The Dumber Side of Smart People(collabfund.com)
collabfund.com
The Dumber Side of Smart People
https://collabfund.com/blog/the-dumber-side-of-smart-people/
85 comments
The second culture is built for politics. There is a neat dividing line - whether questions of truth should be settled by consensus or trial against nature.
The academic STEM culture is a very carefully nurtured group of people who believe (at least to a greater extent) that truth should be decided on by a repeatable, impartial procedure that leverages natural phenomenon. So if two engineers disagree about the minimum conditions for a building to collapse, they are usually the sort of people who will converge on what happens in reality.
The more normal culture is to accept that while there may or may not be an objective truth, what really matters is what most people think. Narrative suddenly becomes important and the truth depends a lot on what you are trying to achieve. Think lawyers and judges. They may accept an objective truth exists in principle, but at the end of the day to them an argument can only be settled by most people agreeing on the truth (including dead people if tradition gets involved).
The first culture is more powerful when dealing with reality (to the shock of nobody). The second is more effective at dealing with groups and generally is more pleasant to work with, except when they lose touch with reality completely and goes berserk with groupthink.
Coincidentally, these dynamics explain why political bodies often choose to drive over the cliff rather than swerve.
The academic STEM culture is a very carefully nurtured group of people who believe (at least to a greater extent) that truth should be decided on by a repeatable, impartial procedure that leverages natural phenomenon. So if two engineers disagree about the minimum conditions for a building to collapse, they are usually the sort of people who will converge on what happens in reality.
The more normal culture is to accept that while there may or may not be an objective truth, what really matters is what most people think. Narrative suddenly becomes important and the truth depends a lot on what you are trying to achieve. Think lawyers and judges. They may accept an objective truth exists in principle, but at the end of the day to them an argument can only be settled by most people agreeing on the truth (including dead people if tradition gets involved).
The first culture is more powerful when dealing with reality (to the shock of nobody). The second is more effective at dealing with groups and generally is more pleasant to work with, except when they lose touch with reality completely and goes berserk with groupthink.
Coincidentally, these dynamics explain why political bodies often choose to drive over the cliff rather than swerve.
Don't agree with your framing on the dividing line. I think the real difference is between groups that treat truth seeking as the end goal vs. those who treat truth seeking as a means to action. These two groups are in constant tension with each other. The first group will always bias towards low uncertainty but will often be paralyzed with inaction. The second group will bias towards action, but will risk choosing the wrong action. Both groups are valuable but often conflict
Knowledge-seeking versus goal-orientation honestly doesn't map one-to-one here, though it's probably correlated. Like I would say that is a better distinction between engineers and scientists than between both and good salespeople or politicians. Goal-oriented people can trust specificity more and knowledge-seeking people sometimes trust confidence. I think at the absolute extremes these map pretty well, but much of the middle is more complicated.
> The second is more effective at dealing with groups and generally is more pleasant to work with, except when they lose touch with reality completely and goes berserk with groupthink.
The uncomfortable truth is that such people always have lost touch with reality, that makes them very easy to deal with when they like you since they will overlook your faults and mistakes. But when such people dislike you then they will only see faults and mistakes in what you do.
So it isn't that the first and second versions of those are more attuned to reality, the difference is only how positive or negative their lack of reality check is for you.
The uncomfortable truth is that such people always have lost touch with reality, that makes them very easy to deal with when they like you since they will overlook your faults and mistakes. But when such people dislike you then they will only see faults and mistakes in what you do.
So it isn't that the first and second versions of those are more attuned to reality, the difference is only how positive or negative their lack of reality check is for you.
Arguably the second culture is also built for leadership. Evidence can't tell you which direction to take a company in, and the person that decides on this direction needs to project confidence in others to instill it in others.
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell
― Bertrand Russell
This adage has been debunked[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Do you mean to draw our attention to the part at the end of the "Definition" section that begins Among laypeople, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood, or do yourself understand it to mean "stupid people are too stupid to know they are stupid", in which case this doesn't contradict Bertrand Russell?
Dunning Krugers study shows that accuracy correlates with confidence, that goes against the quote. In general people who are more confident are more likely to be correct.
> In general people who are more confident are more likely to be correct.
Interesting. That is so completely at odds with my experience that I find it hard to actually believe. I guess I need to look at the research.
Interesting. That is so completely at odds with my experience that I find it hard to actually believe. I guess I need to look at the research.
