51 ms·

Willingness to look stupid

• krumbie 5y ago
  I've experienced it many times how intimidating it can be to ask about things in a new workplace that seem to be commonplace there. Especially in the US, where abbreviations are used for a ridiculous number of things. You just can't break through this barrier if you don't ask what people mean, and it gets worse over time if you avoid it for fear of seeming dumb.
• neilwilson 5y ago
  One of the great advantages of having a Northern English accent is that people automatically assume I'm stupid because of how I sound. And that's very often to great advantage when you're trying to discover something about a system that people would rather not reveal.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• amelius 5y ago
  “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute; the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” ― Confucius
• hyperbovine 5y ago
  In grad school, there was a certain well-known, extremely-senior-in-the-field professor who would show up to seminars and ask pointedly basic and naive-sounding questions (some might call them stupid). A lot of these questions were actually somewhat penetrating, and had an occasionally entertaining effect on the speaker. I learned much from this professor.
• caned 5y ago
  It seems telling that this post has struck such a nerve within the HN community. I suggest there is a predominant hypersensitivity amongst this crowd to the perception of being "smart", "stupid", or perhaps even worst of all, "average."
• torben-friis 5y ago
  I get the appeal of minimalism in the format, but at the very least some margins or a max line length would be welcome. Having to read this with lines extending all across the screen is ridiculous.
  • joeberon 5y ago
    Unfortunately common among many technical users, they have no sense of page design whatsoever, and instead go for the "raw data" approach. It is bizarre
  • hoseja 5y ago
    What's the screen for, then?
    • torben-friis 5y ago
      to visualize content in the best possible way? 4k screens can easily support ridiculously small font sizes, but you wouldn't decide to use that just because it's there. Similarly, you would not want 15 inches long lines of text completely breaking the concept of paragraphs just because your screen can reach that width.
  • dottedmag 5y ago
    Try making the browser window narrower.
    • torben-friis 5y ago
      I mean sure, I can, but it's kind of silly having to put the effort to make the content more readable. I think that should be on the presenter rather than the receiver.
• Grustaf 5y ago
  I don't know who this guy is but he certainly succeeded in looking stupid.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• hyperpallium2 5y ago
  The first step to knowing is acknowledging not knowing.
• greggman3 5y ago
  The masks and air filters make me wonder if my refusal to patronize restaurants that require paying via their website and signing up for an account with email and phone number, both verified by codes. It puts my friends out who just wanted to eat but I'm not eating if they require an account (which always says "we will use your info for marketing"). Maybe it's not the same thing, masks and air filters have more obvious benefits than avoiding accounts at restaurants.
• cbg0 5y ago
  Some of the things mentioned in the article make me think the opposite of what the article is titled. The lack of transparency into the thought process of the individual shows that there is a willingness to not look stupid by giving away reasons which might seem silly, otherwise they'd be more direct in the way they ask questions so as to also reveal their thought process. If you care about what people think of you, perhaps you should first ask if there's anything you can change instead of expecting more from others.
• drewg123 5y ago
  When I was onboarding at Google in 2013, one of the things that they said was "don't be afraid to ask questions in a meeting. Chances are most other people have the same question, but are afraid to look dumb by asking it"
• emodendroket 5y ago
  There are many good insights in this piece but I'm dying to know what was going on with the small-box Mac.
• justinator 5y ago
  The article does give the impression that the author has a superiority complex, and that many people are judging him often, where most likely people just don't care all that much either way. Perhaps what they're describing is being defensive over low self-confidence? They don't seem to be all that easy to work with. "I'm not stupid, you're stupid" is the vibe I'm getting.
• familiarzombie6 5y ago
  Willingness to look stupid is a luxury much more easily afforded to the highly intelligent.
• nonford150 5y ago
  I also have issues with blood draw. I always tell them I have "squirrely" veins. Always thanked for the info; often they just use a butterfly.
• caned 5y ago
  At the risk of looking stupid, how would mentioning that he designs CPUs establish any kind of authority?
• sillysaurusx 5y ago
  > Going into an Apple store and asking for (and buying) the computer that comes in the smallest box, which I had a good reason to want at the time > The person who helped me, despite being very polite, also clearly thought I was a bozo and kept explaining things like "the size of the box and the size of the computer aren't the same". Of course I knew that, but I didn't want to say something like "I design CPUs. I understand the difference between the size of the box the computer comes and in the size of the computer and I really want the one that comes in the smallest box", but just saying the last bit without establishing any kind of authority didn't convince the person > I eventually asked them to humor me and just bring out the boxes for the various laptop models so I could see the boxes, which they did, despite clearly thinking that my decision making process made no sense Oh c'mon, that's not fair. You have to tell us what the goal was. :) I'm super curious what a CPU designer wanted with the "laptop that came in the smallest box." Perhaps smallest box = smallest laptop = they wanted to study the form factor. But does the smallest laptop really come in the smallest box? And did the results of this experiment influence your future CPU design decisions? I feel like this arc deserves its own page.
  • Ensorceled 5y ago
    I have to say, this example did make me switch my view of the author from some one who wasn't afraid to ask the "stupid" questions to being either a deliberately "just asking questions" asshole who likes to fuck with people or, to be more charitable, someone with a bit of a spectrum disorder.
    • MrQuincle 5y ago
      I think it's better to be a bit more charitable here indeed. I also found it striking how the post is emphasizing how important transparency in asking questions is which might or might not reveal the intelectual qualities of the person asking, but then failing to be that transparent towards both the clerk and the reader of the blog post about the internal thought process. If one would like people to learn, enlighten them. :-)
      • 5y ago
• locallost 5y ago
  I felt too insecure to ask (stupid) questions previously because, well, people around you are always confident. But with time I saw there's often not a lot behind this confidence, that someone who has a high opinion of himself is capable of really failing in a very basic way, and that most people are more or less the same. So I talk more freely now, and yes, some people are quick to judge. But whatever.
  • sillysaurusx 5y ago
    (OT, but nice username. "I hate when I get locallost on the way to localhost's LAN party...") The judgmental people tend not to matter in the long run, by the way. Sort of. There are two types of judgmental people. One, the people building a team, or making a bet. Two, the people looking to talk about others. The latter don't matter. The former are quick to judge because they have to be. If they're wrong about their bets, it'll soon become obvious. Which means the optimal strategy is to make many bets, or to interview as many devs as possible, and then cull most of the candidates. It's not personal. http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html helped me care way less about rejection, which seems to decrease the odds of getting rejected.
    • locallost 5y ago
      Right, I don't care. It's my opinion now that I have to be open about what I think or feel because it's just how I am. So if I don't find a common language with someone, then so be it. There are 7 billion other people on the planet.
      • sillysaurusx 5y ago
        By the way, consider throwing some contact info in your profile. It sounds like you have a lot of interesting ideas, and I've gotten a lot of random emails from HN people in the past. (I reached for your profile to email you the "nice username" thing, but there wasn't any way.)
• roenxi 5y ago
  In my experience, there is a slight nuance in the frame here. It isn't just that Mr. Luu is "willing to look stupid", it is that he has confidence that his decision making process will on average turn out better decisions than the go-to default strategy that most people employ ("copy the crowd"). Most people, if they rely on their own research and decision making, will do poorly. And even moderately clever people generally do better by copying the rare stray geniuses that float around in polite society. This manifests as an "unwillingness" to "look stupid". It is important to ask "what does stupid mean" and "how do I measure 'looking something'" when this sort of topic is bought up. I am - and I don't think this is that unusual - willing to go about a decade ignoring the opinions of others if I'm really confident that I have an objectively good idea. It is a high-risk high-reward strategy and not for everyone.
  • marginalia_nu 5y ago
    > It is important to ask [...] "how do I measure 'looking something'" when this sort of topic is bought up. Why is that?
    • roenxi 5y ago
      "Looking stupid" is an assessment of what other people think. Eg, asking for the smallest box isn't stupid - Apple expects all the boxes to be good products. Even picking a product randomly isn't stupid and therefore shouldn't look it. The looking stupid part is an assessment of what the store clerk is thinking. That is a very subtle, fraught and complicated assessment. There is a lot going on to do with the audience, context, risk and the truth. There is a lot going on behind the term "looking stupid" and it undersells the complexity of the social interaction. There are two parties, multiple issues and a lot to think about.
      • barrenko 5y ago
        Yes, but in general it's pretty noticeable when someone thinks you're stupid, because when people find a reason to place you "below" so to speak, all kinds of behaviour quickly come out.
• mlang23 5y ago
  This article is stupid.
• supermatt 5y ago
  Asking "stupid questions" frees you from the trap of assumption. This is why people who are good at solving (or helping others solve) problems ask "stupid questions". I suppose "rubber duck debugging" is a form of this.
  • nathias 5y ago
    the problem is that it frees you from your assumptions, but you'll encounter many more assumptions from others
  • grasshopperpurp 5y ago
    Some years ago, I learned that I'm better at finding things when high. For context, my GF misplace things a few times a week, and I like finding them before she can. I realized pretty quickly that I did better under the influence, because I didn't rule out places the things might be. When sober, I wouldn't check certain places, because, That'd be a ridiculous place to leave that. Sounds kinda dumb, but it was an ah-ha realization that extended beyond finding misplaced items.
    • supermatt 5y ago
      i struggle with adhd and have both the same problem (frequently misplacing things) and a similar solution (checking everywhere, twice, even if im "sure" it wont be there)
• dcminter 5y ago
  More often than not when I ask a "stupid" question it turns out that the answer isn't known (to the people I'm asking). So I try to do so more often. I've noticed that it also makes others feel empowered to ask "dumb" questions too (which usually aren't), so it's a good policy for the team as well as the individual. I'd imagine that it's not so viable in more aggressive/competitive/toxic environments though? But I've been lucky avoiding those. Edit: Oh and sometimes my questions do turn out to be ... a bit dim. Most recent case that springs to mind was asking the local equivalent of "what does SSN stand for?" in a context where I really should have known. But the average outcome is good.
• Errancer 5y ago
  I find such willingness very helpful in many meetings with difficult vocabulary. Instead of nodding to sentences which make no sense to me I like to take the risk and admit that I have no clue what is going on. More often than not I'm not the only person who got lost so it ends up beneficial to the meeting as a whole.
  • josephg 5y ago
    Yeah. Its weird but I find doing this makes people respect you more. If you ask dumb questions, the person speaking (if they’re any good) will start looking to you to figure out if they’re pitching their language correctly. The other people in the room who didn’t understand will be relieved and quietly thankful of you because they didn’t have to be the ones to ask. And people who understood already are usually way more chill about this sort of thing than you would expect. Especially if you give them the opportunity to explain something in front of everyone. And then thank them for doing so. I don’t think I fully understand why, but asking dumb questions is often a subtle act of leadership.
    • FartyMcFarter 5y ago
      > I don’t think I fully understand why, but asking dumb questions is often a subtle act of leadership. Very much so. It helps establishing an environment with less ego, more helpful people, and people who aren't afraid to learn. It also diminishes feelings of imposter syndrome in other people, by showing that not everyone knows everything. All of those are things leaders should incentivize.
• sampo 5y ago
  > Covid: I took this seriously relatively early on and bought a half mask respirator on 2020-01-26 and was using N95s I'd already had on hand for the week before (IMO, the case that covid was airborne and that air filtration would help was very strong based on the existing literature on SARS contact tracing, filtration of viruses from air filters, and viral load) I think this is remarkable, how common people with some level of scientific literacy were able to get this correct much better than the whole medical establishment.
  • j7ake 5y ago
    I wouldn’t say “whole medical establishment”. All Asian countries and their medical teams were using masks by that time.
  • orangeoxidation 5y ago
    > I think this is remarkable, how common people with some level of scientific literacy were able to get this correct much better than the whole medical establishment. I don't think it's remarkable at all. Common people with some level of scientific literacy took basically all kind of stances about masks. Some of them had to be right in the end. 'The medical establishment' otoh had to come to one single common recommendation and as it's only one there's a chance of failure (there were, ofc. individual medical professional and scientists who got it right as well).
    • mellavora 5y ago
      Yes, and because `the medical establishment` cannot risk that failure, they have to be much surer. And they have to be able to communicate it in an effective way such that people believe it... AND can act on it. AND can act on it in a way that doesn't trigger panic or totally mess with supply chains needed to get proper equipment to front-line responders. like Lawrence from azangru's quote above, the medical establishment needs to consider many more factors than 'common people' before making a public statement.
  • Ensorceled 5y ago
    The medical establishment knew N95s were critical from SARS and, at least in, North America had plenty of circumstantial evidence that COVID was, at least, somewhat reduced by masks; as did the author Further, my former co-workers from my stint in HIV testing were ALL saying wear masks and don't count on a vaccine being available until 2021 at the very earliest. They all started self isolating very early. The whole "medical establishment" DID know this. This was a failure of leadership of the medical establishment to either listen to the rest of the medical establishment or to effectively push back on the political leadership.
• iamben 5y ago
  It was a long time ago that I read it, but I'm pretty sure Richard Feynman says something similar in "Surely You're Joking..." I can't remember his exact words, but my takeaway was not to be afraid of asking super basic questions. (Also, it probably doesn't need to be said on HN again, but that really is a good book.)
  • simonswords82 5y ago
    Richard Feynman's lectures are available for free online: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
• lbriner 5y ago
  I'm not sure if this is the same thing but insecure people like me find the lack of affirmation of others troubling sometimes. How many of us get upset/offended if what we think is a high-quality comment on HN gets voted down by a load of people? We should be confident enough that we stand by comments even if we expect some of them to be misunderstood/unpopular. There are always people who will agree and always some who will agree. Once we can judge ourselves fairly, we won't care what other people think - we can be judged by our outcomes.
  • tankenmate 5y ago
    In my experience this is what humility is; not making yourself out to be more than you are, as well as not putting yourself down (deprecating humour aside - which is more about connection). "You don't need more control over everything, you need more courage". In a lot of ways that dovetails with Dan's comments.
• q-base 5y ago
  No question that most of us needs to have the ego take a backseat more often. But I cannot help but compare this to negotiation. It is a lot easier when you negotiate from a place of abundance. Negotiating salary is easier when you do not need the job. Negotiating a house is easier when you do not need to buy that house. I feel like the same applies here. Willingness to look stupid is a lot easier in situations where you have confidence and nothing to lose.
