputer inside our heads.
mkl95 6y ago
Imo this is not good advice for junior software engineers that work for a startup. The truth is most project managers and technical leaders at startups are happy with the quality of their codebases being way below the industry average. Most senior and mid-level engineers are well aware of this fact, but they avoid bringing it up due to workplace politics and how awkward it is. This leads junior engineers to think they are just learning what to do, while the truth is that they are learning what NOT to do as well.
- watwut 6y ago
  How confident you come across is huge part of how others see you. Especially in chaotic environments where leader is not even in position to look closely at your work. If you really overdone it while producing complete crap or stop learning because of it, then yes, it harm you. But in most situations, very confident people do better then humble people of exact same capabilities. Especially in startups and such.
BlanketLogic 6y ago
Does it really matter though? Does it matter if I am above average or below average? I am as good as the last product I built, last library I wrote, the last game I played. I will have to see if I can improve and move on. Looking at one's standing on some world wide leader board is largely irrelevant outside of duolingo, imho.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It doesn't really, but what does matter is whether you FEEL like you are. The software industry (and broader, the whole STEM industry) is full of people who are kinda full of themselves, and people are being TOLD that they are above average, that they SHOULD be above average, that they should be or strive to be a mythical 10x developer, a thoughtleader, that they should be writing blogposts and appear on stage, organize and attend meetups, create and maintain open source software, read books and papers, etc etc etc. And those that don't are silently shamed or shunned, looked down on by those who do (or say that they do; in practice / what I've seen is that that energy they have lasts for only a few years, after which they either settle down in family life, end up in burnout, or both). It's a toxic culture, one that isn't actively pushed by any one individual or organization, but one that is prevalent and normalized throughout the industry. The SF bubble is even worse, where you're considered cool if you do 24 hour hackathons, work nights, sleep in overpriced bunk beds in hacker homes so you can hop back on your tech five seconds after waking up. Anyway sorry, I had a rant brewing, it's not specific to your comment. Speaking for yourself, while I will acknowledge I'm probably better at my job than a lot of people, I also suffer from impostor syndrome, from not being good, fast, ambitious, productive or smart enough. I've thankfully gotten out of a "rat race" organization (consultancy, yay) and I've settled down in a job where I have both responsibility, time and space to do my own thing, pick my own tools and tech. In that job, I can decide on my own technology choices without having to compete with egos and trends. I can sit down and think about, write down the tech choices, instead of landing in an assignment where the decisions have already been made, or where they're made in a 15 minute meeting where the loudest or most impatient guy decides without any deliberation or paperwork. I am a lot more confident that the software I write now will last for longer, whereas other jobs I've had, code I've written would likely go quickly to subsistence / maintenance mode, then a full rewrite by the next generation of energetic hipsters because the existing stuff is unsalvageable, because the previous generation of energetic hipsters got bored and the opportunity to start something new (which they prefer to do every 6-12 months). I should probably write an angry rant blogpost about this, ironically.
docsaintly 6y ago
I assumed for years that I was average and it led to endless frustration: If I'm average, then it means most people should be able to do what I do. So if they don't then it means they are lazy. I agree with the other comments here: assume nothing. Each person (and situation) is a case-by-case basis.
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ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago
I do not assume I'm better than any body of you until I hear you talking about things... friendly yours.
heopd 6y ago
He's certainly above average in thinking he is below average.
qwerty456127 6y ago
Being above/below average doesn't necessarily imply not being also the opposite. There are different aspects in everything you can measure yourself by. You can be slightly more stupid than others (e.g. I don't think I can score at a whiteboard interview, I never am the first one to solve a puzzle) but the fact you are actively aware of that, accept that (but don't give up) and take that in conscious account already makes you superior to others in some very important aspects. Also, being above average doesn't mean stopping improving, it means your can improve better and easier so you probably should.
dang 6y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480002
egsmi 6y ago
"Ninety percent of students think they are more intelligent than the average student." Does anyone know which study this came from? I was trying to figure out exactly how the survey question was worded because this statistic seems somewhat amazing to me. The driving one I get because drivers are not being routinely graded, but students are. I googled the phrase and I basically got related quotes, this article (from 2010), and a couple of studies that came after this article was posted, and they were mostly looking at gender differences in preceived intelligence and after a quick glance, didn't seem to support this statement.
- TheOperator 6y ago
  I've been routinely graded WORSE than the average student and believe this rather confidently. An impression I get from having had teachers yell at me in the hallway about wasted potential and other students cracking jokes about how my friends had "ruined me" after my grades fell off a cliff after making some new ones. Grading doesn't prevent inflated delusions of intellectual superiority if people believe grades are a matter of hard work rather than intelligence. What drove a sense of inferiority for me was somebody getting better grades with seemingly less effort.
  - egsmi 6y ago
    I understand your point and, as I am sure you know, life can definitely be unfair. Do you think it's so unfair that 90% of students would feel the same way? It's not impossible but personally, I would be surprised by that. Which is the point. Experiences vary dramatically, especially if we broaden the statement internationally, so knowing who was asked what is just as important as the claim.
    - TheOperator 6y ago
      I don't see it as unfairness, college mostly gatekeeper business and academia and raw brainpower isn't what you should be selecting for. At least not in isolation. I do agree the 90% claim seems dubious especially unsourced.
CGamesPlay 6y ago
I think you can view this advice in a negative light or a positive light. If you interpret it as "my maximum is lower than other people's" then it will naturally lead to worse outcomes. I believe the author intended it as "my current progress is less than my peers". This outlook can encourage you to work harder to accomplish the thing that you want and be more open to new strategies, if you earnestly believe that other people might have better strategies than you. (Note, this blog post was written in 2010.)
KMag 6y ago
It's probably better to assume you might be wrong than to assume your abilities/understanding are below average in some area. To assume you're below average in some aspect when you're not also causes problems in interacting with others. ("This is easy because I find it easy and I'm below average. Anyone with a high school education probably has a functioning knowledge of linear algebra and differential equations.") It's absolutely true that you might be wrong, and your decision making and behavior should take that into account, regardless of your abilities relative to others. My general rule is to assume I'm missing something or could be wrong. For instance, I was skiing with my dad this February. He said he didn't have his milt-resort pass with him, but it sure looked to me like it was attached to his arm. So, I asked him if the thing on his arm could get him what he needed, instead of flat-out telling him he was wrong. For all I knew, it was some expired single-day pass from the previous season, but it could have been some kind of membership ID that was still useful in our situation. It turned out he had forgotten that his multi-resort pass was on his arm, but my response was less confrontational and more focused on cooperatively reaching the goal.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
notagoodidea 6y ago
It is never about how you perceive your self vs the crowd, it is always about how you fit in your team and microcosm. Evaluating yourself vs the biased projected skills or knowledge of your equivalent in your field is just a way to give you a tap on the back and saying "You are right, you're the smart one in the room" aka living in your own echo chamber. I have always struggle to evaluate myself and deal with the impostor syndrome because I tend to be a generalist dropped in team of specialist acting as a bridge. Am I less knowledgeable that those specialists in their field? Yes but they lack the skills to understand deeply each other and communicate clearly their needs. I was the average finally between them and nobody was doing the same kind of role around me to compare with. Learning is a mindset that is not equivalent to how you can have self-assurance. It is the ability to keep an open mindset to enrich the set of ways to approach your field. If you restrain yourself to only one hammer, you would be above the average smashing all the nails of the world with it finally. You will just not learn anything after a time twisting your hammer to fit every nails.
ozim 6y ago
Could it be selection bias? No one is doing polls on 100% of people. Maybe people who respond in those kind of polls are better than average or they want to be better than average. There is a lot of people who don't care about polls and won't answer them.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
The author, himself, seems to be a pretty interesting chap. There’s many axes to these graphs, and we constantly try to boil it down to simple 2-axis plots. For example, there’s smart, then there’s driven. I have worked with many very intelligent folks that fall to pieces, when unpredictable things happen, or when presented with challenging conundrums. I knew someone who was definitely not a gifted, intelligent person, and was quite aware of that. I won’t go into his story, but he had a lot of personal challenges that most folks would consider “showstoppers.” It would have been quite easy to throw in the towel, and give up on a future. He did not. He worked hard, for many years, and refused to let the attacks and sneers stop him. He pursued education in the IT field, after his original vocation was eaten by new tech. He was the oldest (and, likely, most-tattooed) person in his classes. He ended up working at one of the most prestigious labs in the world, and was obviously valued by his employers. He worked there for a decade, before his unexpected death, earlier this year. If people here knew of the particular challenges this person faced (not my story to tell), I guarantee that mandibles would be hitting the floor. He was definitely below average in many ways, but above average in other, very important, ways. No matter how much we have on the ball, we all have weaknesses, which will never be addressed, if we refuse to see them, and we often have strengths that we may never know, until the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.