I think there is a different between:
1) Answering a specific question: "how confident are you in your results?" In this context, confidence is correlated with correctness.
2) Projecting external confidence in a social context. In this case, your experience and mine agree that the most overtly confident people are generally not the most competent ones.
1) Answering a specific question: "how confident are you in your results?" In this context, confidence is correlated with correctness.
2) Projecting external confidence in a social context. In this case, your experience and mine agree that the most overtly confident people are generally not the most competent ones.
Dunning Kruger is relevant in the context of the linked article but is not relevant in the context of the parent comment.
Dunning Kruger study shows that confidence correlates with accuracy, which goes against the quote.
Veblen (of Veblen Goods fame) described it in his Theory of Business Enterprise. Its called a Veblen Dichotomy. As soon as the chimp troupe discovers a new tool/tech/process etc, two groups emerge to handle the consequences. Both play different roles. One is more technical focused, the other resembles a ceremonial class (similar to kings court). Veblen felt with advances in tech the need for a institutional/beauracratic/ceremonial class would diminish with time.
But it hasnt happened yet cause accessing funds, managing finances, building networks, attracting talent, customers, handling competition and conflict while keeping ever growing group size (ie factions and differdnt agendas,needs,values) from breaking apart, requires lot of tactics that tech hasnt fully addressed yet.
But it hasnt happened yet cause accessing funds, managing finances, building networks, attracting talent, customers, handling competition and conflict while keeping ever growing group size (ie factions and differdnt agendas,needs,values) from breaking apart, requires lot of tactics that tech hasnt fully addressed yet.
There is also a thing that could be perhaps called "the neophobic paradox": excessive neophilia halts progress, as it turns it into a random walk. It turns into people chasing the next big thing, with no noticeable progress over longer timescales.
neophilia: love or enthusiasm for what is new or novel
Yes, and you accept anything new when you are too neophilic, and turn progress into a random walk, because most new things are crap.
Good to know it has a well-known name
A big problem I've found with academic types is belief that their intuition translates to other areas of the sciences or worse, engineering. There are many flavors of academics, but experimentalists trying to perform engineering-like work is an amazing exercise in futility. There is immense difference between finding out how something works and getting it to work in a consistent and repeatable way. I imagine the nuances across other disciplines are similar
in my experience academics are the worst at understanding uncertainty. They refuse to believe anything that doesn't pass their beloved t-test, believing the holy threshold of 0.05 is the arbiter of all truth
You are conflating the typical threshold for drugs to pass random placebo controlled trials with all of academia. That demonstrates a lack of understanding and places you firmly in group 2.
It's not just drug trials, it's a huge proportion of biology and psychology research at least. Additionally, most research in biology is expensive to get off the ground, and in order to get funding it absolutely is important to project confidence - there's an entire game surrounding grant writing that sounds a lot more like "group 2" than "group 1". Group 1 is just a theoretical ideal, not the reality of academic science. While that may be somewhat field dependent it's definitely not restricted to a small niche either.
My wife's course exercises in statistics for health studies says "if the p-value is below 0.05, the relationship is statistically significant." Sure, it's a medical institution (Karolinska institutet in Sweden), but the programme she's in is about workplace health management, not even close to drugs.
Two data points do not a generalization make.
I work in engineering sciences, and we have no such threshold.
This actually strikes me as an example of a political decision creating a stickiness to academic formal standards (as others point out this has become a policy for various organizations' approval of findings). Since the "replication crisis" that happened in the last decade, a lot of people's explanations for this have centered around the use of the fisherian significance test and how gameable it can be, as well as pressures toward publishing positive results. I think there's some merit to solutions involving changing those standards and a lot of STEM people have advocated for them. However, things like drug trials have politically-determined standards that need to be upheld, and some of those standards have become well-known by the general public, so they can't really be bugfixed quickly
There is no single or set of standards that can prevent you from having to think critically about a result. Rarely are results so overwhelmingly positive that it's obvious what the result means. In those cases it doesn't matter what method you use anyway. The rest of the time, you should use many methods, be wary of their assumptions and think very hard about what the data is telling you. Realize that you are biased in favor of a positive result and play devil's advocate with yourself. This is very very hard work, and most people don't want to do it, especially when their careers improve when they look the other way
I view this as obvious but I guess that doesn't go without saying. The two cultures I've characterized actually share a commonly held strong belief that there exist metrics or heuristics that can replace the need for fluid critical thinking. Obviously it's not everyone in either culture who thinks this way, but it's a dangerous form of automation for both
The problem I have with experts is that they are confident that they understand what someone else is articulating.