  • Grustaf 5y ago
    > No question that most of us needs to have the ego take a backseat more often. Nothing says ego in the backseat like an iamsosmart blog post. Bonus points if the website looks like it's from 2005 and if you write it in a tone as if you just invented penicillin.
• thom 5y ago
  There's a bit of a disconnect between the the purported theme of this article, being okay looking stupid, and the actual contents, which is just a catalogue of times other people were stupid, posted on the internet so everyone knows the author is clever. Being willing to look stupid involves actually being able to deal with mistakes and failure, with actually _feeling_ stupid sometimes. Just listing a bunch of great decisions you made that other people thought were stupid seems less life-changing to me.
  • runeks 5y ago
    But the article is specifically about looking stupid. The point being, as I understand it, that you should avoid being stupid but not looking stupid.
    • thom 5y ago
      The title is about looking stupid, but that's not what the author is communicating, to me or many others in the comments here. At no point did the author ever risk any ego, because they knew they were right every time, and no morons were going to convince them otherwise. Willingness to look stupid isn't just about ignoring other people's opinions, it's about actually being willing to find out you _are_ stupid sometimes. Nobody can avoid being stupid their whole lives, whatever cherry picked lists we might publish on our blogs. You are either willing to suffer the risk of people seeing that, and learning something, or you can hide from that risk. The author clearly has a good track record of hiding from that risk, because everything they've ever done has turned out to be correct. But that seems deeply uninteresting as a life lesson. Much more important is what happens when you try something, and the people telling you you're stupid are _right_. How you and your ego handle that is an important part of your character. Maybe that's a subtle distinction, but I think it's important.
  • cycomanic 5y ago
    Thanks you said this much better than I did a bit further up. The whole post smacks a bit of arrogance to me, even though the advice is good.
• formerly_proven 5y ago
  > Friends have been chiding about this for years and strangers, dates, and acquaintances, will sometimes tell me, with varying levels of bluntness, that I'm being paranoid and stupid There is way to much of this bullshit all over the place (e.g. PPE use) and I'm quick to judge people who do it, because I find it a truly moronic attitude.
  • germandiago 5y ago
    I have also heard this. Even the other day I asked my own sister about data about her own profession. She genuinely thinks I am asking too much/bothering her so she just replies "just let it go" or "you think too much". Well, if I think too much, probably I think more than you about your own profession, so, I do not want to say this, but you are not the best possible professional, because sometimes I had the feeling that she just follows the trend instead of getting genuine opinions about some of the topics in the discipline.
• LTaoist 5y ago
  A honest man would not "Willingness to Look Stupid" if he is not stupid.
  • threatofrain 5y ago
    Honesty and transparency aren't the same thing. Dan Luu has a non-transparent process, but that doesn't mean he wishes to deceive you. Most people aren't transparent.
• terabytest 5y ago
  I guess the "stupid question" I'd ask of this article is: why don't you reveal your goals or thought process when challenged after asking a question that might be perceived as stupid? Take the Apple Store example: why not explain the reason why you were asking for a product by the size of its box when they responded by saying that size of the box does not map to size of the product? Being open about your goal would've probably made it easier and less antagonistic as a process, right?
  • threatofrain 5y ago
    But Dan Luu isn't obviously motivated by a desire to antagonize the Apple employee, and neither is he socially or morally obligated in the slightest to explain his consumer intentions during a purchase at the Apple store. And was the encounter really antagonistic? Dan Luu is the one who left looking stupid.
    • entropyie 5y ago
      Consider that the shop is unlikely to have the laptops stored or annotated by box size. Dan was asking the employee to expend considerable additional effort to find the smallest laptop box when he potentially knew the model number, or least had a reason that would justify the extra work. I would have just said "I'm really tight on carry-on space", not to avoid looking stupid, but to assure the employee I wasn't breaking their balls for no reason.
      • genewitch 5y ago
        So you'd lie to the employee? He touches on this later in the article after comparing thoughts to another person (who is block quoted) who seems to wonder the same things as a lot of commenters here...
        • entropyie 5y ago
          I would have synthesised a brief approximation of the real reason. Transport being one real possibility. The point is that this is a two way transaction with a real person, who has their own hidden state, goals and limits that are not always apparent to a consumer. E.g. company policy on deducing what the customer really needs. How was the employee to know Dan was the one person who actually knew what they needed, out of 100 over confident buffoon's that came to the shop that week. This is why I don't hassle the support person fixing my internet when they run through support script. I don't say "skip this, I have an honours degree blah blah", cause they have enough constraints to deal with as is... And once in a 100 times, I will learn something I didn't know...
• jaygray0919 5y ago
  My variation on this is based on years of management. My quip: + I only hire people who are smarter than I am. + I am the dumbest bloke in the business. Everyone is smarter than I am. Like "Willingness ..." it's a tool to remove your ego from and look-for/work-with 'talent' thru a (slightly more) objective lens. As an individual contributor, it opens you to alternative ideas (learning from others). As a manager, it allows your team to build confidence and be open with you about problems and potentially radical alternatives. A variation on this idea: + the only things I know I learned from other folks.
• tester34 5y ago
  >The benefit from asking a stupid sounding question is small in most particular instances, but the compounding benefit over time is quite large and I've observed that people who are willing to ask dumb questions and think "stupid thoughts" end up understanding things much more deeply over time. Conversely, when I look at people who have a very deep understanding of topics, many of them frequently ask naive sounding questions and continue to apply one of the techniques that got them a deep understanding in the first place. Just be like this girl :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q89tdSjE-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q89tdSjE-0 >Learning a sport or video game: I try things out to understand what happens when you do them, which often results in other people thinking that I'm a complete idiot when the thing is looks stupid, but being willing to look stupid helps me improve relatively quickly Overall author came up with this concept of "looks stupid", yet it does already exist as "failure teaches more" or just "curiosity" in my opinion. Overall2: Maybe Why Is It So Hard to Be Rational? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/23/why-is-it-so-hard-to-be-rational https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/23/why-is-it-so-h...
• rStar 5y ago
  the dating example is stupid. when you assume you make an ass out of you and me.
  • FartyMcFarter 5y ago
    Which example?
    • davidcollantes 5y ago
      I think OP is referring to this: > For example, if a date thinks I'm stupid because I ask them what a word means, so much so that they show it in their facial expression and/or tone of voice, I think it's pretty unlikely that we're compatible, so I view finding that out sooner rather than later as upside and not downside.
      • fidesomnes 5y ago
        this is anti-dating advice.
• josephg 5y ago
  After a terrible breakup years ago I took a trapeze class. Before we got up on the trapeze bar, I spent most of the class telling everyone how bad I was going to be at it. When I got home I lay in bed confused. Why did I do that? This article is spot on. I was afraid of being seen to be bad at something. Have you noticed? We spend almost our entire adult lives doing things we’re good at. Anything we do that we’re bad at, we either stop doing or we get good at it. So all roads lead us away from the experience of being a beginner. For me, it had been too long. And I’d accidentally forgotten how to do it. So I took up dancing (which I’m bad at). That was really terrifying. And trampolining. And more recently improv. At the moment I’m learning to draw - which I spent most of my life wanting to do. But I never stuck with it because I hate drawing badly. But that’s just what it feels like to be a beginner. The trick is letting that go, because it doesn’t matter. You don’t get to be good at anything without first being bad at it. And being comfortably, visibly bad at something gives everyone else permission to play.
  • jacobolus 5y ago
    > For me, it had been too long. I have a 5 year old and a 2.5 year old, and hang out with lots of small children. Fear of looking stupid as a beginner is something that most people have right from the start: I have watched kids be afraid of incompetence (to the point of not wanting to try) at riding a bike, running, swinging across monkey bars, drawing, singing, reading, learning a new language, ...
    • aynyc 5y ago
      Similar situation here. One of the things I found useful for skill-based activities is to take video. I took my kid's swim lesson from 3-6, the improvement is obviously drastic. Now, my oldest is starting to understand that while she's not good at something right now, she just need more practice. It's a huge mental change for her.
    • fjfaase 5y ago
      This might be culturally dependent, as in some cultures there is much more emphesize on competition than in others. Have you reflected on your behaviour towards your children with respect to this?
• 123pie123 5y ago
  I learnt a long time ago by a director (CEO) of a large UK company on how to assess people, their technical abilities and personality and that is to act stupid/ daft - not just one question, but for periods of time. and see how they respond to you a very effective technique when dealing or interacting with so called Subject Matter Experts. If they're an expert they should be able to explain complex stuff at a High/ medium/ low levels or just say they do not know. If they're not really an expert then they cover up their lack of knowledge
  • spzb 5y ago
    If they're not really an expert then they cover up their lack of knowledge and then get promoted into a management position telling the actual subject matter experts how to do their jobs.
    • HeckFeck 5y ago
      'Fuck up, move up'
• azangru 5y ago
  There's a beautiful illustration from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon on this topic: === They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back? Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat. Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the average speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river. Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations. Along the way, he realized that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem. If that didn’t prove his intelligence, what would? Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal. Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada. The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else.
  • jmchuster 5y ago
    The moral of the story is that Lawrence was an idiot for not properly understanding what answer the test administrators wanted him to give?
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      From the wording, it sounds like he only answered the one question. Since he kept his work, all they know is that he answered at most[0] one question correctly. [0] It's possible he gave an answer that wasn't what they expected and it was "incorrect".
• bjarneh 5y ago
  This post seems like some sort of humble-brag about not really being stupid, but being "willing to look stupid" to people who are actually stupid. To be honest, this entire post make him look stupid, but we all know now that he doesn't care what we think. I'm probably stupid for falling for another one of his clever schemes where he's just pretending to be stupid.
  • misja111 5y ago
    Exactly. E.g. this: "Although there are some downsides to people thinking that I'm stupid, e.g., failing interviews where the interviewer very clearly thought I was stupid" This isn't just looking stupid, this is being stupid. Why in Heaven's name wouldn't you at least adjust your behavior when you're in an interview? Acting stupid can be a convenient way to hold up your belief that you're smarter than the rest. Nobody will ever challenge your belief because hey, if they think you are stupid, it's because you made them believe that, which means that they are actually the stupid ones!
    • bjarneh 5y ago
      Agreed, that blog post was pure cringe from start to finish.
    • genewitch 5y ago
      I don't change anything about myself when I interview for jobs. I can't even fathom why I would, in this industry (or really any not customer-facing industry, really). They saw my weird resume - it always gets a comment. It was revised and edited under direction from a retired entrepreneur and CEO who explained how employee employer and employee/employer/HR/hiring managers interactions work "in real life". They did a phone interview. They called me in. The only times I get the "thanks for interviewing, but" calls is when the recruiter or headhunter obfuscated the job description to prevent poaching and/or losing their commission/bonus and I had literally no idea about any of their stack/business/whatever. I could just be lucky, I guess, not having to lie or embellish or present a facade.
• j7ake 5y ago
  The fact that the author withheld information from the Apple clerk suggests to me that the author thought the Apple clerk would not understand the “real” reason why he wanted the smallest box. I believe the author thought the clerk was too stupid to understand the real reason and it would be a waste of time to explain to the clerk why.
• dusted 5y ago
  When I was younger, I often met people who seemed kind of dim to me, at first, and later found the majority of them to be orders of magnitude brighter than me. It was not hard to connect the dots, the reason they were so much brighter was (in part) exactly because of what made them initially seem dim.. They asked questions, honestly. Not the showoff kind of question you ask to show how much you know, but real, honest questions that not only showed how little they knew, but importantly, allowed them to actually learn and understand, rather than just nod and not get it. My intuition has changed from this, I find it that most times, when someone shows genuine interest and asks honest, revealing questions about some new topic, they often excel at many other things (and will likely on the new topic as well). I'm adapting this myself, being honest, asking honestly, and sometimes looking really stupid (because, in that context, I am!), and I appreciate greatly both the wealth of information that allows me to access, and that almost anybody worth their salt recognizes this trait as well. Failing an interview due to looking stupid is probably a blessing in disguise, you don't want to be hired by people who can't see this, and you don't want to work next to people who's just pretending to understand, not learning because they can't afford to look stupid when they are (and thus stay stupid, and be much more inclined to try to pass blame to someone else, like you, who look stupid).
  • zitterbewegung 5y ago
    If you don’t know the answers to stupid questions you originally don’t understand the topic fully .
  • SquishyPanda23 5y ago
    > the reason they were so much brighter was (in part) exactly because of what made them initially seem dim The causality also goes the other way. Very smart people see their limitations more clearly and so tend to be humbler about what they know. They realize they can learn from others and so ask a lot of questions that others might feel foolish asking.
  • HeckFeck 5y ago
    This reminds me of the simple brilliance of Socrates. He began from the premise that he knew nothing, and would ask all manner of simple questions building on top of the previous answers. It wasn't long before he uncovered how little everyone else actually knew, but what separated Socrates was his honesty: he knew nothing and admitted it. Naturally, the established powers and polite society didn't find this to their liking. We all know how his story ended.
• Kaibeezy 5y ago
  Seth Godin has a whole schtick on the high value of what he calls “intentional serial incompetence”. Basically, if you’re unwilling to be seen as incompetent, you can’t deal with change. Good summary here - https://www.fastcompany.com/38442/change-agent-issue-31 https://www.fastcompany.com/38442/change-agent-issue-31 My own experience has been that if you’re pretty sure you’re one of the smartest people in the room, you have an obligation to ask the “stupid” questions, because the rest of the room will be too afraid to look stupid.
  • crispyambulance 5y ago
    > ...you have an obligation to ask the “stupid” questions... I really agree with that but it's all about being willing to take a risk. Many settings, especially in corporate environments, are intrinsically hostile to inquiry. These are places where meetings are run with semi-parliamentary rules-- just pro-forma affairs to mark project transitions. In such situations, it may be that the others know better than you do and thus STFU or else be silently, immediately, and permanently dismissed for future consideration by those who call the shots.
    • Kaibeezy 5y ago
      Yeah, well, corporate. If you’re in that situation, you have some self-splaining to do. ;)
• tappio 5y ago
  Willing to look stupid == not caring what other people think of you. Most humans spend terrible amount of time thinking what others think of you. It's normal, but and good to some extent.
• pydry 5y ago
  One way to prove that he truly doesn't mind looking stupid would be to list times when he risked looking stupid... and it turns out he actually was. It's happened to all of us though we dont like to admit it. I'm sure it's happened to him too and I looked but I didn't see any of those examples listed. Giving only examples of when people thought he was dumb and it turned out he wasn't... that's kind of just a roundabout way of humblebragging that you're an unrecognized genius. Sadly I think this undermines the point of the article which otherwise makes a good point.