Guthur 6y ago
I feel this is just a more negative version of always aim to surround yourself we people smarter than you.
blauditore 6y ago
Well, technically it's possible that any percentage is above average - just not above median.
nazgulnarsil 6y ago
This seems like a sad result of a society that places no faith in quantitative methods because such faith has been abused to the point of breaking again and again.
nicbou 6y ago
We should distinguish having above average mental faculty, and above average skills. I vastly overestimated the impact of the former until university. Engineering classes kicked everyone's asses. Everyone was equally smart, but some people studied harder than others. On the other hand, I know I am well above average at certain things because I've been doing them for many years. I have an above average interest in those things, and put an above average effort into learning them. This is also true for other people. My dad is an average dad, until you ask him about cars or motorbikes. I knew he liked cars, but I didn't get to appreciate the breadth and depth of his knowledge until I started wrenching on vehicles. He spared me the details out of politeness, because I wasn't into cars. Now, he doesn't spare me, and it turns out he's a mechanical grandwizard. It was right under my nose this whole time. I suspect most people are like that. They are average, except at one or two things. We tend to judge others based on the one or two things we value, and fail to appreciate them for what they're good at.
- code_scrapping 6y ago
  I agree with all above, and I'll go on a slight tangent. I dislike the "genius" and "gifted" labels because in the long run they're excuses why you're not one. "It's ok that he got a better salary - he's a genius!". With a "nature" argument, you don't have to think about the "nurture" argument - your actual skill. Then you can give up without being ashamed. 99% of the people you'll actually meet are averages with interests and luck to manifest their skills in the right way. And on the other hand, I've attended local Mensa chapter meetings to see first-hand that "geniuses" can in 99% of cases be just ordinary people with some special interests on which they may or may not capitalize. So - always value contextual knowledge, skill and effort, and encourage yourself and other people to develop. Because otherwise you just like to play the lottery and complain how the numbers are too random to your liking.
  - 411111111111111 6y ago
    Salary doesn't reflect skill level or worth to the company. It's at best correlated and shouldn't be part of this discussion.
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godelmachine 6y ago
What if I know I am below average? Seriously asking, after going through the post. There was a time I did fairly well but since more than a decade I have fallen behind my schoolmates.
sedeki 6y ago
I started thinking like this pretty early, and even further than that, refusing myself to "absorb"/think about positive feedback at all. I saw that as pure self-indulgence, with no actionable content whatsoever. I was very stubborn about it too, and I remember talking about it with people whenever someone called me smart or something similar... In my view, it is the first step towards Stoicism.
philh 6y ago
> So I decided to gamble on the opposite. Now I just assume I’m below average. > It serves me well. I listen more. I ask a lot of questions. I’ve stopped thinking others are stupid. I assume most people are smarter than me. > To assume you’re below average is to admit you’re still learning. You focus on what you need to improve, not your past accomplishments. I dunno, I'm not convinced this is what "assuming you're below average" really looks like. At least not all of it. When I think I'm below average I go along with decisions I disagree with; "that's not the strategy I'd go for but you're the person who actually knows our customers" or "that's not the architecture I'd implement but you have more experience with these things". When I think I'm above average, I'll push back harder. It would be nice to get everyone on the same page, ask questions until either I'm convinced or they are, but I don't think that's always realistic. What does Derek do in situations like that?
- depressedpanda 6y ago
  It's simple, at least in theory: Don't go along with decisions you disagree with until you've voiced your concerns and they have been addressed. Having valid concerns is orthogonal to whether someone is above or below average.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    That only works when both your ability to raise concerns is accurate enough to not just annoy everybody (at least half of your objections should have some merit), and also when everyone is working in good faith and will not see objections as a political attack. (If objections are seen as political attacks, then you should only raise them when a really serious problem comes up.)
  - philh 6y ago
    > It's simple, at least in theory: Don't go along with decisions you disagree with until you've voiced your concerns and they have been addressed. Depending how I read "go along", "disagree" and "addressed", I think this either doesn't help or is unrealistic. Like... suppose I say "this plan will run into scaling issues at some point" and the other person can say "that's true, but we don't know if we'll get enough usage for that to be a problem and in the meantime it lets us iterate quickly". I agree with this, but I still think we should go with the more robust thing up-front. How do I proceed? I could say that I'm not going to work on that plan until I'm convinced it's the best plan. But if everyone followed this advice, approximately nothing would ever get done. If you have a team implementing a feature or product, it's important that everyone is working in the same direction even if they don't all think it's the best direction to go. It's not realistic to expect unanimous agreement on what the best direction is, even if everyone sits down to discuss it calmly and sensibly for a few hours. Or I could say that my concerns have been addressed, and I go ahead and work on this plan. But why this plan, and not the plan that I prefer? There's a risk that we just go with the plan proposed first, or by the person who's most stubborn about liking theirs, or drawn at random from a hat. That seems bad too. I don't think there's a good way to proceed where I don't at least try to answer: which of us is more likely to have a good plan? And if I assume I'm below average when I'm not, I'm more likely to get the wrong answer to that question, and then bad decisions are more likely to get made. > Having valid concerns is orthogonal to whether someone is above or below average. The things that make me a better dev than I used to be, and a better dev than most people just starting out, certainly aren't orthogonal to my ability to have valid concerns and not-have invalid ones. If you simply mean that above-average people can have invalid concerns, and below-average people can have valid ones, then I agree but I don't know why you bring it up. I don't think I suggested otherwise.
justinlloyd 6y ago
I truly believe that I am very much below average in all aspects of my life, education, skillset, career, and income. That said, that still puts about 40% of the population on the left of the curve to me.
cryptica 6y ago
I was doing this early in my coding career, but after a certain point, I noticed that people kept making mistakes that I already made before and I didn't have the confidence to say anything because I assumed that they knew better and there was probably some other factor that I wasn't smart enough to see. Because of my passive attitude, everyone was getting promoted ahead of me at work and I was forced to code in a way that I knew was incorrect. Projects in my day job working in a bigger team moved at snails pace while my personal open source projects with only a couple of contributors progressed very quickly and the products were higher quality with fewer bugs (even though I had a lot less time to work on them). Now I've become extremely confident (inwardly) but I still struggle to assert myself (outwardly) so my new approach is to steer people towards my ideas in a way that they think it was their own ideas. If only I could have more money, I could afford to be more outwardly confident and I wouldn't have to resort to such pathetic manipulations. When you don't have money, people don't believe their own eyes when they see talent... People believe that money is a measurement of talent. It's even hard to believe your own talent. But beyond a certain point, after many years, you can't keep ignoring the results.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  > If only I could have more money, I could afford to be more outwardly confident and I wouldn't have to resort to such pathetic manipulations How would money make you more assertive? You can't buy assertiveness.
  - ahartmetz 6y ago
    It makes some sense if you look at money as "that's how the points are counted". Which I assume is a strong reason why many rich people want to get richer. But then you can't necessarily see how much money people own, only how much they spend...
  - cryptica 6y ago
    If others know that you have money, they're more likely to listen to you. But even if they don't know, money gives you an outward confidence boost because other people in your life who do know that you have money treat you better on average and they respond better to your assertions so this gives you more confidence to assert yourself to new people too and it becomes self-fulfilling.
agustif 6y ago
If the average is HN, I'm not even in the fucking graph. If the average is people I know it's a very different outcome though...
- czbond 6y ago
  I disagree a bit. Because some autist can code and remember special case algorithms, doesn't mean they can have a conversation with people, convince them of ideas, or participate in the world. In this example, one can say "thank you" to computer science because those individuals only fit into a few buckets they can perform well. I believe we all have 100 points we divvy up into a few buckets (eg: logic, emotional, social, spiritual, etc). Some people might look down at people perceived as "less smart" - yet they might have huge skills in intuition, feeling, social constructs.
  - jpttsn 6y ago
    believe we all have 100 points we divvy up into a few buckets What would account for this tremendous fairness? A benevolent God, who plays RPGs in his spare time?
    - czbond 6y ago
      Possibly. I believe God is a programmer and systems architect who wrote algorithms that control the bits (quarks/muons/atoms) to run the Universe.
      - agustif 6y ago
        Yep, the other day on HN there was a new about some const that ruled the universe... I imagined that number hardcoded in some virtual env instance of our current existence, like if this is code it makes 0 sense we're the only runtime right? It's probably parallelized too... And I don't know but if god has any sense of humor/curiosity he might tweak or poke with the different settings at each level to see how it affects everything? lol
deleted 6y ago
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hamilyon2 6y ago
Serious question: how to ask for a raise at work? How to negotiate salary in new places? Assuming you are below average.
- RMPR 6y ago
  As far as salary negotiation is concerned I found this article[0] very helpful in this regard 0: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
AntiImperialist 6y ago
