4 ms·

Agree. At least in my western country, it has become almost expected that everyone is fully confident all the time. I’m someone who likes to deliberate on thoug

by bigs 2y ago

Agree. At least in my western country, it has become almost expected that everyone is fully confident all the time. I’m someone who likes to deliberate on thoughts, take my time, listen to opinions and assess them, then provide my opinion (which may also change over time with more information or changing circumstances). I am humble, a listener, and don’t believe I know everything. I feel a little out of place in current society.

randomNumber7 2y ago
These are just characteristics of high intelligence. You would have always felt out of place with society.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  I think there’s personality traits at play here also- simply being introverted means you are more focused on if your ideas make sense to you, than how they will be received or what they will make other people think about you. I think there are intelligent extroverts that just aren’t really that worried about if their opinions are correct or not except in rare cases where the consequences of being wrong would be severe.
chucksmash 2y ago
Your account is dead but none of the posts in your history look bad. You can email hn@ycombinator.com and if there has been a mistake they'll sort it out.
- bigs 2y ago
  Thanks I’m not sure what happened but it seems to be fixed…
Tanoc 2y ago
When I was younger I had a bad habit of taking what information I did know and then piecing it together to try and fill in what I didn't know, then stating that confidently. Many times I was wrong. In fact, most times I was wrong and not even close. But I was expected to be that way in order for people to listen to me. I was doing this almost until I was twenty because of that expectation. The one good thing that came out of this maladapted behaviour is that I learned to take my hunch, piece together the information, and then use that to go looking for what I didn't know. In a way it got me addicted to constantly learning, something I never managed in school.
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  That is very much a normal human condition honestly. In my experience what I’m seeing from time to time is younger folks have way more confidence in things they’re wrong about than I did when I was their age. I had some confidence no doubt but ample room for error where I would run a “trust but verify” pattern on my own bullshit regularly. I learned from who knows what that it’s bon ton to say “I don’t know” so I got into the habit of withholding my theories in favour of yielding to the other parties. Of course it helps in tech and business to be discerning. But I’m seeing less of this and way more of baseless, unfounded conclusions that have not stemmed from deductive reasoning, conflicting research and so on but rather just-so statements and single-dimension emotional reflexes. It’s clear the presenter wholly lacks experience, but we play along because it’s amusing. The hard part is articulating to someone to slow down because we run the risk of them being offended. But that’s a different thread altogether.
amarcheschi 2y ago
One of my professor at uni (he managed to talk to Bill gates to get Microsoft to fund his startup, which is now an established research center) told us that if we don't know something, being honest and saying you don't know it is usually a good sign. Be it at an oral exam, be it when you're answering question at a startup pitch (...) I really appreciated when a professor, when asked with a question he doesn't know, stops trying to answer and says something in the lines of "I actually don't know the exact answer, I'll try to find and answer and tell you next lesson"
- gwervc 2y ago
  In a way the school system teach people to fear not knowing something, because at an exam it mean getting a bad grade. At work, it is also often frown upon. This is indeed a problem in science since the goal is precisely to find more about unknowns.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    I had another enlightened professor that also founded a startup that talked about how much is it frowned upon to admit to be wrong at work. Bear in mind in his opinion this is especially true for Italian workplaces, but I can imagine it can be somewhat true for other places as well. Knowing why things went wrong is much more useful than knowing who did it and pointing fingers to him/her
karmakurtisaani 2y ago
Here's an idiot's guide to sounding smart: - use big words - speak with utmost confidence - if you can't convince, confuse
poincaredisk 2y ago
>it has become almost expected that everyone is fully confident all the time I still remember my first discussion with a CEO in my first job as a programmer (not even out of uni yet). My project was delayed because of a buggy installer and I had problems reproducing the issue. I was am repeatedly asked "how long until the fix" and I kept saying "I don't know, it's a bug, can take 2 hours can take a week". We both left this conversation frustrated. Though of course for her it was business as usual, and for me it's still awkward and stressful when I think back to it. Anyway this taught me to confidently state something like "this will take three days" instead of trying to convey uncertainty to the higher management.

by bigs 2y ago

randomNumber7 2y ago

These are just characteristics of high intelligence. You would have always felt out of place with society.