  • chrisjarvis 5y ago
    Yes, every example is "I sounded stupid but I was actually correct". From the title I thought the article was going to be about not being afraid to learn new things.
  • bambax 5y ago
    Yes. It seems the point of the article is to take revenge at those who might have thought he was stupid (although they didn't say anything at the time) and tell them: "See? I was right all along!" He sounds more like my mother in law than like a keen philosopher.
  • afarrell 5y ago
    Or it is an unwillingness to be vulnerable to the entire internet. Why? Probably fear of being misinterpreted and pilloried by strangers. It is a justifiable fear. For example, it is easy for people to interpret an imperfect amount of courage as "humble-bragging".
    • ridiculous_leke 5y ago
      Nowadays it doesn't even end there. You risk getting "cancelled" by social media mobsters.
    • pydry 5y ago
      Maybe. He didnt add the caveat "I don't mind looking stupid except when the entire internet can see" though. I thought it was heavily implied from the way the article started that we'd be reading some embarrassing stories. I was somewhat disappointed to see that he was presenting himself as just a humble genius who thinks different.
• programmer_dude 5y ago
  Wow, this describes me to a T. The only difference being, you (Dan Luu) are much smarter than me. The other day I got confused by a decimal separator on Hacker News and posted a comment saying so. I am pretty sure some people assumed I was stupid. Perhaps they did not want to put in the effort required to understand why some one might get confused in the given situation. I will admit sometimes I fall into this trap too and assume the other person is stupid. Nobody is perfect. I have nothing profound to say, just wanted to share this.
  • yetihehe 5y ago
    > The other day I got confused by a decimal separator on Hacker News and posted a comment saying so. I am pretty sure some people assumed I was stupid. Perhaps they did not want to put in the effort required to understand why some one might get confused in the given situation. When you try to post low-level questions on a high-level forum (no matter what trade it is), you will get negative responses, because you dilute the topic. It's like having speed bump in fast lane.
    • programmer_dude 5y ago
      Yes, that's understandable.
• coldtea 5y ago
  There's some "willingess to look stupid" here, but also some lack of emotional intelligence (which is probably not conscious/willed). There's a humble-brag/arrogance element too (which also marks for some "emotional stupidity"). As in, the reasoning applied to some of those cases is quite Vulcanian-like, maybe a comrade on-the-spectrum?
• karol 5y ago
  This is terrible advice, I would call it a lack of willingness to communicate openly. Also even if you are in the highest echelons of intelligence making yourself look stupid will close access to some opportunities that might propel you forward. Also, over time this behaviour might form a habit that will also influence your personal life.
  • yetihehe 5y ago
    > Also even if you are in the highest echelons of intelligence making yourself look stupid will close access to some opportunities that might propel you forward. But maybe we should educate our society so that this isn't the case anymore? I know this sounds unattainable, but we should still try to make such outcomes invalid.
    • karol 5y ago
      Of course, write a book about it.
• jvanderbot 5y ago
  This is a great premise, and in my experience spot on both in terms of avoiding feelings of being stupid. But some of the items are more about presenting information in a way that makes people change their actions without feeling stupid. Like the ones about blood draws. I've seen my wife do this so well, and I honestly never knew it was possible to live so harmoniously with society. People are just so much more helpful and flexible with her and I attributed it to her Dale Carnegie levels of persuasiveness.
• mdrzn 5y ago
  >>"I had to confirm three times that I only wanted coverage for damage I do to others with no coverage for damage to my own vehicle if I'm at fault." But.. why tho?
  • CrazyStat 5y ago
    The premise of insurance is that you pay more on average over time but remove very expensive tail events. Basically you pay the insurance company to reduce your risk. If you are wealthy enough (and mentally prepared) to absorb tail events without much negative effect on your life, it can be perfectly rational to not insure damage to your car.
• ozim 5y ago
  *Learning things that are hard for me: this is a "feeling stupid" thing and not a "looking stupid" thing, * When I was younger I found out that things that were hard for me were making me angry. I would say that "this thing is stupid" or "it sucks". Where in reality I was stupid and I sucked. At some point I realized it was that I simply don't understand something that made me angry and then I started using that emotion as a telltale that I should step back and learn a bit more about the thing. In the end it evolved that I don't get angry anymore at things. I directly realize that I don't understand something and accept that I have more work to do on understanding it.
• yanis_t 5y ago
  Unpopular opinion here. I sometime find myself deliberately avoiding looking stupid because it could possibly damage my career. And that's because the people who make decisions are not some divine being who see through you, they are just humans like the rest of us.
• afarrell 5y ago
  If you have ever read a supreme court transcript and thought "why did one of our justices ask this really obvious question", this is half of the reason. The other half is ensuring that certain things get into the official judicial record.
• Benlights 5y ago
  This article starts with a nice premise but then devolves to one long humblebrag.
• eng3n33r 5y ago
  There are many skills where to acquire them you need to power through a phase of looking very stupid to make any initial headway at all. Getting through this is the difference between success and failure. Recently, I've been learning to sing better, with a focus on my higher register. One of the reasons most people cannot sing high notes well is that you inevitably have to go though a phase of singing high notes badly (and very loudly) first. Being a 'bad singer' (especially thanks to TV talent shows) is often seen as a paragon of looking like a dumb, shameful, naive idiot who overestimates their ability and lacks talent. This is despite the fact that every good singer was once a bad one. I've noticed this same pattern in varying degrees of extremity across many sills I've picked up over the years. It is when you are in the 'stupid' phase, regardless of what is is you are learning, you're unlikely to get any sympathy positive reinforcement from the world, before then hitting an inflection point where you get loads. Knowing that you need to push through this to succeed is golden.
• stared 5y ago
  Once I've heard "never let your ego stand in the way to your goals". It does marvels, both in personal and business life.
• darkmatterrat 5y ago
  This whole post just reads as a shallow attempt to justify odd behaviour and poor communication and try to disguise it as some argument against vanity (while ironically being quite vain as his tone comes off as high handed). I wonder how many times he thought he knew better and it bite him in the arse? He did allude to it, but I suspect it far more often than he would be willing to admit. > Car insurance: the last time I bought car insurance, I had to confirm three times that I only wanted coverage for damage I do to others with no coverage for damage to my own vehicle if I'm at fault. The insurance agent was unable to refrain from looking at me like I'm an idiot and was more incredulous each time they asked if I was really sure This is typically more expensive as people that get third party insurance are usually newer (and younger drivers) so the insurance company will charge you more because their algorithm for determining cost will factor that in. So I don't doubt he was getting strange looks because it likely cost him more money and you don't get the obvious benefit of full comprehensive. This and the laptop situation screams of "I made a strange request and didn't explain my motivations and then I wondered why I got strange looks". It is just him communication poorly. Which isn't anything to brag about. > On the flip side, the person I was living with at the time didn't want to wear the mask I got her since she found it too embarrassing to wear a mask when no one else was and become one of the early bay area covid cases, which gave her a case of long covid that floored her for months The whole mask effectiveness isn't as straight forward as he thinks it is. His flatmate after the mixed messaging from the media probably thought it was a wash and decided to just fit in with everyone else and was unlucky as a result. I have no idea why this guy is so popular. Whenever I read anything from him he seems completely unlikeable. EDIT: Rephrasing.
• rsp1984 5y ago
  After reading the first couple paragraphs it felt like Dan was telling stories about my life, not his, down to the detail it's almost creepy. Specifically this paragraph stood out: Back in college, there was one group of folks that, for whatever reason, stood out to me as people who really didn't understand the class material. When they talked, they said things that didn't make any sense, they were struggling in the classes and barely passing, etc. I don't remember any direct interactions but, one day, a friend of mine who also knew them remarked to me, "did you know [that group] thinks you're really dumb?". I found that really delightful and asked why. It turned out the reason was that I asked really stupid sounding questions. And that group of people, when they failed tests or scored badly, it was always the test that was "unfair". I wanted to write a blog post about this very topic for a long time, but it has now become obsolete because there's no way I could do a better job than Dan. Outstanding.
• kaydub 5y ago
  This title spoke to me. I work with some very talented engineers. I often feel like I'm asking stupid questions. A couple coworkers treat me like I'm an idiot. But I don't really care. I'd rather know than have an ego.
• bambax 5y ago
  > I added more air filtration capacity when I moved to a wildfire risk area Well, okay, but maybe the non-stupid thing is to not move to a wildfire risk area. In general the list of circumstances where the author was willing to "look stupid" to strangers because he was, in fact, clever and seeing into the future, is mildly irritating. Feynman's first wife put it better: "what do you care what other people think?"
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Aeolun 5y ago
  > It's taken me up to six weeks to convince people that it's ok for them to ask questions and, until that happens, I have to constantly ask them how things are going to make sure they're not stuck. I never considered that this might be common. I guess I shouldn’t take myself as an example.
• ykevinator3 5y ago
  This is a veiled brag session
• Ensorceled 5y ago
  I expected a "don't be afraid to ask the stupid questions" article and this is sort of that. The first few paragraphs are meandering and, seemingly, deliberately obtuse. Many of the examples are examples of a kind of "I'm so much smarter than you, I can play the stupid" arrogance that is incredibly off putting in real life because it leads to a bunch of bad faith questions and interactions. I really get the impression that the author is an unreliable narrator and that they are always the hero of their story. It is pretty easy to read many of the examples as the person NOT thinking the author was stupid, but rather that the author was a arrogant, condescending ass (especially the Apple store employee, their insurance brokers and every medical professional they have seen).
• bserge 5y ago
  It's more like "willingness to be confident no matter what", isn't it? I mean, stupid people do exactly the same stuff. The difference is their thought process is actually flawed but they're confident they're right. The only difference is in being objectively right or wrong - either way, just be confident. Smarter people seem to have trouble with that because they are often open to learning/being corrected and second guess their decisions.
• Kiro 5y ago
  If I want to ask something online I intentionally make the question sound stupid and uninformed since that provokes better and more clear replies.
  • instakill 5y ago
    Good old Curningham's law
• m12k 5y ago
  Learning something and pretending like you know it already are two goals that are very at odds with each other. It's one of the things I felt got better when going from high school to university - in high school I felt like I needed to do both to get good grades (because of how much of your grade came from the teacher's impression of you) whereas in uni, I didn't have to bother and could just focus on learning.
• jack_pp 5y ago
  This reminds me of the good old times when I had to actually talk to another person in order to get pizza and I sometimes wanted a lot of veggies on it but also meat so I just ordered a vegetarian pizza with meat on it and they always thought I was joking or being silly. Good thing I never let that stop me
• lvl100 5y ago
  People who are unwilling to look stupid often have nothing to offer.
• codingclaws 5y ago
  I like to look stupid too, it's just original if anything. For instance I named my HN clone Peaches 'n' Stink and everyone thinks it's just such a dumb name.
• gameswithgo 5y ago
  dan if you are around why did you want the smallest box?!
  • degrews 5y ago
    I've searched the whole thread for an answer to this. I'm so curious now...
• zcw100 5y ago
  I used to work with a kid who while very smart and energetic but would start every conversation as though he had started it 10 minutes ago in his head and just let it come out of his mouth when he saw you. Everything would be pronouns and it would cause an amazing amount of cognitive dissonance listening to him trying to figure out what "it" was. The best part was how condescending he would be when you asked him to explain himself. You could tell he thought you were a dope because you couldn't follow him because in his head he was a genius.
• blfr 5y ago
  As a man, every condescending comment you get in person only tells you one thing: your deadlift PR is still too low. Get jacked and all these problems disappear. No matter how silly your questions and objections, no matter how dumb they may think you are, all your concerns will be treated very seriously, criticism couched in most polite terms, and weird stuff written off as eccentric. (It helps to be taller, well-dressed, and sound sophisticated but solid deadlift is by far the most effective.)
  • joeberon 5y ago
    Are these seriously the quality of comments we are happy with on Hackernews these days?
    • blfr 5y ago
      It's a social reality most nerds ignore at their own peril. The way you're treated is very loosely correlated with being smart, having unusual tastes, or asking questions but tightly with how you present yourself.
      • joeberon 5y ago
        "at their own peril"? It's really not a big deal lol
        • blfr 5y ago
          Being treated poorly compounds, just like the fear of looking stupid. Especially in the dating market.
          • joeberon 5y ago
            You sound like an incel. Anyone who cares about this stuff is already weak.
            • sidlls 5y ago
• barrenko 5y ago
  This is a whole thing, like talking about money, people have all kinds of emotions about this. Reminds me of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his practice of being obviously arrogant to assholes.
  • Grustaf 5y ago
    Nassim Nicholas Taleb is simply arrogant.
    • 323 5y ago
      In his and Wolfram case it's justified.
      • Grustaf 5y ago
        Why?
        • 323 5y ago
          Because Nassim, like Wolfram, delivers.
        • sandwall 5y ago
          Agree with questioning this. They are both brilliant, but that doesn't justify arrogance. IMHO, it detracts from his brilliance and clouds the clarity of his thoughts.
• digbybk 5y ago
  Reluctance to ask stupid questions comes from a fear of rejection. I studied physics in undergrad and I found it pretty difficult, but wanted to be a part of the group of smart physics kids. It left me with a pretty strong fear of looking stupid and a reluctance to speak up in class when I didn’t understand. Not minding if you might sound stupid comes from a place of security in your life. If you already have a solid in-group, then the fear of being rejected by some other group starts to go away and you feel more comfortable risking looking dumb in front of people. I think it comes from a deep instinct to find allies and show that you’ll be a valuable member of a group, or at least not a liability.
• dustingetz 5y ago
  CURSE OF DEVELOPMENT: the depth of any transaction is limited by the depth of the shallower party. If the situational developmental gap between two people is sufficiently small, the more evolved person will systematically LOSE. A trivial example: if you speak English and French, and your friend only speaks English, you will be forced to converse in English. Full quote from Gervais Principle here: https://dustingetz.com/d4337a942961484b8b408d4b1963e161 https://dustingetz.com/d4337a942961484b8b408d4b1963e161 My transition from developer to founder is marked by needing to win more (all) transactions with minimized variance. As Warren Buffet says "never lose money", you might think it's +EV to apply Kelly Criterion here and risk a bit to maximize alpha, but in soft human affairs there are too many unknown unknowns to quantify risk, you need to keep it simple and not lose transactions. IMO
• jl6 5y ago
  You surely need a fair measure of confidence and security to absorb the downside risk. It’s a lot easier when you are established in a career/network/relationship and have erected a safe space around yourself. You can unmuzzle your inner confusion without threat to your status or ego, as you know you’re not really stupid. Not so easy as an outsider, or as a junior where you secretly worry that you might be stupid.