One problem is that experts use their own jargon and often confuse one use of normal words with their jargon.
The second step is dismissing rather than inquiring.
One problem is that experts use their own jargon and often confuse one use of normal words with their jargon.
The second step is dismissing rather than inquiring.
I agree with you in principle but the reality is that most Universities and research organisations are extremely political. If you challenge the beliefs of the scientists in charge, your funding and support will often be cut. The history of “Nutritional science” is a great example of how bad it can get when money and politics overrules basic science.
Certain sentences are so well-crafted they give me joy. This one is a gem:
>I often wonder how many tens of billions of dollars have been paid to management consultants to solve problems that low-wage line workers had solutions for, only because a guy in a suit has a hard time taking a guy with dirty fingernails seriously.
>I often wonder how many tens of billions of dollars have been paid to management consultants to solve problems that low-wage line workers had solutions for, only because a guy in a suit has a hard time taking a guy with dirty fingernails seriously.
+1! Just as a side note: Listen to the blue collar line workers, and empowering and enabling them, to find and implement solutions is the main thing people fail to understand about the Toyota Production System.
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In software industry we have the same: people who buy software and people who use that software are not the same group. People who use software are not consulted most of the time.
We've got a 15 year old software on our hand. You think they ever brought on a UX person to talk to a customer? Any software developer (we're currently a team of 5) ever met any customer (5,000) using the software? No. It'd be so easy for the whole team to meet customers.
But management 3 levels up decides on colors and wordings.
But management 3 levels up decides on colors and wordings.
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If you've got 1,000 employees and 1 of them has a good, workable, and practical solution, and the other 999 have terrible expensive unworkable "solutions" then there's a technical sense in which this sentence is true but sorting out the good from the bad is still a hard problem which requires some work.
Morgan Housel is a good read in terms of personal finance / behavioral finance kind of stuff.
Being inside the industry, I can say this is a very accurate observation:
> If asked, “Why did the stock market fall 0.23% last week?” an average person will shrug their shoulders and walk away. A very smart person will show you their yield-curve model and valuation analysis and tell you whether the performance will continue. Who do you think is more likely to be stricken by overconfidence?
Remember this anytime you watch CNBC & the like.. they can describe in hindsight the WHAT, but the WHY is generally made up on the fly. A classic smart sounding but meaningless joke answer to the above question is "More sellers than buyers". A lot of financial media is basically this.
Being inside the industry, I can say this is a very accurate observation:
> If asked, “Why did the stock market fall 0.23% last week?” an average person will shrug their shoulders and walk away. A very smart person will show you their yield-curve model and valuation analysis and tell you whether the performance will continue. Who do you think is more likely to be stricken by overconfidence?
Remember this anytime you watch CNBC & the like.. they can describe in hindsight the WHAT, but the WHY is generally made up on the fly. A classic smart sounding but meaningless joke answer to the above question is "More sellers than buyers". A lot of financial media is basically this.
> Remember this anytime you watch CNBC & the like.. they can describe in hindsight the WHAT, but the WHY is generally made up on the fly. A classic smart sounding but meaningless joke answer to the above question is "More sellers than buyers". A lot of financial media is basically this.
There's a much broader topic behind this called Rationalization [1]. I won't forget the sentence by a professor of psychology that said: People are not rational. They are rationalizing.
For me, it took a while to sink in but now I do not focus too much on explanations anymore as these are anyways afterthoughts of intransparent internal processes. However, I pay more attention to how people act.
Interestingly, all this is also some kind of rationalization that my mind made up. But how can I be in control of the inner workings of my brain anyways...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)
There's a much broader topic behind this called Rationalization [1]. I won't forget the sentence by a professor of psychology that said: People are not rational. They are rationalizing.
For me, it took a while to sink in but now I do not focus too much on explanations anymore as these are anyways afterthoughts of intransparent internal processes. However, I pay more attention to how people act.
Interestingly, all this is also some kind of rationalization that my mind made up. But how can I be in control of the inner workings of my brain anyways...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)
In a similar vein, Gary Stevenson (UK economist & trader) also does an excellent job of confirming (and explaining) this. He has a new book out, the Trading Game that's well worth a read (excerpt here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/london-finance-the-t...)
Already at top of my reading list, good call!