_yb2s 2y ago
I think there’s personality traits at play here also- simply being introverted means you are more focused on if your ideas make sense to you, than how they will be received or what they will make other people think about you. I think there are intelligent extroverts that just aren’t really that worried about if their opinions are correct or not except in rare cases where the consequences of being wrong would be severe.

chucksmash 2y ago

Your account is dead but none of the posts in your history look bad. You can email hn@ycombinator.com and if there has been a mistake they'll sort it out.

bigs 2y ago
Thanks I’m not sure what happened but it seems to be fixed…

Tanoc 2y ago

When I was younger I had a bad habit of taking what information I did know and then piecing it together to try and fill in what I didn't know, then stating that confidently. Many times I was wrong. In fact, most times I was wrong and not even close. But I was expected to be that way in order for people to listen to me. I was doing this almost until I was twenty because of that expectation. The one good thing that came out of this maladapted behaviour is that I learned to take my hunch, piece together the information, and then use that to go looking for what I didn't know. In a way it got me addicted to constantly learning, something I never managed in school.

stonethrowaway 2y ago
That is very much a normal human condition honestly. In my experience what I’m seeing from time to time is younger folks have way more confidence in things they’re wrong about than I did when I was their age. I had some confidence no doubt but ample room for error where I would run a “trust but verify” pattern on my own bullshit regularly. I learned from who knows what that it’s bon ton to say “I don’t know” so I got into the habit of withholding my theories in favour of yielding to the other parties. Of course it helps in tech and business to be discerning. But I’m seeing less of this and way more of baseless, unfounded conclusions that have not stemmed from deductive reasoning, conflicting research and so on but rather just-so statements and single-dimension emotional reflexes. It’s clear the presenter wholly lacks experience, but we play along because it’s amusing. The hard part is articulating to someone to slow down because we run the risk of them being offended. But that’s a different thread altogether.

amarcheschi 2y ago

One of my professor at uni (he managed to talk to Bill gates to get Microsoft to fund his startup, which is now an established research center) told us that if we don't know something, being honest and saying you don't know it is usually a good sign. Be it at an oral exam, be it when you're answering question at a startup pitch (...) I really appreciated when a professor, when asked with a question he doesn't know, stops trying to answer and says something in the lines of "I actually don't know the exact answer, I'll try to find and answer and tell you next lesson"

gwervc 2y ago
In a way the school system teach people to fear not knowing something, because at an exam it mean getting a bad grade. At work, it is also often frown upon. This is indeed a problem in science since the goal is precisely to find more about unknowns.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I had another enlightened professor that also founded a startup that talked about how much is it frowned upon to admit to be wrong at work. Bear in mind in his opinion this is especially true for Italian workplaces, but I can imagine it can be somewhat true for other places as well. Knowing why things went wrong is much more useful than knowing who did it and pointing fingers to him/her

karmakurtisaani 2y ago

Here's an idiot's guide to sounding smart: - use big words - speak with utmost confidence - if you can't convince, confuse

poincaredisk 2y ago

>it has become almost expected that everyone is fully confident all the time I still remember my first discussion with a CEO in my first job as a programmer (not even out of uni yet). My project was delayed because of a buggy installer and I had problems reproducing the issue. I was am repeatedly asked "how long until the fix" and I kept saying "I don't know, it's a bug, can take 2 hours can take a week". We both left this conversation frustrated. Though of course for her it was business as usual, and for me it's still awkward and stressful when I think back to it. Anyway this taught me to confidently state something like "this will take three days" instead of trying to convey uncertainty to the higher management.