In what metric? People choose metrices when they are describing themselves. So, if they think they are above average in certain metrices, they are probably right because they picked those metrices to value themsevles... and they chose to improve themselves in metrices that they value, based on their own value system. When other people judge, they judge others based on the value system they judge themselves by. So, it's others who are wrong. People have pretty good understanding of themselves.
jokoon 6y ago
It always felt awkward when people tell me I have high capacities, or any sort of similar compliment, because it never feels like I'm "good enough" or that I'm really able to materialize those pretended capacities into my real life. It leads to an awful feeling of "missing one's true calling". In the end, I did not acquire a significant amount of merit or status related to those capacities I heard people tell me. Rating oneself, evaluating oneself, comparing oneself to others is NEVER healthy. The universe doesn't care, society doesn't care, your relatives don't really care, it will not make you happier, and generally it won't make the world a better place. It's important to have humility, and avoid the reflexes of constantly having the thought of "what rank am I, do I reach my objectives, am I doing my part". It matters to do self introspection but it's not healthy to be afraid of natural selection because it leads to a social darwinist mindset, "eat or be eaten", which will always generate anxiety and fear. Civilized brains are able to focus on cooperation, not domination. Humans exited the food chain, so there's no need to act like animals in the wild.
- draw_down 6y ago
  I don’t agree it’s never healthy. No one is sui generis, we are all linked, and so observing others and comparing is necessary in order to see where you stand and to get better. It’s possible to know that others are better than you at something and not be bothered by it. Obsessing over where you stand and making that too high of a priority is unhealthy, I agree there.
- Balgair 6y ago
  > Rating oneself, evaluating oneself, comparing oneself to others is NEVER healthy. The universe doesn't care, society doesn't care, your relatives don't really care, it will not make you happier, and generally it won't make the world a better place. An old one I had heard (and am probably mis-remembering): "Life is not a True/False exam, it's not multiple choice, or short answer, or even an essay. Heck, in the end, it's only self-graded, and only if you feel like the bother."
  - vsareto 6y ago
    You do end up caring about the skill of people that affect your life. And they care about how you affect theirs. And if you're not a narcissist, you'll care when you affect someone's life negatively. In this way, we rate each other about how they affect our lives. This is important because the feedback generated is used to improve things. However, it should not be a terminal rating and re-evaluation should always be possible unless you commit very serious crimes.
Arun2009 6y ago
I once heard a lecture by Prof. Roy Baumeister of University of Queensland in which he described attempts to cure depression by improving the self-esteem of depressed individuals. The researchers thought that perhaps if the patients had a more accurate view of themselves, they would have a more positive mental state. Unfortunately, they found that it was the non-depressed individuals who had an inaccurate view of their abilities and station in life! The depressed individuals seemed to view themselves quite accurately. So apparently, a bias towards evaluating yourself more positively seemed to play a role in inculcating positive mental states. He said that instead of the much touted self-esteem, he now thought that perhaps we should focus on control and self-discipline. Overall an interesting idea, I thought.
- swiley 6y ago
  If you feel depressed buy a houseplant. Having something to take care of helps a surprising amount. I went through a really rough time last year and taking care of a plant I got at a friend's wedding helped me get through it.
  - jmt_ 6y ago
    I bought a houseplant during a depressive episode. I forgot about it for days at a time, because I was depressed, and it died. Having "something to care for" did nothing for me.
    - smichel17 6y ago
      My cat would never let me forget to feed her for a couple of hours, let alone days.
    - bonoboTP 6y ago
      Buy better plants. Or buy many and see which one survives your level of care. My plants can survive weeks and weeks without water and sometimes even sunlight. They don't look fancy and don't grow much but are sturdy and can bridge over gaps when I don't have the energy or mental space to care for them.
  - 6y ago
DeBraid 6y ago
> I'm just like everybody else man, an average playa with above average potential De La Soul -- The Grind Date https://genius.com/De-la-soul-the-grind-date-lyrics https://genius.com/De-la-soul-the-grind-date-lyrics
jonnypotty 6y ago
You are all different! I'm not.
ekanes 6y ago
Short, and worth a click. Favorite part: "Many people are so worried about looking good that they never do anything great... You destroy that paralysis when you think of yourself as just a student, and your current actions as just practice." In a sense, reducing the stakes allows you to make progress without being overwhelmed by, "what if it doesn't work?"
RMPR 6y ago
> Many people are so worried about doing something great that they never do anything at all. This resonates very well with me. I've come to learn that waiting for the "perfect moment" or the "perfect project" is just an utopia. Fail fast is the way to go.
fefe23 6y ago
This is great advice. Reminds me of another great advice for group communication: Assume zero knowledge and infinite intelligence. It is basically the same advice, just seen from the other direction, I think.
jpttsn 6y ago
My clock is broken; I better turn it upside down! Derek Sivers is clearly above average, and if this is posted in good faith it is an uncharacteristic dip below his average posts.
dcolkitt 6y ago
> Ninety-three percent of drivers say they are safer-than-average drivers. Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel prize for studying these types of cognitive biases, has a really good explanation for this. The human mind has a strong tendency to invisibly substitute hard questions for easy ones. When faced with a difficult question like "what are this company's future prospects?", we tend to subconsciously answer an easier question like "do the founders of this company appear competent and confident?" This, not arrogance, is the main reason why so many rate themselves as above average at common tasks. Truly ranking yourself is pretty cognitively difficult. You have to construct a mental model of the full range of driving ability in the population, then place yourself in it. So almost everybody substitutes the much easier question "am I good driver?" instead of "am I an above average driver?". And the reality is most driver, even those slightly below average are basically good drivers. In other skills though, where most people perceive themselves as not good, the effect is flipped. For example well over 50% of people will rate themselves as below average when you ask them about their ability to strike up a conversation with strangers.
- alain94040 6y ago
  Another cognitive bias at play is that people are bad at statistics. I'm a great driver. I make a mistake maybe once a year (and I apologize for it by waving my hand). Whereas every day on my commute to work, I see a bad driver doing something dangerous. Guess what, I drive by more than 365 cars on my commute, so my stats are actually no better than everyone else. But it feels like it.
  - Archelaos 6y ago
    Your numbers need to be adjusted: I reckon you are not observing the 365 cars during the whole time-span you are commuting.
    - leafmeal 6y ago
      I'm confused... why don't you believe they could drive past 365 cars during their commute?
deleted 6y ago
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alasdair_ 6y ago
I used to think exclusively like this. One danger with this approach is that you can easily spend too much time researching complete garbage like the latest Q Anon conspiracy theory, on the assumption that the people posting it have done more research and are smarter than you. See also anti-vax stuff, anti-mask stuff etc. Eventually you need to decide that some people are just willfully ignorant and not very clever.
analog31 6y ago
It's interesting that we can't even reliably rank ourselves most of the time. According to the research method of "ask Google and trust the first hit," the average driver has 4 accidents in their lifetime. Next, rule of thumb, square root of 4 is 2, so that's 4 plus or minus 2. So the real answer is not that we're above or below average, but that we don't know. (Unless you've already had 10 accidents or something like that). The quality of a professor, likewise.
sakoht 6y ago
There is a balancing factor. People tend to overestimate their skill and ability when risks are low, but underestimate them when they are high. An average person is pretty sure he/she can walk on a path that is 2' wide without error ....but if it crosses a lava pit, the instinct changes. Suddenly you don't have confidence, unless you are around lava pits all the time. Then a second complicating factor comes in: most people interpret egoic/social peril like physical peril. For most of human history being ostracized by the community meant death. So we are willing to believe whatever we can get away with in a social context ...but not more. And the winners of a social egoic competition benefit from this. Competitors self-limit. There is an illusion that confidence confers skill when what is actually happening is that a diminished ego has impeded basic functioning, and artificial self-estimation counteracts that somewhat. Even if you aren't in the top 10%, you may be able to solve the problem b/c the average person is impeded by an artificially diminished ego.
phendrenad2 6y ago
I'm definitely dumber than the average programmer, and the little that I've accomplished has been due to being highly analytical by nature, a strength I try to lean into. My lack of intelligence has really stifled my career growth, but I guess it's still a great career to be in.
tartoran 6y ago
I’ve been driving for 20 years and never had an accident. I’ve driven both motorcycle and cars. Comparativelty I drive smoothly and on the safe side and tend to avoid risky maneuvers because I am probably not the most able driver in that sense or at least I never venture to do things that could result in a bad outcome. I don’t consider myself a good driver in the sense of racing or anything which requires a certain skill but I wonder, if I continue driving for the rest of my life without an accident, would I beat the average?
jiraticketmach2 6y ago
Avoid this mentality when looking for a new job. You will end up working for peanuts and treated like a pawn while seeing the narcissistic wannabe getting payed with gold.
sm4rk0 6y ago
https://xkcd.com/1386/ https://xkcd.com/1386/
kthejoker2 6y ago
The seminal paper on achieving excellence without being "above average" - https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-mundanity-of-excellence-an-ethnographic-report-on-stratification-and-olympic-swimmers https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-mundanity-of-excellence-an-... Its key finding is that, because excellence and motivation are mundane, they key challenge is "psychologically maintaining mundanity even at the height of complex challenges" that is, still tying your shoes well before your Olympics heat, and smiling confidently and talking coolly during the Cuban missile crisis. So to me less about your self image and more about assuming the work itself requires no special talents to achieve; just good practices, practiced well.

