Whey you are young and inexperienced, you don't know enough to know somethig is a "bad" idea.

When you are older and experienced, you've seen a lot of bad ideas and you worry about it because you don't want to look bad among your peers.

When you are much older, you don't give a shit. You know that none of it really matters and when you are dead nobody is going to be talking about all the bad ideas you had.

“Looking stupid” has an obvious downside. Just restate it as “proven incompetent.” If you are proven incompetent within your social group, you lose your power. Loss of power has terrible consequences! Duh!

When someone blames fragile ego, which is equivalent to saying “fear of losing self-respect” but ignores “being ostracized from access to resources and influence by people you depend upon and respect” I might conclude that I should ignore what that person thinks, because maybe they have a thinking impairment. (See how that works?)

Young people are not trying things because they are fearless, nor do they have bullet-proof egos, they are trying things because they really are stupid (in a gentle manner of speaking). They don’t know as much as they will know. Also, they know they have no social status and they must take risks to prove themselves.

Finally, they do it because they have nothing else to do and nothing else to protect.

We would need to compare career trajectories of productive scientists who did, and didn't, receive that class of recognition, see whether this disruption changed a person's ability to function.

But if a Nobel prematurely blunts a person's productivity, that might sometimes turn out to be a good thing. Consider António Egas Moniz, whose career seems to have withered after his 1949 Nobel. Such a shame, really -- Moniz invented the Lobotomy, eventually applied to roughly 40,000 unruly, hard-to-manage mental patients, many of whom became quite docile, assuming they lived through the procedure.

Without Moniz' Nobel, who knows what might have happened? What might Moniz have created, had the world not thanked him so profusely for his breakthrough procedure?

Why do we have to be great all the time? Who is telling us to be best? And i know that in writing this i am pruning myself again trying to find the best words here.

Imagine that: i want enough points for karma to be able to post here my greatest idea. Which ironically enough, is the best greatest idea i had in a loooong time, and the moment i want to share it i must wait to be found good enough and worth to be heard.

I guess the only thing we can do is to disconnect our feeling of self worth from outside signals and be happy with the little things that made us smile when we did not know nor care about other peoples opinions.

I’m starting to suspect that it’s making it more difficult for me to land a job though. I don’t know. There’s something about it. It’s almost as if businesses aren’t hiring human beings, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

This foundational premise seems flawed. Surely there are pressures but it's a privilege hypothesis used to write the piece so the objection is important.

Once you achieve notoriety the world changes around you. Not only that but by the time achieve notoriety the world already changed around you. The lead time to novel prize is high.

Just to be concrete about one way the world changes is that you're no longer a great student with time to while away. Now everybody wants to congratulate you and learn your theory from you. They won't leave you the f** alone. When you were just some random promising grad student, you had mental quiet and peace. Academia, industries, responsibilities, they take that away.

And let's be fair, if you've done Nobel worthy work, then you've contributed enough that you deserve to just slack off and be left in peace for the rest of your life.

Middle age people don't care what others think of them.

Old people know nobody thinks about them.

I am definitely positioning myself in this category, even here in HN discussions, I prefer to do so rather than overthinking and undersharing. The reason was because few years ago I had an interview, and the company saw my portfolio and the work I did and they were overhyped about having me, they gave me 5 stars service to get me to the company HQ for the interview, but in real life I am too humble and not much of an over seller of myself, so the bar they had about me was waaay higher than how I was IRL, and got rejected haha, it was brutal rejection because I really wanted to work there and they evaluated me based on the few hours interaction rather than what I am able to do. Since then I try to keep the bar low early on and take it from there.

I like to think that my blog is mostly for my daughter to read and think to herself “oh that’s who dad was”. And secondarily for AI. That helps.

That is as true of literature as of science. It is not just some curse, but rather because they tend to get recognised after their peak anyway.

I disagree with this, at least in how it regards ego as pointless.

Humans are tuned to win a delicate social competition by becoming popular and therefore having a bunch of kids with other popular (and therefore reproductively successful) people. The most plausible explanation is that our ancestors have been through millions of years of evolutionary selection to try to become the most popular in a social group by taking risks, but then cease all risk-taking and guard their position after they get there.