Always nice for CNBC guests when they get to financial-splain industry terms to the audience, but when they’re asked for predictions they suddenly lose their tongues.
“What will the market do?” “Well, it will fluctuate.” <-- great answer if you can get away with it
“What will the market do?” “Well, it will fluctuate.” <-- great answer if you can get away with it
> Being inside the industry, I can say this is a very accurate observation:
I would say it’s an inaccurate observation, since a smart person would know that using a couple macroeconomic measures cannot explain short term changes in prices.
I would say it’s an inaccurate observation, since a smart person would know that using a couple macroeconomic measures cannot explain short term changes in prices.
I think its more like the mid twit meme.
The idiots & geniuses would respond "I dunno, it's complicated".
The big middle reasonably high IQ "smart person" will ascribe causation based on what they are most familiar with.
Macro guy will point at rates, fundamental guy will point to some specific earnings season themes, quant guy will be like "momentum meltdown", sell side desk guys will have some flows explanation, etc.
The answer is really some unknowable combination of "all of the above".
The idiots & geniuses would respond "I dunno, it's complicated".
The big middle reasonably high IQ "smart person" will ascribe causation based on what they are most familiar with.
Macro guy will point at rates, fundamental guy will point to some specific earnings season themes, quant guy will be like "momentum meltdown", sell side desk guys will have some flows explanation, etc.
The answer is really some unknowable combination of "all of the above".
Any knowledge about "society" is very context- and time-sensitive. The trap for "smart" people is that they abstractly apply rigorous explanatory models to human-made institutions and enterprises. It skews their social understanding and navigation abilities. They often become overly hooked on formalisms like behavioural economics, cognitive psychology, evolutionism or the geopolitical power struggles. It suppresses their reasoning ability in a local, context-sensitive manner.
What's the alternative? Develop social intuitions. Observe your local surrounding environment and the people around you. Try to listen to their personal stories. Tell them yours. Then you can probably figure out what's valuable for them, what drives them every day. Applying that knowledge in the economic realm might change the world for the better.
What's the alternative? Develop social intuitions. Observe your local surrounding environment and the people around you. Try to listen to their personal stories. Tell them yours. Then you can probably figure out what's valuable for them, what drives them every day. Applying that knowledge in the economic realm might change the world for the better.
There are global and generic formalisms which seems to be true, like that the well known far right tactics seems to work way better now everywhere. Chavez was the only one in far right politics in the past 30 years who did something really genuine, everybody else just copied that. They copied the formalism which was written down by academics.
The value of illegible intuition is inherently somewhat illegible itself, but also hard to overstate
Unfortunately, this too will be taken too far. Like the "fake it till you make it" thing.
Yes, sometimes it's OK to say "I don't know". But sometimes it's really not. All people, smart or not, start off in a state of "I don't know". But if it's your job to know then you need to put in the work to make sure you know, or at least know as much as you can. Someone saying "I don't know" doesn't mean they are dumb or smart, it could just mean they are lazy.
On number 2 I just disagree with the definition of smart. A smart person knows when to listen to someone and when not. Should you ignore people with less experience? Of course not. Should you listen to everyone? Of course not!
Smart people definitely suffer from being human, like everyone else, and can become emotionally attached to their ideas etc. I don't think this is a "smart person" trait. But, even so, it is often a very good idea to not buckle to the pressure of fashion and short-term trends. For every story of someone refusing to adapt there is one of someone who was right all along but it took a while for the world to realise.
Yes, sometimes it's OK to say "I don't know". But sometimes it's really not. All people, smart or not, start off in a state of "I don't know". But if it's your job to know then you need to put in the work to make sure you know, or at least know as much as you can. Someone saying "I don't know" doesn't mean they are dumb or smart, it could just mean they are lazy.
On number 2 I just disagree with the definition of smart. A smart person knows when to listen to someone and when not. Should you ignore people with less experience? Of course not. Should you listen to everyone? Of course not!
Smart people definitely suffer from being human, like everyone else, and can become emotionally attached to their ideas etc. I don't think this is a "smart person" trait. But, even so, it is often a very good idea to not buckle to the pressure of fashion and short-term trends. For every story of someone refusing to adapt there is one of someone who was right all along but it took a while for the world to realise.
"I don't know, yet. Hold on."
That's what I look for when I interview people.
Definitely not "I know" when they don't, or "I don't know" and a shrug.
That's what I look for when I interview people.