376 points by enigmatic02 6y ago

Going hand in hand with this sentiment, I strive to feel I am not entitled to given end states, regardless of the effort I put in.

TheUndead96 6y ago
This also means that you do not need to feel guilty for good fortune.

oconnor663 6y ago

As with many things, this goes both ways. Some people are overconfident and need to practice humility. Other people are underconfident and need to take more risks. The trick is figuring which group you're in on any given day.

systemvoltage 6y ago
> this goes both ways. No. It goes one way more than the other. Did you read the article? Statistics the author references show that people are more overconfident than underconfident.
- watwut 6y ago
  People who start with unsupported conviction that they are good in tech, interact with tech a lot more. They over time really learn a lot and meantime end up blaming everything except themselves. But, people who start with conviction that they are not technical kind of person, never learn and just give up. Drivers who assume themselves to be bad drivers tend to drive very little or not at all and never improve. They are parallelized by fear, their assumption they cant do anything rubs on others who are in car with them who then start to give them advice - making situation worst. I have seen that dynamic a lot of times, because in my country it is quite frequent with women drivers. Not most women or something, but there is certain kind of woman who assumes own incapability and it is self-fullfiling prophecy.
- username90 6y ago
  90% thinking they are above average could still mean that almost 50% underestimates themselves. All it proves is that people who are less than mediocre rarely realizes it.
- odessacubbage 6y ago
  our sense of averages is also greatly skewed. if you are a degree bearing professional in a competitive field, the amount of time you spend measuring yourself against the 50th percentile and below is in all likelihood close to zero. you see this in review scores as well. there is a strong cultural bias towards the upper third, an album/ movie or game is often considered a critical failure if it scores a 7 or below even though that would, broadly speaking, mean it is better than average.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Average ≠ Mean (though not always). And average (or is that median?) score is pretty much 7/10 : https://www.polygon.com/2014/10/28/7083373/look-at-this-chart-of-average-metacritic-scores-what-happened-in-2007 https://www.polygon.com/2014/10/28/7083373/look-at-this-char...
lwhalen 6y ago
the days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations... Well, I have really good days

Dylan16807 6y ago

At what? At everything? I can point out things I'm clearly above average at, and things I'm clearly below average at. I can also point out areas where I have no idea, like driving. If I start assuming I'm below average as a baseline, when I wasn't assuming I was above average as a baseline, I'm pretty sure that will make me less accurate. Thinking about things as just practice is good advice but I don't see how it has any connection at all to whether my skill level is above or below average.

byecomputer 6y ago
I totally agree. The different and sometimes complex ways people are good at some things and bad at others is a reality that actually exists. The idea of playing mind games in order to act less self-important seems... kind of self-important. The context of it being sold as a new idea in a blog with the person's name at the top in capital letters doesn't help that perception. I think Socrates might have the jump on this guy's routine by a few years.

roenxi 6y ago

The illusion can be summed up in a single pithy phrase: "I remember everything, because I don't recall ever forgetting anything important". If we were aware of our mistakes, we wouldn't make most of them. So generally we will appear to be the only person doing nothing wrong in a sea of people who are constantly screwing up. People who fight against that illusion be creating safeguards around themselves and testing things they think are obvious have a chance of outperforming. Never underestimate the ability of someone to get amazing results simply by not making any obvious mistakes. All that doesn't explain the cancer patients though.

atoav 6y ago

Ithink it is always good to stay realistic. This could mean you are not as good as you think you are, but it could also mean that you are better than the average (e.g. most people on this site might be better with computers than the average of the world population). Assuming other people are idiots is never a good thing, even if it was true. I'd rather assume they have a bad day, or misunderstand what you mean because they dont have the same mental map unrolled in front of themselves as you have, and that can also be due to miscommunication. Whether someone really is an idiot will come to light through repetition.

lazyjones 6y ago
Exactly, we can all to some extent look at our outcomes and compare to see where we stand. It's what grades are for, after all. A humble attitude in a completely new environment isn't a bad start though.
- atoav 6y ago
  Grades can be misleading as well, because they don't necessarily signify that a person understood what they did, but that they managed to deliver within that grading system (e.g. by learning things by hard, by preparing for a very narrow topic, etc). Working in a very free university/art school (without grades and with little pressure), I often see people who had good grades before completely fall apart when nobody tells them what to do and how to do it. Grades are nice and all, but don't take it for given that they correlate to actual performance. Additionally there are field where this is even truer: how do you grade art? Will a gallerist buy your art because you had good grades in art school? Will a festival screen your film because your professors gave you the best grade? Grades should be taken with a grain of salt unless you know the system within which they were created very well and what these grades indicate. I think actual projects and experiences are worth more. If you e.g. mixed the sound for 10 movies and there are more people asking you to do it for them (and they are willing to pay), this might be a good indicator that you actually know what you are doing.
ahartmetz 6y ago
Yeah - are you below average compared to the average population or compared to the fantastic people that you might work with? The latter is more likely to be true or helpful to assume in any field in which you have survived for some time.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

"I know that I know nothing" -- Socratic paradox.

odessacubbage 6y ago

for the sake of a counterpoint: 'Talent- don't bother about whether or not you have it. Just assume that you do and then forget about it. talent is a word we use after someone has become accomplished. There is no way to detect it before the fact, or when someone is still grappling with the learning process. It is impossible to predict when or if mastery will click into place. Besides, the thing we label as talent is not a single ability. It is a complex mixture of motive, curiousity, receptivity, intelligence, sensitivity good teaching, perseverance, timing, sheer luck, and countless other things. If any part of it is genetic, God-given, the result of astrological fiddle-faddle, fate, or destiny, that part is not the sole determining factor, All the other ingredients must be present in the right combination- and no one knows the exact recipe. Therefore Dear Reader, don't waste time worrying about if you are talented- and don't blame any failures on the lack of it-that is really a cop out...' - Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting, Richard Schmid >https://imgur.com/a/XSMc1zh https://imgur.com/a/XSMc1zh

yarcob 6y ago
Thanks for this citation. I think it perfectly augments the article. I can do both: - assume that I am below average (don't underestimate others) - assume that I have talent (don't underestimate yourself)
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I have a few doublethink beliefs like this that I find quite useful. It feels like different modes of thinking for different situations.
ericmcer 6y ago
I dunno, if you look at untrained 6 year olds, some just are faster runners, have better hand eye coordination, etc. With 0 training. It’s always a balance between hard work and reasonable expectations.