• mam3 5y ago
  Is it just humbleness ?
• jmacd 5y ago
  This really resonated with me. When I was learning to program I had a mentor (who was just a few years older than me at 17) who was an amazing learner but was an incredible teacher. I didn't have any money for programming books and libraries at the time didn't carry many. His ability to explain the complexities of Pascal, Basic and eventually C++ totally changed my life. I never became an amazing programmer, but I was a hacker at a time when that was valuable and it completely changed the trajectory of my life. He set the bar for simplification of a subject and edification of an individual. It's something I look for and at some understanding someone's ability to explain something became the primary way for me to assess their intelligence. The best way to do that? Ask really stupid questions. That has really really worked against my in some contexts. I spent a lot of time working for a large US company and while many of the smartest and most capable executives LOVED those conversations where would explore the outer bounds of their new ideas, many of the mid level mangers truly thought I was a f$#ing idiot. They could not get past their impression of my after one simple, stupid, question. I still don't know how many people I have left in my wake who truly think I am dim. I don't really care, but it took me a lot of years to realize how it was perceived.
• reportgunner 5y ago
  Slightly related video [0], specifically to I was shocked that somebody would deliberately do the wrong thing in order to reduce the odds of potentially looking stupid [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BkzvP19v4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BkzvP19v4
• WA 5y ago
  > Going into an Apple store and asking for (and buying) the computer that comes in the smallest box, which I had a good reason to want at the time This is such an odd example. Because OP makes an uncommon request, the sales person can't parse what this request is about, and neither can I for that matter, and OP doesn't give a reason. So the sales person thinks: What an odd request, which in turn is parsed by the OP as sales person thinks I'm stupid for asking something that the sales person doesn't understand. In the end, OP might want to feel superior by asking stupid-looking questions on purpose and feeling above the sales person for not being able to get to why this question is asked. Maybe just explain WHY you ask this or that and nobody thinks you're stupid anymore.
  • frumiousirc 5y ago
    Perhaps this example is intentionally ambiguous in order to illicit an informal survey of how internet conversations deal with ambiguous tales of social interactions. Taking OP's thesis about the origin of "stupid questions" at face value, this small meta lift seems fitting.
    • WA 5y ago
      Ok, if we want to have a meta discussion, let me ask two stupid questions: Why did OP not tell the store clerk why a small box mattered? Why did OP not tell the reader why he didn't tell the clerk?
      • Zababa 5y ago
        Why would the clerk need to know that, and why would the reader need to know that? Do you need a justification for buying something from a store? I think that's the lesson here. If you think he needed to give justification, you may still consider him stupid in a way.
        • ritchiea 5y ago
          Why does the reader need to read this blog post? We don’t but we think we might learn something or be entertained. Withholding a piece of information that lots of readers are naturally curious about is odd. I like the post & Dan Luu’s writing in general but I’m dying to know the why behind the computer in the smallest box request.
• vjust 5y ago
  I think he's almost flaunting it - but there's real value in the concept. One thing I have realized is that "was I stupid to do this" feeling has something to it. Like being laughed at by my colleagues because I was carrying a "Programming Python" book in ~2008, when Java was the rage. Like buying that odd exercise equipment on eBay, which felt really stupid, and then it's been my desk-side companion over the last 18 pandemic months. Stupid is sticking your neck out, stepping out of the herd and being alone. Like me leaving an established metro and buying a house online in a smaller town (never having seen in person) - and it turning into an amazing home, a cheaper, popular destination in the covid-migration, getting amazing neighbors - leaving some friends behind, and maybe paying covid-prices (those still feel a bit stupid). Being in that 'good stupid' state makes you initially acutely uncomfortable (once the decision sinks in), but later on it proves to be not so stupid, in fact the best thing you could have done. 'Ignorance is bliss' may be related. Lots of 'stupid' simple minded people have come out well in life. But often times stupid is real stupid and lands you in trouble - we all know that side of the equation - now maybe even that has a reward to it - in terms of the lesson learnt.
• bruce343434 5y ago
  Makes me wonder what his reason was for wanting the computer that came in the smallest box.
• ashildr 5y ago
  The author considers himself to be extremely smart. I don‘t think I‘d enjoy their company.
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    Don't most of us?
• nickelcitymario 5y ago
  Not sure if this is anyone's else's experience, but I relate this closely to First Principle's thinking. 1. You start by asking the "obvious" questions, the things everyone is supposed to already know. Question every assumption, every bit of "common sense". 2. Along the way, you discover that most people don't truly know what they claim to know. Instead, it's just years of built-up bias. 3. Soon you're asking questions no one thought of asking in the first place. 4. Finally, you understand the subject better than anyone, because you started by questions the foundational assumptions and built up from there. You see how all the pieces connect. (To my fellow programmers: This is, I think, why many of us dislike frameworks... too many levels of abstraction from the real thing.) Related concepts: - Always be willing to be the dumbest person in the room. It means you've surrounded yourself with people smarter than you, so you can learn from them. It also means they'll help you be far more successful than you could on your own. - Don't try to outsmart everyone. Just try to avoid dumb mistakes. While everyone else is trying to impress each other with their brilliance, you can calmly do the next right thing, and avoid the next dumb thing. Charlie Munger credits the success of Berkshire Hathaway to this principle more than any other. It means being willing to LOOK stupid in order to avoid actually BEING stupid.
• rlonn 5y ago
  When I recognize fear of looking stupid prevents me from doing something I see it as a challenge to do it. This makes it easier to push through. Most of the time it was the right decision, but not always. When picking up my kid at kindergarten once, I got an urge to jump over the fence into the yard, rather than using the gate. Of course, a 49-year old doing that might look stupid to all the kids and staff present (lots), so I did it. Then a 20-year old staff member comes up to me and says “Yeah…so we try to teach the kids here not to climb the fence. It’d be great if you didn’t do what you just did..” Sometimes looking stupid means being stupid too. But that’s ok.
  • circlefavshape 5y ago
    Meh. Non-fence-climbing isn't some important skill children need to learn I applaud your fence-jumping! I think children learning that it's ok to have fun as an adult is a much more important (and rare) lesson than learning that sometimes you have to abide by arbitrary rules
  • robocat 5y ago
    Kindy fences look so dystopian, like caged animals. The sight of a young child holding the bars wistfully looking out at the inaccessible world beyond them is just painful. Not that a moat or geofenced electroshock collars would be better.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• codedeadlock 5y ago
  Not asking stupid questions is not a function of age but conditioning. I have seen children asking all type of questions. For adults, looking smart is more important and if asking dumb questions hinders that capability, then we tend to avoid it. https://binaryho.me/journal/dumb-questions/ https://binaryho.me/journal/dumb-questions/
• nate 5y ago
  This reminds me of something I stumbled onto in grade school. In 7th grade, a teacher upset me for some reason I can't even remember. But being a brat, I went through this phase where I decided to waste her time and constantly pepper her with just tons and tons of questions about what we were learning. Some just "stupid" questions I already could surmise but wanted her to have to frustratingly retread over. And some legitimate things too where I just wanted her to go deeper into something. I would love to apologize to that teacher of course. I was definitely being a spiteful jerk. But incidentally, I noticed my grades were getting better. It dawned on me: the more time I spent coming up with questions, even ones that students would groan over how stupid they were, the better I'd do. Admittedly some of my questions probably didn't even need to be asked, but I decided to stop filtering myself on what's a good question. If there was any doubt at all in my head, from something a teacher would say, my hand would shoot up. And so I just kept doing that through high school and college and noticed when I was vigilent at this, my grades were great. I think some of this behavior has stuck with me, maybe not perfectly though. I think getting older and being seen as an "expert" in some fields now, has probably biased me to stop asking as many questions unfortunately. But ruminating on this experience and the OPs is a great reminder of that bias, and maybe something I can keep improving in myself.
• germandiago 5y ago
  Sometimes I was even scolded for asking too much from other people that knew me on the basis that if I did it it did not look good, it would look like I blabla... all stupid things about how you look to others. I never stopped doing it. I will never stop. I do not care. At the end, what I want, is to know new stuff.
• sanderjd 5y ago
  On the "learning new things" point: I have often thought it is a bit of a super power to enjoy that feeling of being stupid and incompetent. It's a necessary stage in learning new things, and learning new things often is the only way to avoid stagnation. Many people really dislike that initial stage. Lots of successful people are just good at pushing through it in order to get the useful new expertise. But actually being able to enjoy that feeling of stupidity makes it far more likely that you'll learn new things more often. My ability to do this ebbs and flows, but when I do have it, it's a wonderful feeling.
• Zababa 5y ago
  > Going into an Apple store and asking for (and buying) the computer that comes in the smallest box, which I had a good reason to want at the time I think that's a case where the Apple store employees err on the side of caution. I would bet that they have more clients asking for the smallest box while wanting the smallest computer compared to clients asking for the smallest box while needing the smallest box. I think that's an instance of the XY problem https://xyproblem.info/ https://xyproblem.info/, and people being trained to recognise it and having a false positive. > Air filtration: I did a bit of looking into the impact of air quality on health and bought air filters for my apartment in 2012 To take the "opposite view" (as in, don't be afraid of talking to people who look stupid) from this, I love talking to people about these kind of things (if they are willing to talk about them, of course). In many circumstances, I learned a lot by being charitable, open and ready to hear the thoughts of someone about something, even when they're unconventional/look stupid. I think I have that position because I deal more with "look stupid but are smart"-type people, while the Apple employee store or the stackoverflow user seem to deal more with the "look stupid so I have to protect them from themselves"-type people.
• ctvo 5y ago
  Can I ask a stupid question? Who is Dan Luu and why does he keep appearing here? The content hasn’t been amazing. It’s not amazing here either. The blog doesn’t have an about me page as far as I can tell. Google says Dan is a systems engineer at Nvidia. Edit: Found the About page https://danluu.com/about https://danluu.com/about It's at the bottom of articles, but not accessible on the home page. If this were an actual technical topic, I'd be more inclined to continue reading, but here, it's musings framed as a life lesson that could have come from anyone in my circle of friends. Life lessons from people whose only achievement is working at big tech. At least for my friends, they don't walk around assuming they're smarter than people. The reoccurring theme in this post from Dan is he's not the one that's stupid, it's the people around him who are too stupid to see his underlying genius. Dan comes off insufferable.
  • bena 5y ago
    Found his LinkedIn and GitHub. I don't know how that helps, but it's more information than before. It looks like he works for NVidia. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-luu-37721316/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-luu-37721316/ https://github.com/danluu https://github.com/danluu
    • rednalexa 5y ago
      That is definitely not his LinkedIn
      • bena 5y ago
        Yeah, you're right. The thumbnail looked vaguely like the same guy. Combined with the work history, I didn't look much closer.
  • samuel 5y ago
    I was too afraid to ask, honestly. I have another one. Why don't he spend 5 minutes making the content readable? Add some margins, it's all what it takes.
  • banana_maker 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• rthomas6 5y ago
  I think there is wisdom in this, but I also think there is value in some circumstances to making efforts toward behaving in a way that gets respect from others, because then they take you seriously. This can come down to manner of dress and tone of voice. It likely doesn't matter most of the time, but I feel that making an effort to not appear stupid in order to get the person drawing your blood to take you seriously is not a waste of time. It's true that I often care way too much about looking stupid and this post is really useful for reexamining that mindset and seeing how it's a mistake. Setting my ego aside and doing the best action regardless of how it makes me look would benefit me 99% of the time. BUT, I've had people in charge of some thing I care about dismiss my thoughts or contributions because it appears to them that it's not worth their time to pay attention to me. If I am collaborating on something that I know or care a lot about, I want my questions answered well and I want my contributions taken seriously. Sometimes that means I need to go out of my way to get the respect of this person. Being professional, making efforts to let someone know WHY I am asking a question, and asking revealing questions that benefit others' understanding, are not always a waste of time.
• devnull255 5y ago
  Is this post about being willing to look stupid or about not being afraid to ask questions? In my own experience, I was more afraid of asking questions because I was afraid it would expose me as not paying attention in class or not being prepared. I was afraid of being embarrassed by the question. I suppose one could say this might also be read as afraid of looking stupid, but stupidity itself is ironically not as simple as some might believe. I remember the first time I heard the statement: The only stupid question is the question you don't ask. This statement bewildered me, because I thought I might be the one that asked "that" question. If this sounds confusing, I most likely read that statement as "the only stupid question is the the one you shouldn't ask and if you don't know what makes a question stupid, you're probably too stupid to know." This fear of asking stupid questions made me unwilling to take math courses beyond Geometry. I ended up getting further math education when I started my IT career in 1990. I overcame my fear of asking questions in the course of doing my student teaching assignment before that.
• sumanthvepa 5y ago
  Lesson learnt from the blog post.: Avoid Jane Street. Hostile interviews are a red flag. It's okay for the interviewer to be unconvinced. But active hostility in a setting like this with a stranger indicates serious problems with the organisation's culture.
• bo1024 5y ago
  I’m in academia and willingness to look stupid (sometimes to be stupid) is an important and difficult skill that we try hard to train and almost all of my colleagues now have. But I believe that it’s also very cultural and gendered so it’s not as easy or successful for everyone, unfortunately. (Adding) I mean not easy personality wise due o their background, OR not easy because people more often treat them as stupid given an excuse because of who they are or what they look like.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  The author's approach is that he has a reason for his behaviour that others don't understand, and he says they treat him as "stupid," which may not be accurate. The pop culture trope about "genius and insanity," resembling each other has always been presented as mysterious, but the link is that both people are indexed on things others can't see. The difference is that one person is persuasive and manages to cohere, persist, and realize ideas from those things others can't see, and the other person fails for a variety of reasons related to just being high functioning nuts. The examples the author gives are more about being indexed on what others can't see than him being ignorant - but "stupid" is an interesting one because that means something else. If you separate intelligence and smart as being a capactity for abstraction and clarity vs. being able to get or achieve the things you want, one person can easily be both hyperintelligent and completely un-smart. Nerd is the cliche for that. The low cunning of a middle manager can produce outcomes that are very smart, without much talent for complexity, discovery, truth, or consideration, which is reflected in other archetypes. I often admit I'm not particularly smart, and that mostly I'm stupid in such unexpected ways that people conclude I must know something they don't, because nobody with a rudimentary apprehension of reality would attempt the things I have. Beware an idiot with the element of surprise. This is to say, I look stupid every day, and it is often painful and has a permanent record, but I see it more like lifting weights, where given the options, using your body to shift hundreds of pounds without leverage is definitely short term stupid, but the effects of persisting are long term smart.
