Ask HN: Let's say I'm not as smart as I think, how do I stop acting stupid?

10 points by anon012012 1 year ago | 20 comments

I am literally taking you up on this precious life advice.

Let's suppose I have been very stupid. How do I fix it?

What does it look like in the path afterward?

Is there even a path, at all?

I've been told software engineers are full of themselves (even Perplexity confirms there is a reputation of being "pretentious and arrogant"...) So I think this is very related. Don't we have the responsibility of "fixing" our community from this defect? How can we heal ourselves?

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-it-true-software-engineers-ahvBDBHeQUmIkSdDCzIz_g#1

Have a laugh... They say that even in HN's inner circle, it gets more and more pretentious than ordinary engineers... the more we reach the epicenter... Which might just be me? I'll take the blame...

almosthere 1 year ago |

It's the pay. The pay is so high that we've removed humility from our life. Everyone must treat us well otherwise we can flippantly ignore something.

Someone that starts out with a humbling experience first, has a different upbringing. The path, is to lower pay dramatically, make it on par with serving McDonalds fries.

toomuchtodo 1 year ago | |

Yep, you have to take a metaphorical beating in life to cultivate humility. Empathy helps.

We are, broadly speaking, not special; just lucky to get paid to solve puzzles that happen to have some value in the current socioeconomic configuration.

d--b 1 year ago |

Are you just realizing just now you are a Republican after all? Are you like : oh shit Zuckerberg too, maybe I’m the one who’s wrong?

Joke aside, yes engineers are condescending a-hole. I think the most effective way to avoid that is to meet people who are really a lot smarter than you are.

For me it was easy, cause my brother is one of them. I think I am smart but he’s a whole other level. Sometimes I come up with an idea and work on it for 6 months, and when I talk to my brother about it, it’s like he’s 3 sentences ahead of me all the time. And it’s not rare that I make sense of what he tells me 6 hours after talking to him. So weird. No wonder he skipped 2 years when he was 6, and then proceeded to get into the best schools in the world with super high grades all the time.

I met a few other people like that in my career. This was truly humbling, and I don’t mean the fake “humbling” term startup people throw around, I mean humbling like you feel really close to the ground. Like “oh ok, I’ll just shut up now”

domofutu 1 year ago |

Start seriously reading history; then, realize this too shall be history.

As Paul Graham wisely points out:

“At every period of history people have believed things that were just ridiculous and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell, it isn't.”

nradov 1 year ago |

I agree that many software developers are pretentious and arrogant. When they see something that looks dysfunctional or inefficient from the outside — whether it's healthcare or education or construction or warfare — they default to assuming that it's because the people involved must be stupid and lazy, and enlightened engineers could do it better. The reality is that the people working in those fields are no less intelligent than software engineers. It's just that their big problems aren't amenable to technical solutions.

When working on any problem or project, assume that everyone else involved is smarter than you are until definitively proven otherwise. By not making negative assumptions you'll look smarter yourself.

swframe2 1 year ago |

Just accept that we all are part nature and part nurture. I suspect your good friends accept you as you are; some probably really like you as you are. It is also kind of relative; Hang out with the some people and you will always feel stupid or smart. I think you should focus on doing things that you and others find very interesting. There is a famous line from Dune that basically says "fear is the mind-killer"; generalize that to "thinking too negatively about yourself can lead to poor outcomes".

aristofun 1 year ago |

Awareness of own’s limitations and humility in thenselves are the best intellect boosters mankind ever known.

Anything beyond that requires you to formulate a very precise question to get any answer worth reading (what kind of smart/stupid do you mean? What result you want to get, in what context? Etc).

Currently it’s a very generic and broad question => any answer can be bad or good depending on the perspective.

fuzzfactor 1 year ago |

Maybe you have to quit acting altogether :)

We all need to be as well-grounded as we can, and that takes enough effort itself.

When you try to act smarter than you are, about the only way to have a chance is to act different than you are.

I think it's pretty common when that's going on the chances are about 50:50 that you may look smarter or you may look stupider.

The best way to come out undamaged is sometimes not to play the game at all . . .

shahbaby 1 year ago |

I'm not sure if this is the best approach but I've found just talking less combined with a heavy dose of humility helps a lot.

jrflowers 1 year ago |

> They say that even in HN's inner circle, it gets more and more pretentious than ordinary engineers

“Guys I’m worried I might be dumb, so I have come to this group, who I believe to be at least as dumb if not dumber than I am, to help me alleviate this affliction”

mikewarot 1 year ago |

Keep a diary. Make predictions about the outcome of bigger decisions and write them down. Look back and learn how you actually progress through life, especially watching for blind spots.

Look back at things you've already written in public and do the same.

karmakurtisaani 1 year ago |

Why do I get the feeling you're basically holding a mirror on all of us, and getting answers that totally seem to miss it, making it even more delicious?

Or perhaps I'm just being pretentious here. In any case, very entertaining.

soheil 1 year ago |

You're not "acting" stupid if you're not as smart as you think... you are.

sexyman48 1 year ago |

Start by not asking dumb questions.

aristofun 1 year ago | |

That is funny and true at the same time:)

soheil 1 year ago | | |

But is it also dumb?

uncomplexity_ 1 year ago |

either you're a man focused on your individuality where society is expected to take its shape around it

or you're a man focused on society where your individuality is forced to take shape around it

it's high agency vs low agency people, anon. pick your side.

not_your_vase 1 year ago |

So, what's the question?

I found that owning your stupidity takes off its edge. When I do or say inadvertently something dumb, and I see that beside me others have realized too how dumb it is, I just something along the lines of "Ufff... now I must look like a damn fool" - which usually gets some agreements and some laughs, and 10 minutes later everyone forgets about it.

Of course this works only if the stupidity hasn't caused any damage (yet). Once there is real damage, well... consider not doing such things.

whatnotests2 1 year ago |

Defer to your betters?

Do as you're told?

Submit?

Great question!