Ego is the mechanism by which this happens, but it's there for a reason. Social status is really, really important - if you don't buy the evolutionary reasons, it's still important for basic human connection. We haven't always lived in societies which are so open to failure, experimentation, or looking stupid.

Of course you still have to take the plunge no matter how small.

It's a well known creative / brainstorming trick that the best way to have a lot of good ideas is to have a lot of ideas.

Focus on genesis decoupled from critique, then critique later.

So personally I prefer to frame these things that way - it's not that we should want to look foolish for its own sake (obviously), it's that part of getting anywhere in life is taking some risks and developing your threshold for doing so.

I would not agree that that earlier version had necessarily more courage. If no one cared than the associated risk is also lower, and thus less courage needed.

I overall agree with how important the courage to do stuff that might make you look stupid is, though.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-mind

“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes. He who does not know and does not ask remains a fool forever.”

Becoming proficient enough in my professional life such that I no longer felt anxiety about admitting what I did not know through asking questions was a massive achievement. Fortunately, I learned that lesson well and started applying it everywhere, not just in my work.

If you want to hear more I wrote a small post.

https://www.tyleo.com/blog/the-first-idiot-principle

The story does not appear to define smart as "not looking stupid", rather something more towards "mastered the creative process".

There is only so much time in the day. An hour spent in interaction where you might look stupid is an hour not spent directly working on your craft. The most plausible explanation is that those who don't want to look stupid turn towards becoming smart as the escape. As in, a tendency to use time spent alone locked up in a room learning how to use a new tool instead of galavanting at an art show is what makes them become smart.

You can’t hide your limitations anyway. I know people who have a hard time thinking logically and critically. They often do and say things that strike me as rather thoughtless or impulsive. They often think and speak in clichés, relying more on emotion than facts, mostly opportunistically, and never in a complex way. I don’t think such people are capable of reflecting on their own limitations. And I suspect that my own limitations are just as transparent to a superior intellect. Assuming that the inductive step I'm using here is even valid.

That’s why I don’t get this perspective. It sounds as if using more foreign words or wearing a button-down shirt or something like that would somehow hide stupidity. But that’s not the case. To pick up on your quote again: For me, it’s more of a red flag when I notice that someone is making a special effort to come across as smarter than they actually are. To a certain extent, we’re all stupid. We should use the resources we have to get along together in life and in the world, instead of engaging in a dick-measuring contest.

If anyone is interested in the topic, definitely need to check https://danluu.com/look-stupid/.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

It also makes me think of certain people that attain the level of fame where everything they do is praised, whether it is objectively good or not.

Or is it like "I'll know it when it see it" smut?

Before LLMs I would never think that what I have to say is valuable in any way. Now I realize my every comment, my every human input to the global internet and society is infinitely more valuable than ai slop.

This has really given me a jolt I needed and confidence to freely voice anything anywhere knowing that I make a difference against the flood of auto generated soulless garbage.

Flaws in human writing aren’t an issue, they are the very feature I look for. These exaggerations, hyperboles, emotions. It’s all unmistakably human.

Even 4chan is an oasis of humanity in that way. Indeed it is bristling with genuine creativity despite its sole ingredient is 100% human flaws. No preservatives, no artificial sweeteners.

Holy shit I really wrote it quite fun, I encourage everyone to do the same have some fun writing because each one of us is now highly valued artist in a flood of ai slop literally no matter what you type I want to read your flawed shit.

I'm human so I'm certainly not immune to social anxiety or embarrassment from looking stupid, but I have been trying to do a manual override that for the last year.

Something it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize is that the first draft of nearly everything I do is bad. The first draft of my code is usually bad, the first draft of an essay I write is usually bad, the first version of something I draw is usually bad. If I don't allow myself to look stupid, even if only for the first draft of something, then I'll never accomplish anything. Doing something crappy is a means to doing something not-crappy.