anonytrary 6y ago

> To assume you’re below average is to admit you’re still learning The top physicist in the world deeply knows that he is still learning, but he also knows that he's above average. There are plenty of ways people get feedback in life that tells them that they're above average. I think the real advice is to not assume you're better than someone just because you're above average at X. That person is probably above average at Y. Thankfully, most people who are above average already know this.

garbagetime 6y ago
To assume you don't know everything is to admit you still have more to learn
- Balgair 6y ago
  It's a lot easier to realize that when you are on the bleeding edge, staring at a universe of unresolved questions ... and grant applications :P
khalilravanna 6y ago
Sure but why does it matter that one is above average? I can’t think of one situation that isn’t contrived that involves this piece of information. That physicist doesn’t need that info to do research or accomplish great things.
- morgancmartin 6y ago
  I've used that kind of information throughout my life as a marker to help me determine when it's time for me to move on to the next "stage" of development of my skill. It is similar in spirit to the quote (paraphrasing), "If you're the smartest person in the room, find another room", except substitute "smartest" with "highest skilled" perhaps. Essentially, I see it as a meta-indicator, a way of making decisions in situations where I don't have all of the information. Another way to look at it would be through the lens of game theory. Game theory is absolutely a field of some consequence, and it's all about relative positioning of agents in a system and their likely intentions after factoring in the likely intentions of their peers. In a word, you might describe this type of analysis as simply, "wisdom." I find it to be of particular value in entrepreneurship.

keithnz 6y ago

Assume nothing! If, for some reason, it is important to get an accurate gauge of how you rank compared to others, then find engage some kind of assessment that will determine that. If that's not viable, then it probably isn't important to know (often when it is viable it also isn't important to know also).

bArray 6y ago

I think this is generally not such a great idea, quite a few things end up getting achieved because somebody is punching above their station. I think you learn the most when you steam train into something and get stuck - then figure out how to get out of it. In general, I think it would be better to assume that you're not more intelligent than the person you are speaking to (at least on a particular subject) and that you may not be the smartest person in the room. That's not to say you are below average, but that there is still something you can learn from at least one person in your company.

runawaybottle 6y ago
I’d say both shifts in mindset is a tactical decision. Sometimes you really need to have faith in yourself to achieve something. Sometimes you need to remove your ego to sustain something. Every situation is different, but I would agree one should not give up tactical options in the greater strategic battle of coping with life and the onslaught of dealing with people.
- Flex247A 6y ago
  I for example, have problem maintaining a balance. Is there really a way of doing this better?
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    Practice. Relinquish a belief and deal with the fallout (internally with the psychological hit to the ego, modulate the impact it has on you), then strive for something that may or may not be achievable (and modulate again, not letting the attainment be your everything, and not letting failure be overly impactful). It’s tough when you’re insecure because your primary mental fortification is an inflated ego. Just get used to (practicing) inflating and deflating the ego (ideally just keeping it half filled with air) so you literally are not a zero-self-esteem mess out there in the world. If you have no practice with this, every time life gives you an opportunity or challenge, you’ll make judgement mistakes.

kstenerud 6y ago

Not only no, but fuck no. When you have talent, it is your duty and responsibility to hone it and care for it. You have a gift; to squander it in a misguided attempt at humility or fear of trying is the worst sin you could commit. Stop listening to what other people have to say about where you should go and what you should do; their reasons are either selfish or fearful. Only you are sufficient judge of what is your true potential, and that only comes through the continuous experience of discovery and trying. Become your potential, because you're the only one who will ever care enough. This advice will be downvoted to oblivion because very few people can understand it, but I implore you to at least TRY it, take a chance on yourself. SURVIVE and THRIVE!

mym1990 6y ago
Not sure you even read the piece. OP doesn’t link assuming that you’re below average with being below average, but rather being more humble in the way we approach other people and other activities. And by the way, I’m curious who bestows this “duty” and “responsibility” to care and hone one’s “talents”? You obviously come off as thinking you have at least one...
- kstenerud 6y ago
  The piece starts by running off statistics about everyone who has been wrong about being exceptional. Basically "Don't bother; by all wagers you're at best average." It then settles into the comfortable safety of "I'll just assume I'm average." No guts, no glory. Even worse, those statistics are basically about believing without evidence. Talents produce evidence when exercised (provided you're ready to recognize them). If something comes easier to you, you focus and push harder, seeing how far it can go. But you have to believe that you can or else you won't put your full weight behind it. Man's greatest asset and his greatest enemy is his mindset. The lucky talented just know in their bones that they are. For the rest, your mindset determines the success of your talents, and that mindset takes work to maintain.
yarcob 6y ago
If you have a talent, you can do with it whatever you want. There is no such thing as squandering your talent. People always told me: "You're so good at maths, you have to go into research. Your talent would be wasted as a middle school teacher." But then it turned out that I hated research. I work as a programmer now, a profession that I do enjoy, but it's so mundane. I wonder where I would have ended up if people hadn't discouraged me from becoming a teacher. I'm slightly jealous of people who get to work with curious kids every day.

tutfbhuf 6y ago

I think if it's important to you then don't assume, measure it. Ask your students, colleagues, partners where you could improve and see where you are already good at (above avg).

thrower 6y ago

The mistake or cognitive error people make is that the potential of an average human is actually extraordinarily high. Being “average” is in itself more than enough to achieve close to anything. Compare the human brain to anything currently in existence, and it should begin to dawn on you that we basically carry around a low energy power efficient supercomputer inside our heads.

mkl95 6y ago

Imo this is not good advice for junior software engineers that work for a startup. The truth is most project managers and technical leaders at startups are happy with the quality of their codebases being way below the industry average. Most senior and mid-level engineers are well aware of this fact, but they avoid bringing it up due to workplace politics and how awkward it is. This leads junior engineers to think they are just learning what to do, while the truth is that they are learning what NOT to do as well.

watwut 6y ago
How confident you come across is huge part of how others see you. Especially in chaotic environments where leader is not even in position to look closely at your work. If you really overdone it while producing complete crap or stop learning because of it, then yes, it harm you. But in most situations, very confident people do better then humble people of exact same capabilities. Especially in startups and such.

BlanketLogic 6y ago

Does it really matter though? Does it matter if I am above average or below average? I am as good as the last product I built, last library I wrote, the last game I played. I will have to see if I can improve and move on. Looking at one's standing on some world wide leader board is largely irrelevant outside of duolingo, imho.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
It doesn't really, but what does matter is whether you FEEL like you are. The software industry (and broader, the whole STEM industry) is full of people who are kinda full of themselves, and people are being TOLD that they are above average, that they SHOULD be above average, that they should be or strive to be a mythical 10x developer, a thoughtleader, that they should be writing blogposts and appear on stage, organize and attend meetups, create and maintain open source software, read books and papers, etc etc etc. And those that don't are silently shamed or shunned, looked down on by those who do (or say that they do; in practice / what I've seen is that that energy they have lasts for only a few years, after which they either settle down in family life, end up in burnout, or both). It's a toxic culture, one that isn't actively pushed by any one individual or organization, but one that is prevalent and normalized throughout the industry. The SF bubble is even worse, where you're considered cool if you do 24 hour hackathons, work nights, sleep in overpriced bunk beds in hacker homes so you can hop back on your tech five seconds after waking up. Anyway sorry, I had a rant brewing, it's not specific to your comment. Speaking for yourself, while I will acknowledge I'm probably better at my job than a lot of people, I also suffer from impostor syndrome, from not being good, fast, ambitious, productive or smart enough. I've thankfully gotten out of a "rat race" organization (consultancy, yay) and I've settled down in a job where I have both responsibility, time and space to do my own thing, pick my own tools and tech. In that job, I can decide on my own technology choices without having to compete with egos and trends. I can sit down and think about, write down the tech choices, instead of landing in an assignment where the decisions have already been made, or where they're made in a 15 minute meeting where the loudest or most impatient guy decides without any deliberation or paperwork. I am a lot more confident that the software I write now will last for longer, whereas other jobs I've had, code I've written would likely go quickly to subsistence / maintenance mode, then a full rewrite by the next generation of energetic hipsters because the existing stuff is unsalvageable, because the previous generation of energetic hipsters got bored and the opportunity to start something new (which they prefer to do every 6-12 months). I should probably write an angry rant blogpost about this, ironically.

docsaintly 6y ago

I assumed for years that I was average and it led to endless frustration: If I'm average, then it means most people should be able to do what I do. So if they don't then it means they are lazy. I agree with the other comments here: assume nothing. Each person (and situation) is a case-by-case basis.