• xyzelement 5y ago
  I used to work at a place where we recognized each other for the ability to "stick our hand in the fan." Meaning, we know that some things cannot be understood until they are tried, and trying such things often leads to failure (though there's an art to keep the failure small and learn fast.) So we'd basically recognize and reward people for embracing that reality, for the ability to say "yup I am gonna probably do this wrong the first time but that's gonna lead to progress" Inverse of that is fear of failure - inability to do something unless you are certain you're capable of securing a successful outcome. Basically that means you only do things you already know how to do.
• deleted 5y ago
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• smiley1437 5y ago
  Wow, tell me you’re on the spectrum without telling me you’re on the spectrum
• known 5y ago
  "Understanding is more important than memorization! Schools should teach the students how to understand, think, doubt, and question. They should be made open to imagination and creativity" --Feynman
• giantg2 5y ago
  I'm a natural at looking stupid. I'm always thinking outside the box and don't conform to most groupthink. My experience is that it doesnt help. The only way to get power and money is to have people with power and money want to give it to you. For that to happen, you have to share a majority of thought process, opinion, etc.
• AtreidesTyrant 5y ago
  works with comedy too--some of those who are willing to ham up the stupidity do so because they understand that others 'like' to feel superior
• gonehome 5y ago
  When you ask questions you learn faster. I think there’s some stuff here where he could have done a better job explaining why he was curious about something (the smaller computer box). Generally people are afraid to ask questions when they’re afraid to look stupid. This creates a harmful feedback loop. Part of the reason for this fear is cultural. I try to go out of my way to encourage new hires to push through this fear: https://zalberico.com/essay/2017/02/21/asking-questions.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2017/02/21/asking-questions.html
• k__ 5y ago
  You can spin this endlessly. You look stulid and are stupid. You look stupid but aren't. You look smart but aren't. You look smart and are smart, but people think you're just virtue signaling. But you know that virture signaling actually saves you time discussing why your aren't stupid while still looking so. etc. pp. In my opinion, real gain in looking stupid is when you actually are and then know how to accept valid critique, or at least try to understand where it comes from before you know it's valid. Because then you actually learn something that could improve your situation.
• mynegation 5y ago
  > I would sometimes run into people who would verbally make fun me If one does that, they are part of the problem. Please leave other people alone. You do not know anything about their personal situation.
• shrubby 5y ago
  Awesome. A friend I was on a same team, told me once that its always good to show up a bit slow witted to your opponent. I've had no issues in adjusting to that. Not stating that I'm anything of a genius BUT that it makes life a lot easier when you lose the excuse to pretend smart and can be actually yourself.
• rkangel 5y ago
  A related "power" I've found in the past is being willing to say "I don't know". Fundamentally I work as a consultant. It's my job to solve other people's problems, which we usually (but not always) do by building something for them. Often our clients deal with a lot of consultants of different forms - they use consultants because they have specific skills and knowledge in different areas. Unfortunately this means that everyone is always trying to sounds as smart as possible and never admits to not knowing something. For the client they then don't know if they're getting "this is something that I know from doing 100 times" from "I'd guess this is the answer". I've found that answering the occasional question with "I don't know (but I'll find out and get back to you)" changes people's opinion of me (and my company) for the positive. They suddenly (usually subconsciously) have greater trust of what we're telling them, because they know we'd admit if we didn't know.
• kchoudhu 5y ago
  This resonates because my entire professional persona is Career Idiot Asks Questions. It's worked out reasonably well and acted as a filter for professional situations where I definitely would have been very, very unhappy.
• b0rsuk 5y ago
  There's a song about this: "Dare to be Stupid" - Weird Al Yankowich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMhwddNQSWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMhwddNQSWQ Asking questions is really putting print statements(or functions) in ordinary, physical world. It's debugging yourself or your surroundings. Asking questions is crucial when you're doing sports and trying to improve your personal best - for example pull ups or squats. Eventually a joint or tissue starts to hurt and you need to figure out why or you get an injury. Am I doing it too often? No warmup? Bad diet? Sleep? Does your joint rotate too much and in which axis? And you will absolutely not get far in a puzzle game like Baba Is You if you're not good at asking questions. When I got stuck in that game, it was almost always due to a wrong assumption I made early on and failed to recognize. Solving the game is similar to tree traversal. If one approach doesn't work, and you don't have another idea, you need to re-examine your assumptions.
• dekhn 5y ago
  my greatest superpower is to sit in meetings and say "wait. I don't understand. Are you saying...." and "If that's true then doesn't it mean..." and leading the entire team to conclude that the consultants really are idiots.
• jb3689 5y ago
  Majoring in math in college, I felt like this came up all of the time. Statistics is a prime example of a subject filled with subtle complexity and fairly wild/groundbreaking assumptions/insights that most people just accept as obvious fact for some reason
• asimjalis 5y ago
  An important factor here is that sometimes when people ask stupid questions they just haven’t done the homework. “Instead of doing a Google search let me blast an email to everyone at work.” It’s useful to give an indicator that you are asking at a deeper level. For example, briefly mention some of what you have found and why it is unsatisfactory.
• createunderrate 5y ago
  Epictetus said something similar almost 2000 years ago: "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other."
• trillic 5y ago
  I resonate with the author, but there's no chance I'll wear a helmet while sailing.
• Threeve303 5y ago
  Story of my life. Also, it helps if you can fail up.
• zz865 5y ago
  There is a particular American culture twist to this though as Americans are conditioned to be over-confident and project knowledge even if they know little. An American asking a Brit "Do you know XYZ?" The foreigner will reply "A little" and to an American that means the know nothing - an American who knows "a little" will say they are good at it.
• datavirtue 5y ago
  This reads like an account of a sane, rational, thinking person trying to navigate a world in which all of that is rare.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Heh. My standard classroom experience is that I ask “dumb” questions all the time, often eliciting guffaws. By the end of the class, though, everyone is asking me for help (even the guffaw people). For me, really understanding the material is critical. I can’t deal with rote.
• xyzzy21 5y ago
  Brilliant!
• ciconia 5y ago
  If there's one thing I learned in my time on this earth it's that there are very few stupid people. If my first impression is that the person is "stupid", I usually find that it's just a matter of really listening to the them and to what they have to say with an open mind and an open heart.
  • bambax 5y ago
    Yes and no. Yes there are very few stupid "people", but there are stupid reactions and actions. The reason isn't that the people are stupid, it's often that they are busy with other things. It's amazing to me how conservative people are with their mental energy. Many people hate to think. Not because they can't! Just because they would rather not. I'm not sure why.
• agentultra 5y ago
  Let the haters hate, just ask questions and move on. One of the hardest lessons to learn in life is to not concern yourself with what others think of them. Be polite, courteous, and caring because you want people to like you and you don't want to be ostracized but those things come from within. But, "I want them to think I'm successful/hot/smart/cool/etc" is just a good way to show how you're not any of those things. So many stories are about people who try really hard to maintain these personas and they all fall apart from the tension. Delightful anecdotes in this article. Well done.
• appleflaxen 5y ago
  > In particular, it's often the case that there's a seemingly obvious but actually incorrect reason something is true, a slightly less obvious reason the thing seems untrue, and then a subtle and complex reason that the thing is actually true It would be fun to have a list of these ideas. Anyone have any examples beyond the footnote in the article? (why wider tires have better grip)
• claytn 5y ago
  I have to remind myself of this all the time. The older I get the worse I am about asking questions on topics I don't know. "Ugh I should know that by now", is a pretty common thought that goes through my head. Definitely trying to unlearn this habit by being willing to jump in Discord groups and asking dumb questions. Never a bad experience so far! Great read!
• andrewla 5y ago
  This has happened to me frequently at my current company. I get pulled into a meeting about something that I have no context on because it touches my area of expertise, and the discussions have apparently been stalling out. I brace myself to be the idiot. I'm going to waste everyone's time asking questions that everyone knows the answer to, and I just got looped in, so everyone's going to feel like they need to walk through all the super-obvious stuff to satisfy the one guy who didn't do his homework. So I start asking questions, and slowly begin to realize that nobody in the room has any idea what they are talking about. That there are fundamental misunderstandings and misconceptions about existing systems. And, naturally, it turns out that the questions I have are questions that other people have. This has happened to me so often now that you would think the sinking feeling I get before I brace myself to look stupid would go away, but it never does.
  • d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    I do this all the time too and have observed the same results! I ask a lot of dumb questions like "what does XYZ stand for?" and "what was the original problem you were trying to solve by taking this course of action?". Even though I always have that same sinking feeling, usually by the 4th or 5th question I have a very clear idea of what's going on.
  • Thorentis 5y ago
    This is essentially the Socratic method. Arriving at a shared understanding through the asking of questions. I employ this technique regularly and it rarely fails me.
  • kfarr 5y ago
    Yes and it feels like the older I get the more I have to be the one that plays this role to ask these basic questions as younger professionals are fearful to look dumb in front of others
    • cbtacy 5y ago
      The fear of looking stupid is a profound motivator in many professions. If you want to understand why so many of the stories posted about people using this technique are of more senior folks or people with more authority (bosses, mentors, professors, etc), this is why. Being willing to potentially "look stupid" requires enormous self-confidence.
• RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  Wasnt this link posted not too long ago?
• wolfspider 5y ago
  Intelligence is cultural and I think many people don’t realize that. If I were to be dropped off in a random place on Earth I would encounter people, most likely, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with and even if they did understand me based upon who they are I may seem very stupid. In the wilderness I don’t have a lot of real survival skills and if someone discovered what I was doing to survive I may come off as very stupid in that context as well. Lots of examples and scenarios for this. For myself I have to consider things like just because someone hasn’t read history or literature and doesn’t understand the references I’m making does that make them stupid? Does their culture even concern itself with these things? Who am I to judge ultimately what makes someone stupid or not?
• radiator 5y ago
  He writes "the smallest box". But the set (width, height, depth) of the dimensions of the boxes is not totally ordered. So this question makes no sense. Maybe he means another metric, e.g. by volume? But: - first problem, he seems to expect that people with whom he talks should not make assumptions - second problem, does he really expect the store clerk to calculate the volumes of all the boxes? I don't know, are we sure he is not actually stupid?
• m3kw9 5y ago
  By assuming a question is stupid, you throw yourself into a situation where you decide if you should risk reputation by asking, or by keeping your perceived reputation by not talking. Assumption upon assumptions, ultimately pointless waste of opportunities to move yourself or others forward who has the same questions and afraid to ask.
• seancoleman 5y ago
  10 years ago in my mid 20s, I was a product manager at a tech BigCo (not FAANG). Just after starting, I was in a casual in-person meeting with my boss, my boss's boss, and a couple other executives (closer to a meet 'n greet than formal meeting). I don't remember much of what happened in the meeting, but I distinctly remember the feedback my boss gave me shortly after the meeting: "I think it'd help you if you don't ask obvious questions because it makes you look dumb" (I remember it being delivered more compassionately, but that was the essence). At the time, I was young, insecure, and fraught with imposter syndrome (viewing virtually everyone as smarter than me) so I took it personally. That feedback gave me a visceral "that has got to be the worst feedback ever" reaction. Fast forward 10 years, I've reached the point where I don't think twice about asking questions in any setting. I'm secure and confident in what I know, understand the vastness of what I don't know, and try to be vulnerable about this truth. I'm no longer worried about looking dumb. Maybe some people still think "well that's a dumb question, he should know that" but I'd rather have this experience, while retaining my adaptability "superpower" of being able to dig to the root of a problem, quickly learn context, and rapidly provide solutions. I think about that feedback a lot.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  The problem is that there is really a stupid question, people often can’t tell since they are a bit clueless to begin with. Example is if you are a newly hired subject matter expert(Security for example) and you question something like what is a buffer overflow in a meeting, that could mess you up. It’s a extreme example, but anywhere in between, it could be hard to tell if this is the one question that could undo me.
• asdffdsa 5y ago
  Ah, finally a post I identify with :) These are good points in the article; two other areas I'm willing to look stupid are: - asking a store employee where to find specific items (quicker than most men) - communicating in simple (almost childlike), direct rhetoric. As I get into more intellectual circles, I've found that my reputation does take a hit, but I still think the mental throughput/accuracy of expressing ideas simply is worth the reputational hit
• arthur_sav 5y ago
  Smart (in my book) is someone that knows how to navigate this world in order to achieve ones goals. If you don't care how you're perceived, that's fine. However, you'll be missing out on many opportunities because reputation matters.
• johnisgood 5y ago
  I often pretended I did not know something because then I would have had to do that something every single damn time.
• PatronBernard 5y ago
  I'd be nice if the author would provide some answers for the "stupid" questions that the readers will inevitably ask themselves when they read about laptops and the size of the boxes they come in. Or how else will they acquire a better understanding of the point the author is trying to make?
• jnaddef 5y ago
  I loved the first paragraphs but then they lost me with their list of examples. Those are not examples of asking stupid questions. Those are examples of asking good questions in a stupid way, almost like he is trying to look stupid, for no good reason. Why don't you give your interlocutor some context so they can help you better? Is your goal to instead make them look stupid? I truly don't understand.
• SamPatt 5y ago
  At my company I'd say "ignorance is my superpower." It would usually get a laugh but people seemed to appreciate the mindset of intellectual humility. Asking childish "why?" questions is often very illuminating, although if it causes you to stumble into some aspect of incompetent leadership then be warned.
• legohead 5y ago
  This resonates pretty well with me, re: asking questions I noticed in classes that people were afraid to ask questions, and when they did, everyone else was happy they did so since we all had the same question in mind, usually. So at some point I decided I'm just going to ask any question that pops into my head and stop caring what others think. It worked out great, but now that I'm married, it annoys my wife to no end, especially with an engineer mindset. Like the old joke "go to the store and get milk, if there are eggs, get a dozen", and the husband brings home a dozen milks. I ask these seemingly subtle, stupid, clarifying questions all the time (ie: "a dozen eggs, right?"), and it makes my wife angry -- still after 10 years of marriage.