Definitely not "I know" when they don't, or "I don't know" and a shrug.
I would fail your interview. I assume interviews are for what I do/don't know. So I honestly say what I don't know, and would not offer to find out. Not right then anyway.
Unless you make it very clear at the outset of the interview that this is exploratory and we will be working with network connectivity and full access to the world's knowledge.
I have sent followups to interviewers on problems that were interesting or deep, but those conversations never turned into anything.
Unless you make it very clear at the outset of the interview that this is exploratory and we will be working with network connectivity and full access to the world's knowledge.
I have sent followups to interviewers on problems that were interesting or deep, but those conversations never turned into anything.
I don't think the commenter meant to literally look stuff up during an interview. A good interview is more of a conversation than an exam. During that conversation it would be perfectly normal, even expected, for the interviewee (or even interviewer!) to say something like "I would need to check the specifics in the documentation" or "I don't know what X is, but let's assume it's Y".
Nobody can possibly hold all the knowledge they'll need in their head at once. A fundamentally important part of any skilled job is being able to adapt, improvise and learn on the job. This is what is being tested, not what you know/don't know.
Nobody can possibly hold all the knowledge they'll need in their head at once. A fundamentally important part of any skilled job is being able to adapt, improvise and learn on the job. This is what is being tested, not what you know/don't know.
I'm not looking for someone who can autodidact something on a whiteboard during an interview. That'd be kind of silly unless it's something very small. It's more of an attitude, a desire and willingness and ability to learn stuff you don't know yet or try new things.
The market for narratives about what happened or will happen is much bigger than the market for "it's just noise/don't know" - so people cater to that market. That does not mean, however, that they - or even their customers - don't understand what is being sold.
The market for narratives is also bigger than the market for noisy predictions, which in turn feeds the supply for narratives.
The market for narratives is also bigger than the market for noisy predictions, which in turn feeds the supply for narratives.
Inspiration, brainstorming and exploratory
finding are often lacking in very competitive
environment where "trying things out" is
too costly or cumbersome(like e.g. testing
in large-scale), which favors analytical exploration
of pre-existing processes and staying within
the current paradigm: e.g. micro-optimization
of current process/algorithm/system.
What kind of companies or money making endeavours would allow for such exploratory behavior?
You have me curious, since that's a company I'd consider working for. My current position could be describe as an "R&D service tech" where I am fixing custom machinery, some of which I have never seen before I arrive onsite, other than drawings or schematics. My dream would be to work with a firm that has a cohesive R&D department that get the resources it needs to function well.
This is often cited as a reason why Amazon is such a hostile work environment, for instance. It's not clear if this actually produces the desired results, though.
>It’s amazing what happens when you become open to the best ideas, rather than the most credentialed voices.
Is it though? For starters, you're going to have to listen to a lot of terrible ideas, which is time-consuming even if ideas are easy to evaluate (like jokes). If we're talking business strategy or science or technology, ideas can be very difficult/expensive/time-consuming to evaluate, credentials serve as a useful filtering step[0]. Next time the author has a health problem I suspect they'll go to a credentialed doctor rather than polling random people on the street.
I agree that smart people can be overconfident, so it's good to have some humility, but it's also good to try to spend time effectively. And dumb people are perfectly capable of being overconfident as well, it's not like this is a problem unique to smart people. Ignorance can breed overconfidence just as much as knowledge; it's easy to "solve" a problem when you don't actually understand why it's difficult in the first place and your solution never gets tested against reality.
[0] The extent that this is true is also a way to judge the credentialing system. Most areas have informal "credentials" based on experience/reputation, eg Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David are considered authorities on comedy and it's not because they have PhDs.
Is it though? For starters, you're going to have to listen to a lot of terrible ideas, which is time-consuming even if ideas are easy to evaluate (like jokes). If we're talking business strategy or science or technology, ideas can be very difficult/expensive/time-consuming to evaluate, credentials serve as a useful filtering step[0]. Next time the author has a health problem I suspect they'll go to a credentialed doctor rather than polling random people on the street.
I agree that smart people can be overconfident, so it's good to have some humility, but it's also good to try to spend time effectively. And dumb people are perfectly capable of being overconfident as well, it's not like this is a problem unique to smart people. Ignorance can breed overconfidence just as much as knowledge; it's easy to "solve" a problem when you don't actually understand why it's difficult in the first place and your solution never gets tested against reality.