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ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago

I do not assume I'm better than any body of you until I hear you talking about things... friendly yours.

heopd 6y ago

He's certainly above average in thinking he is below average.

qwerty456127 6y ago

Being above/below average doesn't necessarily imply not being also the opposite. There are different aspects in everything you can measure yourself by. You can be slightly more stupid than others (e.g. I don't think I can score at a whiteboard interview, I never am the first one to solve a puzzle) but the fact you are actively aware of that, accept that (but don't give up) and take that in conscious account already makes you superior to others in some very important aspects. Also, being above average doesn't mean stopping improving, it means your can improve better and easier so you probably should.

dang 6y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480002

egsmi 6y ago

"Ninety percent of students think they are more intelligent than the average student." Does anyone know which study this came from? I was trying to figure out exactly how the survey question was worded because this statistic seems somewhat amazing to me. The driving one I get because drivers are not being routinely graded, but students are. I googled the phrase and I basically got related quotes, this article (from 2010), and a couple of studies that came after this article was posted, and they were mostly looking at gender differences in preceived intelligence and after a quick glance, didn't seem to support this statement.

TheOperator 6y ago
I've been routinely graded WORSE than the average student and believe this rather confidently. An impression I get from having had teachers yell at me in the hallway about wasted potential and other students cracking jokes about how my friends had "ruined me" after my grades fell off a cliff after making some new ones. Grading doesn't prevent inflated delusions of intellectual superiority if people believe grades are a matter of hard work rather than intelligence. What drove a sense of inferiority for me was somebody getting better grades with seemingly less effort.
- egsmi 6y ago
  I understand your point and, as I am sure you know, life can definitely be unfair. Do you think it's so unfair that 90% of students would feel the same way? It's not impossible but personally, I would be surprised by that. Which is the point. Experiences vary dramatically, especially if we broaden the statement internationally, so knowing who was asked what is just as important as the claim.
  - TheOperator 6y ago
    I don't see it as unfairness, college mostly gatekeeper business and academia and raw brainpower isn't what you should be selecting for. At least not in isolation. I do agree the 90% claim seems dubious especially unsourced.

CGamesPlay 6y ago

I think you can view this advice in a negative light or a positive light. If you interpret it as "my maximum is lower than other people's" then it will naturally lead to worse outcomes. I believe the author intended it as "my current progress is less than my peers". This outlook can encourage you to work harder to accomplish the thing that you want and be more open to new strategies, if you earnestly believe that other people might have better strategies than you. (Note, this blog post was written in 2010.)

KMag 6y ago

It's probably better to assume you might be wrong than to assume your abilities/understanding are below average in some area. To assume you're below average in some aspect when you're not also causes problems in interacting with others. ("This is easy because I find it easy and I'm below average. Anyone with a high school education probably has a functioning knowledge of linear algebra and differential equations.") It's absolutely true that you might be wrong, and your decision making and behavior should take that into account, regardless of your abilities relative to others. My general rule is to assume I'm missing something or could be wrong. For instance, I was skiing with my dad this February. He said he didn't have his milt-resort pass with him, but it sure looked to me like it was attached to his arm. So, I asked him if the thing on his arm could get him what he needed, instead of flat-out telling him he was wrong. For all I knew, it was some expired single-day pass from the previous season, but it could have been some kind of membership ID that was still useful in our situation. It turned out he had forgotten that his multi-resort pass was on his arm, but my response was less confrontational and more focused on cooperatively reaching the goal.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

notagoodidea 6y ago

It is never about how you perceive your self vs the crowd, it is always about how you fit in your team and microcosm. Evaluating yourself vs the biased projected skills or knowledge of your equivalent in your field is just a way to give you a tap on the back and saying "You are right, you're the smart one in the room" aka living in your own echo chamber. I have always struggle to evaluate myself and deal with the impostor syndrome because I tend to be a generalist dropped in team of specialist acting as a bridge. Am I less knowledgeable that those specialists in their field? Yes but they lack the skills to understand deeply each other and communicate clearly their needs. I was the average finally between them and nobody was doing the same kind of role around me to compare with. Learning is a mindset that is not equivalent to how you can have self-assurance. It is the ability to keep an open mindset to enrich the set of ways to approach your field. If you restrain yourself to only one hammer, you would be above the average smashing all the nails of the world with it finally. You will just not learn anything after a time twisting your hammer to fit every nails.

ozim 6y ago

Could it be selection bias? No one is doing polls on 100% of people. Maybe people who respond in those kind of polls are better than average or they want to be better than average. There is a lot of people who don't care about polls and won't answer them.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

The author, himself, seems to be a pretty interesting chap. There’s many axes to these graphs, and we constantly try to boil it down to simple 2-axis plots. For example, there’s smart, then there’s driven. I have worked with many very intelligent folks that fall to pieces, when unpredictable things happen, or when presented with challenging conundrums. I knew someone who was definitely not a gifted, intelligent person, and was quite aware of that. I won’t go into his story, but he had a lot of personal challenges that most folks would consider “showstoppers.” It would have been quite easy to throw in the towel, and give up on a future. He did not. He worked hard, for many years, and refused to let the attacks and sneers stop him. He pursued education in the IT field, after his original vocation was eaten by new tech. He was the oldest (and, likely, most-tattooed) person in his classes. He ended up working at one of the most prestigious labs in the world, and was obviously valued by his employers. He worked there for a decade, before his unexpected death, earlier this year. If people here knew of the particular challenges this person faced (not my story to tell), I guarantee that mandibles would be hitting the floor. He was definitely below average in many ways, but above average in other, very important, ways. No matter how much we have on the ball, we all have weaknesses, which will never be addressed, if we refuse to see them, and we often have strengths that we may never know, until the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.

Guthur 6y ago

I feel this is just a more negative version of always aim to surround yourself we people smarter than you.

blauditore 6y ago

Well, technically it's possible that any percentage is above average - just not above median.

nazgulnarsil 6y ago

This seems like a sad result of a society that places no faith in quantitative methods because such faith has been abused to the point of breaking again and again.

nicbou 6y ago

We should distinguish having above average mental faculty, and above average skills. I vastly overestimated the impact of the former until university. Engineering classes kicked everyone's asses. Everyone was equally smart, but some people studied harder than others. On the other hand, I know I am well above average at certain things because I've been doing them for many years. I have an above average interest in those things, and put an above average effort into learning them. This is also true for other people. My dad is an average dad, until you ask him about cars or motorbikes. I knew he liked cars, but I didn't get to appreciate the breadth and depth of his knowledge until I started wrenching on vehicles. He spared me the details out of politeness, because I wasn't into cars. Now, he doesn't spare me, and it turns out he's a mechanical grandwizard. It was right under my nose this whole time. I suspect most people are like that. They are average, except at one or two things. We tend to judge others based on the one or two things we value, and fail to appreciate them for what they're good at.

code_scrapping 6y ago
I agree with all above, and I'll go on a slight tangent. I dislike the "genius" and "gifted" labels because in the long run they're excuses why you're not one. "It's ok that he got a better salary - he's a genius!". With a "nature" argument, you don't have to think about the "nurture" argument - your actual skill. Then you can give up without being ashamed. 99% of the people you'll actually meet are averages with interests and luck to manifest their skills in the right way. And on the other hand, I've attended local Mensa chapter meetings to see first-hand that "geniuses" can in 99% of cases be just ordinary people with some special interests on which they may or may not capitalize. So - always value contextual knowledge, skill and effort, and encourage yourself and other people to develop. Because otherwise you just like to play the lottery and complain how the numbers are too random to your liking.
- 411111111111111 6y ago
  Salary doesn't reflect skill level or worth to the company. It's at best correlated and shouldn't be part of this discussion.