  • bityard 5y ago
    Hah! I can relate. My wife and I have conversations like this all the time. I've been trained to take an engineering mindset towards things because, frankly, it's how I earn a living and rarely lets me down. Earlier in our marriage, she would make a vague request or statement as a prompt for me to do something. Instead of asking for clarification, I would do what I _guessed_ she wanted. And I would often get it wrong and be met with the response of, "You knew what I meant!" No, clearly I didn't, or I wouldn't have done the wrong thing. These days she is getting better at being clearer about her needs and I am (maybe?) getting more diligent about asking for clarification.
• joethrow29292 5y ago
  >> I see that most people would choose to do the wrong thing to avoid potentially looking stupid to people who are incompetent. This post could be called "Unwillingness to appear human"
• rob_c 5y ago
  Come back to academia, I keep along stupid questions all the time. Granted, my defence is I'm no longer paid to do science so don't mind looking stupid in that regard infront of the boss. I just build things for them to use. It's remarkable how many of the "stupid questions" ends up sounding like the synonymous "reviewer 1". And how many end up catching out high level problems which are lost in the detail in something new and exiting. Such as "OK we build and install it there and calibrate it, but what about networking and power in year 2 after the upgrade?"...
• adverbly 5y ago
  People also think I'm stupid. I am, but people think I'm stupid too. The secret is that we're all dumb as bricks - most of us just dont act like it, and so they go on being a brick. Those of us who are self aware and unashamed can be slightly less stupid on a good day. That's about all we can hope for, but it's worth it imo.
• tikhonj 5y ago
  > Going into an Apple store and asking for (and buying) the computer that comes in the smallest box, which I had a good reason to want at the time This seems fine, but I've found a better approach in this sort of situation is to—as much as possible!—explain your reason to the person helping you. It's not about seeming less stupid (although that is one of the outcomes) but about giving the other person room to help you with your actual goal. When somebody understands why you need the smallest box, they'll have no reservations about finding it for you, and they might have even better suggestions you didn't consider (eg "order this laptop online, the boxes they use for shipping are more efficient").
• akath20 5y ago
  Asking for the computer in the smallest box ruined the rest of the article for me... that isn't the same as asking a silly question when trying to learn, that's just making things unnecessarily difficult. There were otherwise good points though such as willingness to ask what a question means, but that first example really threw off the rest of it for me.
• keeptrying 5y ago
  There's a difference between willingness to look stupid and intentionally trying to flip the bozo-bit on others to figure out their boundaries. You can actually make this a habit and it becomes hard to fix! If you ever want to start a company, you have to make it a habit to look impressive.
• t0mmyb0y 5y ago
  It is great to have others think you are stupid, which I am. They don't ask for anything.
• speedgeek 5y ago
  I have this theory that there is an direct relationship between intellect and doing really stupid things. A genius will sometimes do the most idiotic things. Take comfort the next time you do something really dumb because it indicates you are generally very smart.
  • the_cat_kittles 5y ago
    ah yes, we all know the saying "stupid is as stupid doesn't"
  • bittercynic 5y ago
    If I'm spending very much energy thinking how brilliant or stupid I look or feel, then I'm not focused on doing something fun or useful. We probably all have to put some amount of energy into image management to be part of society, but the less energy put into that the better. At least for me.
• mattjaynes 5y ago
  If you're looking for resilient, growth-minded friends, I'd recommend taking up a class where everyone is guaranteed to look bad in the beginning. Only those that can get through the rough waters in the beginning will make it to the "shore" of basic competence. It can be a great filter. I realized this when trying to learn Salsa dancing. Some people have a natural talent, but most don't and that includes me. It was one of the most difficult things for me to learn and it took months of very very bad dancing to get to a passable level. As a guy, it can be tough post-college to make other good male friends, but I look back at all my male friends now and they are almost all from Salsa. There's a real camaraderie that comes from passing through a challenge together and making it to the other side. Sure - it's not a Navy Seal experience or something that intense, but the fear of social humiliation is a strong one and if you can get through that with some other solid people, it builds a real bond.
• irrational 5y ago
  One of my favorite is “I don’t know how to do that.” I’ve found that people absolutely love demonstrating that they know something and will happily show you how to do X. Or, everyone says that they don’t know how to do X either. Then we all figure out how to do X or give someone the task to research it and report back. A good thing to remember is nobody knows what you don’t know.
• cpb 5y ago
  I'll add to the voices here mentioning vulnerability. I believe it takes strength and courage to choose vulnerability. I am starting to recognize that the courage is required because it can be a filter. It isn't just the chance that a "nurse or phlebotomist" might judge you harshly, there are many people in the world that'll sooner reject than connect with you. Still, if we are to be true to ourselves, perhaps vulnerability can minimize the total amount of pain in our lives. It'll take weighting the acute pain of rejection as vulnerable as lesser than the chronic pain of acceptance with insecurity. May we be so fortunate to choose.
• WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  I find it to be productive sometimes to have the attitude of the brave soldier Švejk. "I report obediently that I've been officially declared to be an idiot, sir". Most of the time it lowers expectations people have of me and relieves me from the worries about not being able to meet said expectations.
• greyhair 5y ago
  My golden skill at my last job was asking questions. My director, who was a peer at a prior startup, knew this about me, and dragged me into meetings where my core interest was only peripherally related. I often spent time in the meeting with my head slightly tipped back and my eyes closed, because I would have already read through the prepared slide deck twice before the meeting, and I wanted to concentrate on what was being said. A lot of times, people thought I was asleep. They were wrong. One of the first meetings at this fortune 100 company, a chip architect was running through the design (too many details) and he mentioned one particular communication link they were going to use, because that was the only port available on the companion chip they were using to constrain costs. I immediately opened my eyes and asked one question on the bandwidth/latency for one use case, that would be heavily used, and the room went silent. The architect tried to wave it off, but another hardware engineer I had worked with for three years at a prior job said he would run the numbers on it and get an answer. In the end, the design was cancelled, because that one flaw (there were likely others) meant the design would never work. People at that company didn't know me well, yet, and as I said, I wasn't core to many of the meetings I attended, and I spent most of the meeting sitting quietly with my eyes closed. Never assume I am sleeping. And don't try to wave off my 'stupid' questions. I ask the stupid questions, because if you cannot address it with a simple direct answer, then you don't understand the stupid question.
• tomxor 5y ago
  > if a date thinks I'm stupid because I ask them what a word means, so much so that they show it in their facial expression and/or tone of voice, I think it's pretty unlikely that we're compatible, so I view finding that out sooner rather than later as upside and not downside. This generalises well... ultimately if being pretentious is valued over being genuine then it's probably not a valuable or healthy place for you to be, situation to be in, or person to be around. For the other more common example of the intern/junior who fears looking stupid to their own detriment. Their only defence is that work places exist which _do_ actually prosecute people for asking "stupid" but useful questions - if they happen to be at such a workplace, it's not worth staying anyway.
• DoreenMichele 5y ago
  This is great to see on the front page and I hope it positively influences the culture here. HN is larger than it used to be and it's harder to ask "stupid sounding" questions and get meaningful, civil engagement than it used to be. You are more likely to get guff for it than used to be the case. I fell in love with HN because of the quality of the discussion which was rooted in a sincere attitude of "There are no stupid questions" (assuming you were asking in good faith and not trolling or sea lioning or something like that). And I'm not enjoying HN as much as I used to and I think part of it is I love asking the "stupid" questions and getting real answers from knowledgeable people and I feel like that's much harder to find than it used to be.
  • def_true_false 5y ago
    Hey, thanks for this comment. Do you know of other places besides HN that also have this combination of "no stupid questions" and quality discussion?
    • DoreenMichele 5y ago
      I don't know. HN seems like the gold standard in that regard though you might be able to find some reddits that suit you that do a fair job for the topic in question.
• jturpin 5y ago
  The fear of looking stupid cripples me in just about everything I do. Work, both professionally and personal projects, competitive videogames, even playing piano or guitar. Maybe I can take a hint from this post and embrace it rather than avoiding it. I think this post might be triggering a lot of people who feel it might be criticizing them. It takes a lot of emotional energy to _look_ stupid in front of people, in ways that I would guess most people here (including myself) don't.
• d4mi3n 5y ago
  This really resonates with me. I've always had the strong opinion that a corporate culture of open, cooperative, non-judgemental dialog is critical to building strong teams. The OP's experiences mirror my own: I try to be careful to avoid this failure mode when onboarding interns and junior folks and have generally been sucessful, but it's taken me up to six weeks to convince people that it's ok for them to ask questions and, until that happens, I have to constantly ask them how things are going to make sure they're not stuck. That works fine if someone is my intern, but I can observe that many intern and new hire mentors do not do this and that often results in a bad outcome for all parties In almost every case, the person had at least interned at other companies, but they hadn't learned that it was ok to ask questions. P.S. if you're a junior engineer at a place where it's not ok to ask questions, you should look for another job if circumstances permit If you want dependable, competent people to work with, you need to give them the space to become those kinds of colleagues.
• raman162 5y ago
  After reading, I don't think the author is willing to look stupid, I think they don't care at all if they look stupid, an attribute that I still think is remarkable. I wish I had the self-confidence to not care so much about what others think. Something I'm still slowly working on.
• tfehring 5y ago
  Minor point: I assume the author's rationale for carrying only liability insurance is that he has enough money to comfortably self-insure the risk of an at-fault accident. For businesses that approach makes sense - big companies self-insure most or all of their fleets, because buying third-party insurance costs more than the actuarially fair cost of risk. But those businesses also have teams of people to deal with the giant hassle that is the claims process, including dealing with the other party's (or parties') insurers, determining fault, and suing and/or negotiating a legal settlement as needed. For individuals that service is largely inseparable from risk transfer, i.e., you can really only get it through insurance. Lawyers can handle a subset of the process, but not all of it, and besides, relying on lawyers for it is probably at least as expensive as the non-risk-transfer component of insurance in expectation. In general, if someone's wealthy enough that they can effectively self-insure, even if they're completely risk-neutral, their time is probably valuable enough that they'd be better off buying insurance just to avoid having to go through the equivalent of the claims process themselves. So unless the author's rationale is wildly different than I'm thinking, in that example his insurance agent was right and he did make a stupid decision.
• rcthompson 5y ago
  Apparently I have a talent for asking basic questions in a way that doesn't make me look stupid, because I ask a lot of questions, especially when learning new things, and I don't think I've ever been called stupid because of it.
• ncmncm 5y ago
  The problem with looking stupid is that actually stupid people (i.e., people who do actually stupid things) are dangerous both to themselves and others. So, seeming to be stupid leads people to distance themselves from you, to avoid being caught up in expected consequences of stupid actions. Donald Rumsfeld was both actively intelligent and very actively stupid. Staying away from him was smart. He could have just asked the Apple droid to bring out one of each laptop in its box, and picked one without saying why he was picking that one. The whole transaction would have gone quicker. So, making himself look stupid produced a predictably suboptimal result in that case.
• kakuri 5y ago
  I failed a technical interview at a large financial institution and I'm sure the interviewers thought I was stupid. As I gazed at the atrocious code they wanted me to make changes to and listened to them misuse programming terms as they tried in vain to communicate what changes they wanted me to make I'm sure my bewilderment was all over my face. Everything else about the company was great, but all my enthusiasm died when I saw into the engineering side of the business.
• 7402 5y ago
  I think that sometimes "willingness to look stupid" can simply be a function of your power situation. When I was a respected Principal Engineer, secure in my position, I was willing to look stupid. When I was in a contract-to-hire position, where I had spent months looking for a job and where I was constantly judged and I thought I might be let go at any moment, I was not willing to look stupid. When I was a long-time group leader and project architect, I was willing to look stupid. When I worked at a place where I was in the political and religious minority, I was not willing to look stupid. One shouldn't be afraid to look stupid in situations where that fear is groundless. But I think it's worth having some empathy for people who are in a situation where looking stupid could actually be a threat.
  • Woberto 5y ago
    The author mentions this as the biggest drawback, understandably so - if getting a job depends on knowledge and confidence, which it usually does, you really need to be careful with how you come off
• jack_riminton 5y ago
  I did an MBA which involved plenty of consulting projects for real firms. I pride myself on being brave enough to ask stupid questions and I found that this was a superpower when consulting on complicated projects. Often the instigators don't know the answers themselves so you go on journey of discovery together in the first few meetings. A lot of the international students, especially from Asian countries, would never ask such 'stupid' questions for fear of losing face. This became apparent for a lot of them in the final presentations when they still didn't understand the real problems
• softwarebeware 5y ago
  Kahneman's Thinking fast and thinking slow explains all of this. The fast-thinking part of our brain (the sub-conscious) tells us the "obvious" answer all the time. And it is WRONG. It's only by asking "stupid" questions that we start to engage our slow-thinking conscious brain and find out the truth. Idiots.
• jcoq 5y ago
  One of the most memorable experiences of my post-doc was working with the venerable Joachim Cuntz. It was often amusing to attend talks with him as he'd usually blast the speaker with a barrage of seemingly rudimentary questions. This trait is shared among almost all of the mathematicians I've respected deeply and it's always astounding how the most trivial lines of questioning can lead to deep, profound realizations.
• darkerside 5y ago
  "looking stupid" seems like a poor abstraction for two other things: 1) failing to come to terms with your own insufficiency, and 2) being willing to do things that others are not doing. I think separating them out helps us realize they are separate skills, and this way, those of us who are not naturally talented at them are more likely to pick them up. Another helpful thing would have been examples. What were the stupid questions he was asking in college?
• hsn915 5y ago
  Having this skill probably helps with all sorts of situations. For example, showing people an incomplete product either as potential users or investors. If you're afraid of looking stupid .. you will probably lack the courage to get your product out there even though it's not yet complete.
• beervirus 5y ago
  There’s a lot of value in this, and I try to do it at work. I’m confident enough in my abilities that I don’t mind asking questions when there’s something I don’t understand. And I find that people who won’t do that are insecure, and often for good reason. But still… it can be taken too far. Just as a matter of being a person who can socialize normally, what’s wrong with spending a few seconds explaining yourself? “This is gonna sound silly, but I want the computer in the smallest box. Here’s why.” That kind of thing. I don’t let my ego get in the way of learning new things. But I don’t go out of my way to sound like an eccentric weirdo either.
• b3morales 5y ago
  Funny, there's a good complement to this* that someone else just posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947926 _"How to get useful answers to your questions"_ *Complementary to the headline and premise, at least; a bit less so the actual contents.