[0] The extent that this is true is also a way to judge the credentialing system. Most areas have informal "credentials" based on experience/reputation, eg Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David are considered authorities on comedy and it's not because they have PhDs.
I don't think you can be too smart for your own good, but there might be a confusion about what "smart" means.
Most people get the difference between intelligence, and knowledge, but there is something in between: technique. And this is the part that confuses most people - it seems kind of like intelligence, but really it's more like knowledge. You may know a technique, you may be able to use it, and still have no idea why it works, why it's used, and where it's no longer applicable.
Most people get the difference between intelligence, and knowledge, but there is something in between: technique. And this is the part that confuses most people - it seems kind of like intelligence, but really it's more like knowledge. You may know a technique, you may be able to use it, and still have no idea why it works, why it's used, and where it's no longer applicable.
Good article, but I can't help but see that the author is conflating smartness and research-acumen/ivory-tower-living.
Being in academia != intelligence. In most of my experiences in the Ivory Tower, the smartest people tended to leave after a short while. Modern US based academia 'hires' on intelligence and 'promotes' based on blind loyalty to the system, boiling off anyone with dignity, honor, or self-respect.
Being in academia != intelligence. In most of my experiences in the Ivory Tower, the smartest people tended to leave after a short while. Modern US based academia 'hires' on intelligence and 'promotes' based on blind loyalty to the system, boiling off anyone with dignity, honor, or self-respect.
> The biggest risk to an evolving system is that you become bogged down by experts from a world that no longer exists.
I see that a lot at large financial institutions. Their architecture teams are often comprised of lifers that have never worked in a different industry, or for a different employer. They're experts in how the bank does things, not how the rest of the tech world does things now, and innovation gets stifled.
I see that a lot at large financial institutions. Their architecture teams are often comprised of lifers that have never worked in a different industry, or for a different employer. They're experts in how the bank does things, not how the rest of the tech world does things now, and innovation gets stifled.
A truly fantastic read for me as it relates to my week over week woes working for a software company that is striving to be the top in it's industry and eventually purchased. Being involved in leadership here, I see the anecdotes being sold down about criticisms or decisions being made by truly remarkable 'uncredentialed' people and hear things from the old blood like:
"Well, bob such and such thinks a lot of things, but he really doesn't have that much experience or understand the code base or customer needs"
or
"He's obnoxious and do we really think he knows what X customer wants, get Suzy on it from leadership to show the powerpoint on what we are planning, Bob isn't good at selling the vision".
It ends up 6 months later that we end up messing up that feature and Bob ends up being the one right all along and we are doing it anyway and the original feature or design was just from the leaders own head, entirely missing the mark.
"Well, bob such and such thinks a lot of things, but he really doesn't have that much experience or understand the code base or customer needs"
or
"He's obnoxious and do we really think he knows what X customer wants, get Suzy on it from leadership to show the powerpoint on what we are planning, Bob isn't good at selling the vision".
It ends up 6 months later that we end up messing up that feature and Bob ends up being the one right all along and we are doing it anyway and the original feature or design was just from the leaders own head, entirely missing the mark.
This seems to be about people who think they are smarter than they are. There are dumb and smart people alike who fall in this category, but also plenty who do know their own limits.
The trouble with the very smart people is that even when wrong, they can come up with very elaborate and convincing reasoning why they in fact are not in the wrong, and indeed convince themselves (and then others in the process) that what they are preaching indeed is the correct solution or answer to a problem.
>they can come up with very elaborate and convincing reasoning why they in fact are not in the wrong
Like Elon?
Like Elon?
The guy who is landing rocket boosters?
No, the guy who kept saying you should buy the Model 3 because it will get level 5 FSD around the corner, and you'll be able to use it as a robotaxi and the car will pay for itself.
The guy who said "fuck advertisers" in public even though his X business depended on them.
The guy who said "fuck advertisers" in public even though his X business depended on them.
It's the same person you're talking about, he's done both of those things. He seems to be doing fine for himself. Which suggests that he's not falling victim to his own intelligence as described in the article, but rather just lying.
Way to completely discount the thousands of smart people who actually made it happen.
Speaking for the very smart people, I must say that this article is full of useless stereotypes. Most of us frequenting the smart-people-club are open, contemplating, and humble.
The article less about “smart people” and more about “arrogant people”
Yeah, the article is talking about smart people but truly smart people realize all of these issues and therefore the article in reality talks about those who seem or believe they are smart even though they really are not.