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godelmachine 6y ago

What if I know I am below average? Seriously asking, after going through the post. There was a time I did fairly well but since more than a decade I have fallen behind my schoolmates.

sedeki 6y ago

I started thinking like this pretty early, and even further than that, refusing myself to "absorb"/think about positive feedback at all. I saw that as pure self-indulgence, with no actionable content whatsoever. I was very stubborn about it too, and I remember talking about it with people whenever someone called me smart or something similar... In my view, it is the first step towards Stoicism.

philh 6y ago

> So I decided to gamble on the opposite. Now I just assume I’m below average. > It serves me well. I listen more. I ask a lot of questions. I’ve stopped thinking others are stupid. I assume most people are smarter than me. > To assume you’re below average is to admit you’re still learning. You focus on what you need to improve, not your past accomplishments. I dunno, I'm not convinced this is what "assuming you're below average" really looks like. At least not all of it. When I think I'm below average I go along with decisions I disagree with; "that's not the strategy I'd go for but you're the person who actually knows our customers" or "that's not the architecture I'd implement but you have more experience with these things". When I think I'm above average, I'll push back harder. It would be nice to get everyone on the same page, ask questions until either I'm convinced or they are, but I don't think that's always realistic. What does Derek do in situations like that?

depressedpanda 6y ago
It's simple, at least in theory: Don't go along with decisions you disagree with until you've voiced your concerns and they have been addressed. Having valid concerns is orthogonal to whether someone is above or below average.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  That only works when both your ability to raise concerns is accurate enough to not just annoy everybody (at least half of your objections should have some merit), and also when everyone is working in good faith and will not see objections as a political attack. (If objections are seen as political attacks, then you should only raise them when a really serious problem comes up.)
- philh 6y ago
  > It's simple, at least in theory: Don't go along with decisions you disagree with until you've voiced your concerns and they have been addressed. Depending how I read "go along", "disagree" and "addressed", I think this either doesn't help or is unrealistic. Like... suppose I say "this plan will run into scaling issues at some point" and the other person can say "that's true, but we don't know if we'll get enough usage for that to be a problem and in the meantime it lets us iterate quickly". I agree with this, but I still think we should go with the more robust thing up-front. How do I proceed? I could say that I'm not going to work on that plan until I'm convinced it's the best plan. But if everyone followed this advice, approximately nothing would ever get done. If you have a team implementing a feature or product, it's important that everyone is working in the same direction even if they don't all think it's the best direction to go. It's not realistic to expect unanimous agreement on what the best direction is, even if everyone sits down to discuss it calmly and sensibly for a few hours. Or I could say that my concerns have been addressed, and I go ahead and work on this plan. But why this plan, and not the plan that I prefer? There's a risk that we just go with the plan proposed first, or by the person who's most stubborn about liking theirs, or drawn at random from a hat. That seems bad too. I don't think there's a good way to proceed where I don't at least try to answer: which of us is more likely to have a good plan? And if I assume I'm below average when I'm not, I'm more likely to get the wrong answer to that question, and then bad decisions are more likely to get made. > Having valid concerns is orthogonal to whether someone is above or below average. The things that make me a better dev than I used to be, and a better dev than most people just starting out, certainly aren't orthogonal to my ability to have valid concerns and not-have invalid ones. If you simply mean that above-average people can have invalid concerns, and below-average people can have valid ones, then I agree but I don't know why you bring it up. I don't think I suggested otherwise.

justinlloyd 6y ago

I truly believe that I am very much below average in all aspects of my life, education, skillset, career, and income. That said, that still puts about 40% of the population on the left of the curve to me.

cryptica 6y ago

I was doing this early in my coding career, but after a certain point, I noticed that people kept making mistakes that I already made before and I didn't have the confidence to say anything because I assumed that they knew better and there was probably some other factor that I wasn't smart enough to see. Because of my passive attitude, everyone was getting promoted ahead of me at work and I was forced to code in a way that I knew was incorrect. Projects in my day job working in a bigger team moved at snails pace while my personal open source projects with only a couple of contributors progressed very quickly and the products were higher quality with fewer bugs (even though I had a lot less time to work on them). Now I've become extremely confident (inwardly) but I still struggle to assert myself (outwardly) so my new approach is to steer people towards my ideas in a way that they think it was their own ideas. If only I could have more money, I could afford to be more outwardly confident and I wouldn't have to resort to such pathetic manipulations. When you don't have money, people don't believe their own eyes when they see talent... People believe that money is a measurement of talent. It's even hard to believe your own talent. But beyond a certain point, after many years, you can't keep ignoring the results.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
> If only I could have more money, I could afford to be more outwardly confident and I wouldn't have to resort to such pathetic manipulations How would money make you more assertive? You can't buy assertiveness.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  It makes some sense if you look at money as "that's how the points are counted". Which I assume is a strong reason why many rich people want to get richer. But then you can't necessarily see how much money people own, only how much they spend...
- cryptica 6y ago
  If others know that you have money, they're more likely to listen to you. But even if they don't know, money gives you an outward confidence boost because other people in your life who do know that you have money treat you better on average and they respond better to your assertions so this gives you more confidence to assert yourself to new people too and it becomes self-fulfilling.

agustif 6y ago

If the average is HN, I'm not even in the fucking graph. If the average is people I know it's a very different outcome though...

czbond 6y ago
I disagree a bit. Because some autist can code and remember special case algorithms, doesn't mean they can have a conversation with people, convince them of ideas, or participate in the world. In this example, one can say "thank you" to computer science because those individuals only fit into a few buckets they can perform well. I believe we all have 100 points we divvy up into a few buckets (eg: logic, emotional, social, spiritual, etc). Some people might look down at people perceived as "less smart" - yet they might have huge skills in intuition, feeling, social constructs.
- jpttsn 6y ago
  believe we all have 100 points we divvy up into a few buckets What would account for this tremendous fairness? A benevolent God, who plays RPGs in his spare time?
  - czbond 6y ago
    Possibly. I believe God is a programmer and systems architect who wrote algorithms that control the bits (quarks/muons/atoms) to run the Universe.
    - agustif 6y ago
      Yep, the other day on HN there was a new about some const that ruled the universe... I imagined that number hardcoded in some virtual env instance of our current existence, like if this is code it makes 0 sense we're the only runtime right? It's probably parallelized too... And I don't know but if god has any sense of humor/curiosity he might tweak or poke with the different settings at each level to see how it affects everything? lol

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hamilyon2 6y ago

Serious question: how to ask for a raise at work? How to negotiate salary in new places? Assuming you are below average.

RMPR 6y ago
As far as salary negotiation is concerned I found this article[0] very helpful in this regard 0: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

AntiImperialist 6y ago

In what metric? People choose metrices when they are describing themselves. So, if they think they are above average in certain metrices, they are probably right because they picked those metrices to value themsevles... and they chose to improve themselves in metrices that they value, based on their own value system. When other people judge, they judge others based on the value system they judge themselves by. So, it's others who are wrong. People have pretty good understanding of themselves.

jokoon 6y ago

It always felt awkward when people tell me I have high capacities, or any sort of similar compliment, because it never feels like I'm "good enough" or that I'm really able to materialize those pretended capacities into my real life. It leads to an awful feeling of "missing one's true calling". In the end, I did not acquire a significant amount of merit or status related to those capacities I heard people tell me. Rating oneself, evaluating oneself, comparing oneself to others is NEVER healthy. The universe doesn't care, society doesn't care, your relatives don't really care, it will not make you happier, and generally it won't make the world a better place. It's important to have humility, and avoid the reflexes of constantly having the thought of "what rank am I, do I reach my objectives, am I doing my part". It matters to do self introspection but it's not healthy to be afraid of natural selection because it leads to a social darwinist mindset, "eat or be eaten", which will always generate anxiety and fear. Civilized brains are able to focus on cooperation, not domination. Humans exited the food chain, so there's no need to act like animals in the wild.

draw_down 6y ago
I don’t agree it’s never healthy. No one is sui generis, we are all linked, and so observing others and comparing is necessary in order to see where you stand and to get better. It’s possible to know that others are better than you at something and not be bothered by it. Obsessing over where you stand and making that too high of a priority is unhealthy, I agree there.
Balgair 6y ago
> Rating oneself, evaluating oneself, comparing oneself to others is NEVER healthy. The universe doesn't care, society doesn't care, your relatives don't really care, it will not make you happier, and generally it won't make the world a better place. An old one I had heard (and am probably mis-remembering): "Life is not a True/False exam, it's not multiple choice, or short answer, or even an essay. Heck, in the end, it's only self-graded, and only if you feel like the bother."
- vsareto 6y ago
  You do end up caring about the skill of people that affect your life. And they care about how you affect theirs. And if you're not a narcissist, you'll care when you affect someone's life negatively. In this way, we rate each other about how they affect our lives. This is important because the feedback generated is used to improve things. However, it should not be a terminal rating and re-evaluation should always be possible unless you commit very serious crimes.