• desktopninja 5y ago
  Its actually pretty amusing to watch the "cognitive dissonance" on the other persons face when they clearly labelled you "stupid" but your solution to problem the problem at hand is clear/concise/defined. They eventually learn to fear you :(. Ah humanity!
• lazybreather 5y ago
  Here is when I feel really stupid. There is a highly upvoted post on HN. Read the article and feel like you have learnt something really impactful. Largely agree with the content. Only to get to the comments section to see the article getting torn apart left right and centre. Thank you HN. You make me look and feel very very stupid. :)
• AQuantized 5y ago
  I had this happen to me at a company recently. They were initially impressed with my linux knowledge and how I could port many of the processes they were previously confined to windows with. However, they had an unusual server setup, and when I asked a few very basic questions about it they totally reversed their opinion of me. When my ability to actually implement functionality was incommensurate with their perception of my level of understanding, they would still privilege their perception as colored by me asking very basic questions (which despite appearances can often yield surprisingly useful/surprising information). Despite being aware of what was 'going on', and generally having high confidence, this still impacts my self perception on some level. I find when I optimize for being perceived as intelligent instead of actually trying to understand things effectively I get much better reviews. It's difficult to know which is appropriate if you want to advance your career.
• waterhouse 5y ago
  "Discovery is the privilege of the child: the child who has no fear of being once again wrong, of looking like an idiot, of not being serious, of not doing things like everyone else." — Alexander Grothendieck
• banana_maker 5y ago
  I think Dan is on point here with asking questions for true understanding and not being afraid to do that. Our society, unfortunately, for the most part rewards those who are confident and act like they know everything instead of those who admit they don't know something. And being willing to look dumb/bad is crucial to learning a language, instrument, or new hobby well... --- But he lost me with the examples of the Apple computer box. Employees aren't little robots- they're actual humans that (mostly) are trying to be helpful. It would've taken Dan -significantly- less time and effort to just say WHY he was looking for a smaller box. Probably the same deal with the auto insurance agent- he could've just explained WHY he wanted such an unusual request, and the agent likely wouldn't have incredulously asked him 3 times. In my experience people are straightforward and respectful with you when you're straightforward and respectful with them. Waltzing in and going "give me the thing in the smallest box" makes absolutely zero sense and it's like Dan was just purposefully playing a game of being obtuse towards random help staff... People aren't intelligent or stupid because they get confused when someone comes in with very unusual requests that they refuse to elaborate on. --- Also, I truly don't get the box thing. Technology-wise it makes no sense. Why doesn't Dan explain the reason in this post either? —- Last edit: I had an unusual situation once in Seoul at this one cafe that I visited a lot. There were two registers, and for some reason my credit card just wouldn’t work on the left register. So a few times I just asked “Hey, this is an unusual request, but could we use the machine on the right? My card works on that one, but not this one.” And guess what? The employees went “oh, ok” or “sure”. It took slightly more effort on my part than saying “hey, use the machine on the right”. But then nobody was confused. It had nothing to do with the employees being intelligent or stupid or being perceived as such.
• pklausler 5y ago
  One side benefit of being willing to say "I don't know" and to ask embarrassing questions, when one is in a position of being a supposed expert, is that this kind of humility lends you credibility when you do claim to know something. (I'm talking about experts with/for whom I've worked, to be clear, not myself.)
• danity 5y ago
  Dan Luu interprets confusion from his lack of explanation as people thinking he is stupid. It almost seems the other way around, Dan Luu is the one who thinks other people are stupid (Apple Store clerk, insurance salesperson) because they don't know what he knows.
• at_a_remove 5y ago
  I preface mine with "In the words of the great philosopher Yankovic, I am going to dare to be stupid ..." Partially, because in IT -- seemingly more than in other industries -- variations of the phrase "Why haven't you just ..." arise, "just" being that magical simplifier which compacts all complexity into a single and obvious step, and often come with some measure of "why haven't the boffin pressed the button, I told the boffin that the button needs to be pressed" attitude, and I do not want to do that to someone else. The other portion of it is being the rubber duck, quack quack.
  • davidw 5y ago
    I was hoping someone would reference that song.
• bob1029 5y ago
  I try to lead by example on this one - particularly in front of customers or other junior team members. There is a huge hazard in training people to avoid looking like they are doing the wrong thing. Most of our struggle today is extracting useful information from the business so we can deliver a properly-configured product to them. You don't want anyone to feel like they are being persecuted for not knowing something or you will not be able to get much worthwhile information out of them. The way I push myself in front of the stupid bus is by intentionally putting myself into situations where I cannot possibly provide a 100% smooth delivery. For example, instead of spending an hour to refresh myself on a complex code question before hopping on a 1:1 screenshare (presumably so I can look like a total smartass), I will ask the other teammember to fire up a screenshare right away without any planning. The consequence is that I inevitably look a little lost every time and the other team member has to remind me of the gaps as we go through the problem. Over time, I believe this builds a strong sense that even the lead/architect is not better than anyone else and that we all have an ongoing role in keeping each other synchronized on the relevant domain knowledge.
• soheil 5y ago
  This ties closely to plausible deniability. I seriously think this field is under developed and more people need to learn from an early age how the most plausible sounding explanation is not always, and maybe in certain fields even often, not the right answer. It's easy for engineers to intuitively grasp this since we see so many oddball failure modes in software development.
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• drummer 5y ago
  This person definitely is stupid for thinking masks work against sarscov2.
• jFriedensreich 5y ago
  i have met people like this and never thought they were stupid, but really rude. The point is not that they not only do not care if they look stupid, they also don't care or enjoy if they confuse/ create unease in their conversation partner by witholding critical information to let them understand their reasoning. the best case is something like aristotle where at the end of a conversation there is some revelation that makes you take another standpoint. but the worst example is asking for a computer in the smallest box without sharing the WHY. this action likely shows that someone either treats the partner as a monkey working in a store whose human whish to understand is worth less than the energy to give a reason or it shows an autistic enjoyment if creating confusion because normal human interactions are perceived as boring.
• desktopninja 5y ago
  Pinky and the Brain. Need I say more? :)
• mwfunk 5y ago
  People need to be absolutely fearless about looking stupid. Whether or not you look stupid at any given moment is an imponderable, an unanswerable question. The fear of looking stupid is more paranoia and insecurity than anything else. As long as you do your absolute very best to communicate to other people, even when that's difficult or impossible, that's the only thing that matters. If someone else decides you're an idiot you have no control over it, and if you're truly doing your best to communicate then someone else dismissing you as stupid is on them. What's much more self-destructive than being afraid of looking stupid is feeling like you need to look like you know 100% of what is going on at all times- this inevitably leads to bullshitting and half-truths and weird circuitous conversations where it's unclear who actually knows what. Never try to conceal ignorance. People who matter and people who you actually would want to work with and work for would never judge someone for admitting ignorance or asking questions. People who don't matter, and people no one would want to work with or for are the ones who get on someone's case for asking what they think is a stupid question.
• tuatoru 5y ago
  Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design by Donald Gause and Gerald Weinberg is a great reference for learning how to ask questions and what questions to ask. https://geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Exploring_Requirements.html https://geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Exploring_Requirements.html
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• diskzero 5y ago
  My variation on this theme has been "Willingness to be Curious".
• ryanar 5y ago
  Author's site could do with this small css change to make the articles more readable on larger screens: body { max-width: 80ch; margin: auto; }
• dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  I feel like I could have written this post, even the trouble getting blood drawn, and the response from nurses when you tell them. Except for this part: The person who helped me, despite being very polite, also clearly thought I was a bozo and kept explaining things like "the size of the box and the size of the computer aren't the same". Of course I knew that, but I didn't want to say something like "I design CPUs. I understand the difference between the size of the box the computer comes and in the size of the computer and I know it's very unusual to care about the size of the box, but I really want the one that comes in the smallest box". Just saying the last bit without establishing any kind of authority didn't convince the person In that case I most certainly would have established that I knew what I was talking about, and also explained exactly why I cared about the box. Maybe the author never worked in retail or public facing tech support, but when you're in those jobs you learn to not believe anything the user/customer says. At least until they let you know they know what they're talking about. The asking questions part also reminded me of a story from when I was a junior network engineer in my mid 20s, working with two guys in their 50s who had each been doing the job for over 15 years. A little bit after I started they gave me a task that required me to use a system they knew I didn't have access to. After about an hour I figured out that I would need it. I asked them how to use the xyz server, and they both started laughing. It was a test to see if I would ask for help. Apparently the last guy who had to do that task waited 3 days before asking for help, and didn't even figure out he needed to use the system in question. They decided to see how I would handle it, instead of just telling me outright.
  • h2odragon 5y ago
    Never did find a band widener, but did get to talk to everyone in the radio department...
• davesque 5y ago
  Shoutout to anyone using user agent styling in 2021.
• dynm 5y ago
  I'm really surprised by a lot of the negativity here. The author never claimed to actually be stupid, nor did they claim to be humble, nor did they claim that this particular essay was an exercise in looking stupid or an exercise in humility. All they did was claim there were some situations where it was beneficial to be willing to look stupid, and listed those situations.
  • WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    And this could be precisely the reason of all the negativity.
• davesque 5y ago
  There's a flip side to this. Not sure if it's mentioned in the article since I only skimmed it. The complementary point is that it really is stupid to try and make other people look stupid. And it's stupid because it's counter-productive, not because it reveals that you're trying to learn something, which is covered by the article. This problem seems to be endemic in tech (although, subjectively, it seems to have improved over the past couple years or so). It's such a trope and a drag to deal with people who act like everything is obvious. Don't they enjoy talking about things they understand? Then they should act like all questions are great and answer them with words. It's fun for the whole family. Actually, that does seem to maybe cut to the heart of the matter. Maybe those types don't like "dumb" questions because they don't really understand anything and are trying to hide it. P.S. I guess the article does touch on this when it mentions the anecdote about the people in class and the "dumb" questions being posed to the teacher. Come to think of it, I guess the whole article is kinda like a commentary on this phenomenon actually :).
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  A problem with asking stupid questions is that if the person you're asking is not smart, you're gonna get stupid answers. Sometimes you have to ask it in a "smart way", or you'll be sitting there going back and forth for an hour while the other person keeps giving you stupid answers, because they couldn't see why you were asking a stupid question. The opposite also happens. You ask a stupid question, and people try to give you "smart" answers that aren't actually answering your first question, because they assume you're stupid / "doing it wrong".
• fungiblecog 5y ago
  i always start my questions with something like "maybe i'm being a bit thick but..." which works well because it signposts up front that you're not trying to be awkward or obstructive. Most of the time it turns out that a bunch of other people had the same questions but didn't want to appear stupid
• jollygoodshow 5y ago
  I think there's a very big difference between asking simple questions (especially when gaining an understanding of a situation) and asking actually stupid questions (unrelated to the topic or questions that have already been answered). This article is claiming the former as the latter and saying "Even when I'm stupid I'm so smart"
• nkabbara 5y ago
  The mental frame that I often use to help me be ok with looking (and feeling) stupid is: stupid now, smart later. You can train yourself to invoke it when the feeling comes up, if you didn’t have the chance to preload it before the interaction. I think the only requirement for it to work though is that the intentions behind your questions are whole.
• chimen 5y ago
  By the end of it I realised everyone thinks he's stupid. He is intelligent though.
• SavantIdiot 5y ago
  If you're rich, it's called being "eccentric", not "stupid." When I turned 40 about 10+x years ago, I started wearing garish colors and weird jewelry, and styling my hair differently every few months. I'm talking mullets, or perms, with yellow blazers, leather bracers with gems, purple pants, rings on all fingers, red shoes, bright green shirts with zebra stripes... I rotate everything routinely. Now people expect I'm going to say weird things and look at me suspiciously. Random people start friendly conversations, local people I see when I walk to the store tell me the look forward to seeing me. It's called not giving a fuck and it feels fantastic...
• luthfur 5y ago
  Reminds me of Josh Waitzkin's concept of "investment in loss". Such a great and rewarding approach if you are able to suspend your ego and practice it.
• jkuria 5y ago
  Nice piece but could the op please invest in formatting his articles? Surely a techie like you can spend an hour installing Wordpress and a nice theme. Your ideas would then spread more.
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• hardwaregeek 5y ago
  One important point made is that leaders should build environments where people aren't afraid to look stupid. I worked at a place where a senior developer would laugh after "winning" an argument with me[1]. I have to say that's the only work environment where I wanted to punch a member of my team. It was also the environment least conducive to dialogue and learning. Even if you're right and the person is genuinely being stupid, you don't need to rub it in. Chances are they'll already feel stupid from their own judgement. [1]: A lot of our arguments boiled down to us debating stuff where neither of us knew what we were talking about, but I was the only one willing to admit that.
• m0zg 5y ago
  There are three things in tension here. 1. It is usually combinatorially impossible to answer all the questions when solving a problem - people just choose some random walk over the problem space and it doesn't always lead to ideal results. 2. It is socially unacceptable for "senior" people (who usually have better mental model of higher level concerns) not to project smug confidence in front of less "senior" people, so they pretend to know things they do not. 3. People have evolved to be lazy as fuck, so unless they absolutely must know something and can't do without it, they mostly won't even bother. Some won't bother even _if_ they can't do without. I don't have solutions to #1 and #3, and I doubt #3 can even be solved at all. But I do have a solution for #2 - it's the Socratic method (or as they call it at Microsoft "precision questioning"). It lets you save face by asking pointed, outcome-oriented questions of someone who likely knows more about the problem, without necessarily making your own lack of knowledge obvious. Besides that it also surfaces the assumptions, some of which routinely turn out to be wrong, and it's the easiest method I know for getting people to change their mind on things, because they feel like they've arrived at the answers using "their own" thought process. It is difficult to master, so it too runs into #3, however, but I think all engineers, senior and junior would benefit from learning this. Another upside of learning it is it makes it harder for unscrupulous others to manipulate you maliciously via Socratic questioning, since you know what they're trying to do.
• yutyut 5y ago
  There was a foreign student in my CS classes who asked lots of questions at the end of class while everybody rolled their eyes because they wanted to leave. I assumed he was having issues with the language barrier or was just slow. Turns out he was the top student in the program and I would guess this was due in part to his willingness to ask questions and lack of fear in asking them in front of a room. He helped me get through an Operating Systems course the next semester. More importantly, he showed a young me that asking questions is actually a sign of maturity and intellectual honesty and that what the peanut gallery thinks is of little consequence. That lesson has served me well in the last decade. He's now a PhD at a major research university and a close friend.