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I've seen the "too smart" get crippled by analysis paralysis, while the B student will optimistically plunder on to some degree of success.
I think a lot of analysis paralysis is actually lack of leadership in disguise. Like when two engineers have different ideas about how to do something, the manager doesn't have an opinion, and doesn't want to get involved, so they let the engineers make the decision, as long as they find a consensus somehow. If neither part is ready to give up, this can take a while.
Is a person who is aware of analysis paralysis smarter or dumber than the person who is a victim to analysis paralysis ?
I would argue that the person is not truly smart if they get analysis paralysis.
I would argue that the person is not truly smart if they get analysis paralysis.
if there's one thing I've learned from these "smart" and "dumb" conversations, is that you can't really generalize a person. "Smart" and "dumb" are just lazy evaluations.
I believe that intelligence is not the same as being smart. Intelligence (what we measure with IQ tests) is basically just a measurement of your ability to think abstractly. And yes being able to think abstractly is an excellent skill to have! Especially when working in math/physics/engineering/programming. However the world is full of high IQ people who make non-smart decisions every single day.
This summarizes my encounters with 0.1 programmers. Others call them 10x programmers, but I disagree ;-)
Here's a story from the field https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38802996
Here's a story from the field https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38802996
I’m incensed reading this article, early on.
First, that Robin Williams anecdote. It’s absurd. If it’s even true, a macroeconomics class isn’t necessarily difficult nor do they always ask difficult questions. It’s more likely, “What happens to the price when demand goes up and supply remains the same?”
Next,
> If asked, “Why did the stock market fall 0.23% last week?” an average person will shrug their shoulders and walk away. A very smart person will show you their yield-curve model and valuation analysis and tell you whether the performance will continue.
This is patently false. Some smart people might do this. Many will behave in the same manner as the average person. Smart does not mean a person feels the need to have a correct answer for every question and to convey the confidence of always being correct. I know the article might arrive at this point, but lying about reality before getting there is a nonstarter. So this is where I stop reading.
First, that Robin Williams anecdote. It’s absurd. If it’s even true, a macroeconomics class isn’t necessarily difficult nor do they always ask difficult questions. It’s more likely, “What happens to the price when demand goes up and supply remains the same?”
Next,
> If asked, “Why did the stock market fall 0.23% last week?” an average person will shrug their shoulders and walk away. A very smart person will show you their yield-curve model and valuation analysis and tell you whether the performance will continue.
This is patently false. Some smart people might do this. Many will behave in the same manner as the average person. Smart does not mean a person feels the need to have a correct answer for every question and to convey the confidence of always being correct. I know the article might arrive at this point, but lying about reality before getting there is a nonstarter. So this is where I stop reading.
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Quite the strawman! If you can’t say “that is too complex”, “I don’t know” or give nuanced answers then… you probably aren’t smart. That said I am moving the goalposts.
I would like to see evidence that people getting hard degrees are like this. Plenty of un book smart people think they know it all too, see Reddit comments for plenty of examples.
I would like to see evidence that people getting hard degrees are like this. Plenty of un book smart people think they know it all too, see Reddit comments for plenty of examples.
"Most people will die after three days without water."
This is false.
This is false.
Pretty disappointing non-article.
TL;R Smart people have some biases and flaws too.
TL;R Smart people have some biases and flaws too.
However, most people who make hiring decisions outside of academia (and increasingly many inside it) are part of a different culture which assigns status based on the confidence a person projects and their ability to inspire other people to feel strongly about things they say. While there are also people of the former culture making hiring decisions in sufficiently technical fields, it's hard to avoid the pressures of this second culture.
Also, the pressure on knowledge workers is the same as that on workers of any kind: While there are a few stray independently wealthy people or even quasi-independent rags-to-riches successes in the world, by the numbers most people have to dance for their dinner, so they have to either become conversant in this culture of confidence or find people they trust to navigate it for them
I actually don't think the second culture has no value. It's a lot more powerful in building organizations and gaining buy-in from lots of people. I also don't think the first culture completely avoids the failure modes mentioned in this article. Obviously people with what I've called academic norms definitely fall into this article's discussed pattern of trusting people based on their credentials and disproportionately Think They Are Very Smart
That said, since people fluent in the second culture tend to rise to the top of organizations, people in the first culture increasingly need to signal confidence even when it's inappropriate to justify their existence as they move into a professional sphere, which again most people don't really have the option to opt out of