Arun2009 6y ago

I once heard a lecture by Prof. Roy Baumeister of University of Queensland in which he described attempts to cure depression by improving the self-esteem of depressed individuals. The researchers thought that perhaps if the patients had a more accurate view of themselves, they would have a more positive mental state. Unfortunately, they found that it was the non-depressed individuals who had an inaccurate view of their abilities and station in life! The depressed individuals seemed to view themselves quite accurately. So apparently, a bias towards evaluating yourself more positively seemed to play a role in inculcating positive mental states. He said that instead of the much touted self-esteem, he now thought that perhaps we should focus on control and self-discipline. Overall an interesting idea, I thought.

swiley 6y ago
If you feel depressed buy a houseplant. Having something to take care of helps a surprising amount. I went through a really rough time last year and taking care of a plant I got at a friend's wedding helped me get through it.
- jmt_ 6y ago
  I bought a houseplant during a depressive episode. I forgot about it for days at a time, because I was depressed, and it died. Having "something to care for" did nothing for me.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    My cat would never let me forget to feed her for a couple of hours, let alone days.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Buy better plants. Or buy many and see which one survives your level of care. My plants can survive weeks and weeks without water and sometimes even sunlight. They don't look fancy and don't grow much but are sturdy and can bridge over gaps when I don't have the energy or mental space to care for them.
- 6y ago

DeBraid 6y ago

> I'm just like everybody else man, an average playa with above average potential De La Soul -- The Grind Date https://genius.com/De-la-soul-the-grind-date-lyrics https://genius.com/De-la-soul-the-grind-date-lyrics

jonnypotty 6y ago

You are all different! I'm not.

ekanes 6y ago

Short, and worth a click. Favorite part: "Many people are so worried about looking good that they never do anything great... You destroy that paralysis when you think of yourself as just a student, and your current actions as just practice." In a sense, reducing the stakes allows you to make progress without being overwhelmed by, "what if it doesn't work?"

RMPR 6y ago

> Many people are so worried about doing something great that they never do anything at all. This resonates very well with me. I've come to learn that waiting for the "perfect moment" or the "perfect project" is just an utopia. Fail fast is the way to go.

fefe23 6y ago

This is great advice. Reminds me of another great advice for group communication: Assume zero knowledge and infinite intelligence. It is basically the same advice, just seen from the other direction, I think.

jpttsn 6y ago

My clock is broken; I better turn it upside down! Derek Sivers is clearly above average, and if this is posted in good faith it is an uncharacteristic dip below his average posts.

dcolkitt 6y ago

> Ninety-three percent of drivers say they are safer-than-average drivers. Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel prize for studying these types of cognitive biases, has a really good explanation for this. The human mind has a strong tendency to invisibly substitute hard questions for easy ones. When faced with a difficult question like "what are this company's future prospects?", we tend to subconsciously answer an easier question like "do the founders of this company appear competent and confident?" This, not arrogance, is the main reason why so many rate themselves as above average at common tasks. Truly ranking yourself is pretty cognitively difficult. You have to construct a mental model of the full range of driving ability in the population, then place yourself in it. So almost everybody substitutes the much easier question "am I good driver?" instead of "am I an above average driver?". And the reality is most driver, even those slightly below average are basically good drivers. In other skills though, where most people perceive themselves as not good, the effect is flipped. For example well over 50% of people will rate themselves as below average when you ask them about their ability to strike up a conversation with strangers.

alain94040 6y ago
Another cognitive bias at play is that people are bad at statistics. I'm a great driver. I make a mistake maybe once a year (and I apologize for it by waving my hand). Whereas every day on my commute to work, I see a bad driver doing something dangerous. Guess what, I drive by more than 365 cars on my commute, so my stats are actually no better than everyone else. But it feels like it.
- Archelaos 6y ago
  Your numbers need to be adjusted: I reckon you are not observing the 365 cars during the whole time-span you are commuting.
  - leafmeal 6y ago
    I'm confused... why don't you believe they could drive past 365 cars during their commute?

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alasdair_ 6y ago

I used to think exclusively like this. One danger with this approach is that you can easily spend too much time researching complete garbage like the latest Q Anon conspiracy theory, on the assumption that the people posting it have done more research and are smarter than you. See also anti-vax stuff, anti-mask stuff etc. Eventually you need to decide that some people are just willfully ignorant and not very clever.

analog31 6y ago

It's interesting that we can't even reliably rank ourselves most of the time. According to the research method of "ask Google and trust the first hit," the average driver has 4 accidents in their lifetime. Next, rule of thumb, square root of 4 is 2, so that's 4 plus or minus 2. So the real answer is not that we're above or below average, but that we don't know. (Unless you've already had 10 accidents or something like that). The quality of a professor, likewise.

sakoht 6y ago

There is a balancing factor. People tend to overestimate their skill and ability when risks are low, but underestimate them when they are high. An average person is pretty sure he/she can walk on a path that is 2' wide without error ....but if it crosses a lava pit, the instinct changes. Suddenly you don't have confidence, unless you are around lava pits all the time. Then a second complicating factor comes in: most people interpret egoic/social peril like physical peril. For most of human history being ostracized by the community meant death. So we are willing to believe whatever we can get away with in a social context ...but not more. And the winners of a social egoic competition benefit from this. Competitors self-limit. There is an illusion that confidence confers skill when what is actually happening is that a diminished ego has impeded basic functioning, and artificial self-estimation counteracts that somewhat. Even if you aren't in the top 10%, you may be able to solve the problem b/c the average person is impeded by an artificially diminished ego.

phendrenad2 6y ago

I'm definitely dumber than the average programmer, and the little that I've accomplished has been due to being highly analytical by nature, a strength I try to lean into. My lack of intelligence has really stifled my career growth, but I guess it's still a great career to be in.

tartoran 6y ago

I’ve been driving for 20 years and never had an accident. I’ve driven both motorcycle and cars. Comparativelty I drive smoothly and on the safe side and tend to avoid risky maneuvers because I am probably not the most able driver in that sense or at least I never venture to do things that could result in a bad outcome. I don’t consider myself a good driver in the sense of racing or anything which requires a certain skill but I wonder, if I continue driving for the rest of my life without an accident, would I beat the average?

jiraticketmach2 6y ago

Avoid this mentality when looking for a new job. You will end up working for peanuts and treated like a pawn while seeing the narcissistic wannabe getting payed with gold.

sm4rk0 6y ago

https://xkcd.com/1386/ https://xkcd.com/1386/

kthejoker2 6y ago

The seminal paper on achieving excellence without being "above average" - https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-mundanity-of-excellence-an-ethnographic-report-on-stratification-and-olympic-swimmers https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-mundanity-of-excellence-an-... Its key finding is that, because excellence and motivation are mundane, they key challenge is "psychologically maintaining mundanity even at the height of complex challenges" that is, still tying your shoes well before your Olympics heat, and smiling confidently and talking coolly during the Cuban missile crisis. So to me less about your self image and more about assuming the work itself requires no special talents to achieve; just good practices, practiced well.