3 ms·

Smart people have a tendency to think that their intelligence is enough to figure out anything. Turns out it's basically impossible to have an original thought

Smart people have a tendency to think that their intelligence is enough to figure out anything. Turns out it's basically impossible to have an original thought in most fields without first getting caught up. Actually, now that I think about this, I'd extend it to just about everyone, not just academics/engineers/etc. Imagine two people working on a plumbing problem. An hour into it, Bob waltzes in, looks at it, and says, "did you try __?" The two people who have actually been working on it roll their eyes and mutter, "yes, Bob, we've been working on it." Sometimes Bob will get lucky and notice something they didn't, because they're too deep in the weeds, but I think people dramatically overestimate how likely this is.

cecilpl2 6y ago
It's important to recognize this tendency in everyone. When I have the instinct to say something like that, I switch gears and recognize that I'm not helping - I'm actively asking them to stop working on the problem and get me caught up. Usually the only time I'm actually helpful in situations like that is if I have esoteric knowledge or experience that is uncommon and directly related to the problem at hand - "Oh, I ran into this 3 years ago, here's what we did to solve it". Your peers have already tried the obvious things. Another rule of thumb to notice when this is happening is the word just. "Why don't you just..." is a belittling thing to say, as if they hadn't already thought of the obvious. Better is "why didn't X work"?
lostmsu 6y ago
On the other hand smart people tend to avoid simple solutions to "hard" problems, that reduce their ego to a mechanical process. For instance, I don't see a good reason why having consciousness of X is in any way fundamentally different, than having an ability to play StarCraft at MMR Y this instant in time. IMHO, conceptually they are the same and the only difference is the game being measured.

cecilpl2 6y ago

It's important to recognize this tendency in everyone. When I have the instinct to say something like that, I switch gears and recognize that I'm not helping - I'm actively asking them to stop working on the problem and get me caught up. Usually the only time I'm actually helpful in situations like that is if I have esoteric knowledge or experience that is uncommon and directly related to the problem at hand - "Oh, I ran into this 3 years ago, here's what we did to solve it". Your peers have already tried the obvious things. Another rule of thumb to notice when this is happening is the word just. "Why don't you just..." is a belittling thing to say, as if they hadn't already thought of the obvious. Better is "why didn't X work"?

lostmsu 6y ago

On the other hand smart people tend to avoid simple solutions to "hard" problems, that reduce their ego to a mechanical process. For instance, I don't see a good reason why having consciousness of X is in any way fundamentally different, than having an ability to play StarCraft at MMR Y this instant in time. IMHO, conceptually they are the same and the only difference is the game being measured.