• canabisjunke 5y ago
  Here is my situation. You decide if I’m stupid. We’re evaluating an alternate database for our product already on prod. I sat in along with my manager for meeting with 5 folks from mongodb. They presented the annual cost for a licensed usage of mongodb enterprise for 500 gigs of ram at $132k annually. So my question in the end was - “If I were to simply install mongodb on our server with more than 500gigs of ram allocated across the mongo cluster by aws, how would you police us down for the extra usage? Is your server recording ram usage and sending it back to you?” Everyone was silent and the account t manager from mongo said : “Well it’s an honour system, we trust a big company such as yourself to use the product accordingly , we don’t police or check”, my manager followed up with a jovial remark “I don’t know why you ask such questions “. End of the day, I felt super stupid. Point being - I’m not a hidden genius or anything, sometimes I just ask in haste without thinking through.
• shuckles 5y ago
  The layout of this writer’s website certainly proves their point, but I’m not sure how it helps them.
• kevbin 5y ago
  > I'd rather spend my "weirdness points" on pushing radical ideas than on dressing unusually Agree. This could be a post in itself.
• drited 5y ago
  Dude cares so little about looking stupid that he writes an essay to explain that he really wasn't actually stupid all the times he looked stupid.
• bob_neumann 5y ago
  True story:. I'm a techie and a nerd and I've always been near the top of my class. One of the things that I enjoy is it really dry humor. And one of the ways I can get a laugh out of people is by stating something that is obvious as though I just figured it out. Or intentionally making massive understatements. Like if I just broke my arm and I would say something like, "I have found that breaking your arm is unpleasant." When you say it around people who are generally quick witted, it takes a second for them to grok what you're saying and then they figure out that you're cracking a joke and then they smile, usually laugh. But years ago I found myself working as an aircraft mechanic. And my cohorts whom I rode around with were very blue collar in language and culture, and several of them had been chosen as "mechanic" because they hadn't performed that well on an aptitude test. So one day I made one of my famous observe-the-obvious funny statements, and one member of the group whom I'm pretty sure was one of the low aptitude scorers, looked at me with obvious disgust and said, "You must be one of the dumbest people I've ever met." He didn't understand why I started howling with laughter.
• im_down_w_otp 5y ago
  I'm willing, but I also have no choice in the matter, so it's hard to say whether it's benevolence or banality.
• baby 5y ago
  I have thousands of these stories. The only reason why I understand so many things today is because I dare asking stupid questions, and I do it a lot. During my master, one of the students laughed out loud after I asked a question during class. I told him "there are no stupid questions" and he replied "your question was stupid though". Guess who ended up with the better job. In my previous job some guy berated me publicly (on slack) for asking too many questions.
• RattleyCooper 5y ago
  This is also why a lot of people who are actually ignorant get really aggressive when someone points out a mistake. Because they care A LOT about appearances. They don't actually care about improving or actually being correct, so long as people think they're smart. Or really, as long as they think that other people think they're smart. I'm very much like the author, in that I just ask questions and don't worry about looking stupid (what a silly thing to worry about), but I think my friend is the polar opposite, and this article really helped me understand the dynamic between the 2 of us a little bit better. I always wondered why he would get super defensive if I correct him on anything, but it makes sense if he thinks I'm stupid and is getting corrected by the stupid guy lol
• brenainn 5y ago
  I too look stupid, but not in "so ahead of everyone I look stupid" way, or in a Socratic ironic way, just stupid. It does mean I can ask dumb questions and keep up with what's happening, or propose dumb ideas and sometimes they stick, but I think I'd prefer to not look, and consequently be treated like, I'm stupid.
• AdamN 5y ago
  Stupid questions are a great way to tease out when people seem to be saying similar things but they're not actually saying the same thing.
• nikisweeting 5y ago
  Hey, I wrote something similar along these lines a while back ;) https://docs.monadical.com/s/ask-stupid-questions https://docs.monadical.com/s/ask-stupid-questions
• jtlienwis 5y ago
  One of the most intelligent people I went to college with just always seemed to ask the dumbest, most simple questions to the professor. I know now, that what he was doing was establishing the ground floor so to speak of his knowledge. The first principles. Once he had those in hand, he knew he could use logic and deduce most of the rest. Especially when grounded in the mathematical equations that went along with the first principles.
• dan-robertson 5y ago
  I think the conclusion I draw from this is that, on the margin, there should be more times when people think I am stupid. I can’t think of a good example off the top of my head of this happening. I think the car insurance example is perhaps an example of the three-part explanation talked about in the article because sometimes comprehensive cover is cheaper than third party cover (the argument goes 1. Comprehensive is better because it covers everything, 2. Third party is cheaper because it covers less, 3. Actually comprehensive is sometimes cheaper for weird reasons like riskier drivers self-selecting for third party cover) but I could also be wrong here. An obvious way would be that the author’s case is not one where comprehensive cover is cheaper and a less obvious way would be if comprehensive cover is deceptively cheap (eg maybe if you get into an accident where the insurer covers first-party damage because you have a comprehensive policy, your future premiums under any policy are higher than if your insurer had only paid for third party damage.)
• lend000 5y ago
  This is something I'm working on. It's a lifelong process, especially when you get into the mindset of thinking you're smart (a problem for most folks on HN, and not necessarily because they're wrong). Nobody knows everything, and even if you're a hyper-conformist who always tows the line and parrots experts instead of evaluating ideas from first principles, you ought to find peace in the fact that 500 years from now (and perhaps even some in our lifetimes), people will look back at many of our most fundamental, passionate, and obviously true opinions with a mix of disdain, pity, and fascination.
• rstuart4133 5y ago
  This reads like this flip side of Paul Graham's essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular" http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html Spoiler alert: he thinks it's because whereas most people try really hard to be popular, nerds focus on other things. Like understanding the root cause of an issue, even if it involves making yourself appear stupid. I can't say it's news: I'm like that myself. It has it's downsides though. I focus so much on the real world, things like spending hours on personal grooming to impress others just don't happen. My wife thinks I'm a slob. I'm a very tidy & clean slob, but it's true.
• unobatbayar 5y ago
  From my experience, the Japanese people have really mastered the art of looking stupid. Going as far as acting like they don't understand anything and has zero clue of what you're talking about. In nicer cases, they get so amazed of how well you play the piano when in reality they're one of the greatest of pianists and you're just a beginner. It's difficult to tell who is who. Knowing this, I cautiously assume everyone is smart. Sometimes, it's scary how smart/skilled someone actually turns out to be.
• AlexCoventry 5y ago
  I'd really like to hear his pitch for working at MS.
• AlexCoventry 5y ago
  > I think that being willing to say things that I know have a good chance of causing people to think I'm stupid is a deeply ingrained enough habit that it's not worth changing just for interviews and I can't think of another context where the cost is nearly as high as it is in interviews. Unwillingness to adapt to circumstances maybe isn't stupidity, but it's definitely self-limiting.
• hyperpallium2 5y ago
  huh. i just realized a lot of people probably think i'm stupid.
• hyperpallium2 5y ago
  You need innner confidence in your intelligence to be able to bear outer stupidity. I think that's why many comedians are extraordinarily smart. Not because comedy requires intellugence, but because it requires looking stupid.
• amznbyebyebye 5y ago
  The best people who do this are those that ask stupid questions in a way that makes it seem like the question they’re asking is because the other person is stupid
• guhsnamih 5y ago
  I think he also has a way of writing that makes him look like he doesn't know how to. Will look forward to that post. For now I'll just go back to the second or maybe third reading of his post.
• deedree 5y ago
  But why did he want the smallest box?
• guhsnamih 5y ago
  > most small (by transaction volume) startups could get away with being on a managed platform like Heroku or Google App Engine. BTW what's wrong with this? Honest question!
  • trog 5y ago
    > BTW what's wrong with this? Honest question! In the context of the article, I imagine it's that some Kubernetes expert couldn't design and sell them an overcomplicated microservices-based solution which would basically only really be useful at Netflix-scale.
• adamzerner 5y ago
  Through whatever quirk of my psychology, looking stupid has always been something that I have been 100% ok with. There are various stories that come to mind, but the two that stick out the most happened in middle school science class. One time we were learning about volcanoes. And, of course, that they erupt. I was thinking about how the eruption is dangerous and causes harm, and what we could do to prevent it. My first thought was, well, to put a cap on the volcano. So I raised my hand and asked the teacher "what if we put a cap on it?", and everyone laughed. Another time we were learning about plants, and how if you give them too much water they will die. That immediately sounded insane to me and I raised my hand to ask, "Wait, why don't they just not drink it?!" Both of these stories lingered around for years and people knew me as someone who lacks "common sense" and who is known for asking silly questions.
• seanhandley 5y ago
  Re: "You are not noticing when people think you're stupid" and particularly > it's very important that you know that they think that you're stupid and will keep increasing the intensity of their responses until you acknowledge that they think you're stupid. I rarely get criticised or mocked and I think it's because I'm tall, white, and male. If I say something naive, people are almost always accommodating (ok, not on the Internet) because they don't want to risk offending the big beardy dude. This is a shame because I've spent much of my life: a) thinking people are basically kind and accommodating b) not being questioned, so missing a potentially valuable source of data with which to check myself and improve
• 19h 5y ago
  I consider this the to be the opposite -- smart people that ask questions straight away when they don't understand something is the opposite of looking stupid, and it's the first thing I ask new hires to do. I don't want employees that say "yes" but rather ask "why?", and I most definitely don't want employees to answer questions if they don't know what they mean to begin with just to save their face. There's a difference between not saying anything and asking "What are you referring to right now specifically?", "What does DMA mean in the context of the server?" and "Sorry, I'm very experienced with X. How hard would you say is it to do Y with it compared to doing it with Z, which I have worked with in the past?". Not only does it show that a person is listening, but it also improves the ability of everyone in the team to express and elaborate on details that are relevant to the topic being discussed.
• Thorentis 5y ago
  For somebody who doesn't mind looking stupid, there is a glaring lack of examples of when you actually were stupid. This seems like a really long example of a typical narcissistic interview answer to "what is your biggest weakness?", of "people think I look stupid but actually I'm really really smart".
• tigerlily 5y ago
  As an engineer frequently working with high-voltage, in my world there is simply no such thing as a stupid question. I gently remind my technicians of such whenever they come to me with questions they feel are stupid.
• lbayes 5y ago
  This is my not-so-secret weapon and I highly recommend it. I spent some years at a FAANG, some of them in management, and it was shocking how many meetings could be unlocked by one person willing to risk sounding stupid. I was also shocked by how many people would approach me after to say they were wondering the same things. The flip side to this, was that I would also occasionally step on someone's favorite baby, which they usually didn't like much.
• familiarzombie6 5y ago
  Being so willing to look dumb is a luxury much more easily afforded to the highly intelligent.
• eranation 5y ago
  Making “asking stupid questions” socially acceptable can solve SO MANY issues. Being able to politely say what everyone is thinking and not keep things to blow later is also probably the way for world peace. (Or world war 3…)
• hipjiveguy 5y ago
  The problem is that there are always problems. Many look at a problem as a frustating situation, and wish it would go away. That's what "they think I'm stupid" is mostly about. Most people just want things to work, which is understandable and reasonable, but not rational. It's wishful thinking, that has no action or teeth. In reality, constant change and development will always bring about frustration. The true problem is accepting that you can't control everything. But after realizing that, pretend that you are in control. Be ok with the results, no matter what's the ultimate solution. ie. Ignore what you can't control, and BE YOURSELF. BUT, listen to your elders. Listen for at least 3 months. Think about it. If you're still willing to listen to their advice, but don't want to take it, go slowly forward, and live your life. The next generation is always unfathomable to their parents, but you need to respect, and listen, for they truly do know things you don't know, but the reverse is true as well.
• cratermoon 5y ago
  All the talk in the comments on this post about how smart people ask stupid questions and how great it is to ask 'why' and explore assumptions kind of feels a bit off, and I think I know why. Over on another danluu post thread about productivity, I kept asking why it was assumed that one had to maximize productivity and go fast as a prerequisite for having leisure time. But no matter how I asked why it was asserted that leisure is dependent on productivity and why relaxing is predicated on first clearing some bar of an acceptable amount of work, nobody really wanted to examine that. It was just taken as a given. One response even shut down further discussion with "this isn't a philosophical discussion". So it seems to me that it's really only considered ok to ask stupid questions and look stupid within a framework of what's acceptably 'stupid'. But probing into the underlying assumptions themselves is not an acceptable kind of stupid. Which leads to my stupid question: who determines, and how, what the acceptable limits of "stupid" are? And how are those norms communicated and enforced?
• svilen_dobrev 5y ago
  yeah. that stupidity is important.. https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/121/11/1771/30038/The-importance-of-stupidity-in-scientific-research https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/121/11/1771/3003...
• halotrope 5y ago
  Joe Rogan seemed to have exploited this concept to great success. He does not seem to have any more than very superficial or anecdotal knowledge about most topics, just vaguely remembers some bits. Always needs to have things explained from the very start and listens with an open mouth. In the and he is always amazed by what he has learned. Might be common in interview settings but seems to be extraordinarily effective for these long-form podcasts. I remember he got called out for being actually very smart by Jordan Peterson once.
• vagab0nd 5y ago
  I think willing to look stupid is easy, because you already figured it out. So you know you are not stupid and you are kind of showing off in a weird way. The one step forward is willing to be stupid. That is you know you are stupid but still not try to hide it. And most of the time it'll just be that: you are stupid. But once in a while you discover something deep.
• boxfoxdox 5y ago
  If there is one thing I learned is that what makes you being pervecived as stupid is the way you are asking the qestion, rather than the thing you dont know. For example for some bizzare reason I am percieved as strange bu very inteligent and yet when I ask the questions they are rarely percieved stupid. Why I am not going out of my own way to sound smart or anything I display depth of knowledge at certain areas and the way I'm asking questions is in an honest inquisitive matter of fact way. The other side of this is the way one perceives the reactions, for example they might not reacted as if one was stupid as much as they are confused at disparity between the question asked and the knowledge one has showcased before that question.
• codr7 5y ago
  This rabbit hole goes a lot deeper. I've found that the less I give a damn about what other people think at all, the more enjoyable life is. The thing is; if you have no authority, you have no responsibility; and I'm clearly not in control of other people's thoughts.