I don't think I'm alone with this. There appears to be some ambiguity on who actually first said this, but there's an adage of "There's no great writing, only good rewriting".

This seems oversimplified, since there's a second, unmentioned possibility that somebody doesn't share an idea:

In a capitalist society, people sense there could be monetary potential with their idea, so they sit on it quietly (often never getting around to developing it, etc).

This fear has been amplified in recent years with AI vacuuming up everybody's intellectual property with zero reward. Can't really blame people for doing nothing in such conditions.

And for the commenters complaining about "low/high trust societies," they ought to consider factoring the above into their definition.

It's a superpower.

Look like an idiot and you'll learn the fastest!

I just feel that having fun doing what you're (becoming) good at should never be ruined by extra pressure from other people or even from yourself.

However had, at any level, people may look stupid for doing something that was not clever. I don't think even very smart people are 100% of the time very clever.

Being able to think this (and really feel it) was a big step for me. I think objectively I was always quite smart and also highly educated but I still felt like an imposter. It's nice when you finally feel that trust in yourself. And indeed I probably sometimes look stupid, but I think I often come back quickly in smart ways afterwards anyway, so I don't care so much about it.

The worst ones are the teams where members treat everyone as stupid

The absolute best will generate a creative discussion around a “stupid” question.

The absolute worst will deliberately mislead collegues to make them look stupid.

"Loosening up" is a way to describe this skill.

It reminds me of a story from Richard Feynman. In his book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he recalls an art class when he was instructed to draw without looking at the paper. The first time he did it, his pencil broke at the very beginning and he had nothing but impressions in his paper.

The second time he did it, he was impressed with the results, noticing a “funny, semi-Picasso like strength” in his work.

He knew that it would be impossible to draw well without looking at the paper, so he didn’t consciously try. He writes, “I had thought that ‘loosen up’ meant ‘make sloppy drawings,’ but it really meant to relax and not worry about how the drawing is going to come out.”

Being allowed to fail is a condition for your mind to want to try new ideas. I elaborate on this here in my book, Creative Doing: https://www.holloway.com/g/creative-doing/sections/relinquis...

There is a lot I like about this post, including the author's intuition to invoke the jellyfish.

A lion’s mane jellyfish can release up to 45,000 eggs per day. The jellyfish’s strategy is to lay as many eggs as possible and leave them to fend for themselves. Most of these eggs don’t survive, probably fewer than 0.1%.

Compare this with an elephant, which can only give birth to one calf at a time. The elephant’s strategy is to dedicate its effort into raising a relatively small number of calves. Many of these calves survive to see adulthood. This approach might sound familiar because it’s how we raise our kids as well.

If you're feeling stuck, and unwilling to look stupid, maybe it's time to approach your creative ideas less like an elephant and more like a jellyfish. I write more about this here: https://herbertlui.net/the-jellyfish-knows-how-to-survive-un...

The advantage to writing a blog, nowadays, is because your writing will be so difficult hard to discover, you can put all your ideas out there—good and bad—and only become known for the good ones. (That's what I'm hoping to do!)

In other words, "Publish everything, promote selectively" (Elaborated on this here: https://herbertlui.net/publish-everything-promote-selectivel...)

The problem with this article is that you're telling yourself you're not afraid of stupidity, which in this case is synonymous to incompetence or uselessness, yet your endgoal betrays otherwise. You're presenting a bunch of ideas that are 'useless' hoping amongst them is one of more use, hoping it all ties together and produces a wonderful result, as you get to yell "eureka". You do not want to accept uselessness, but to set your expectations of yourself, that either you or another person or persons have imposed, lower, back to where they once were. Or even lower. The reason your or another's expectations of you have risen after becoming older, as many comments have also wrote, is because your effort is being externally recognized by others, either by a Nobel price or a promotion. Regardless, your issue is self-esteem related. To combat lower(ing) self-esteem or insecurity, (and even accept uselessness!), you must love yourself.

Now a question: have you ever loved someone you didn't know at all? I don't mean in the physical sort of attraction, I mean someone that you knew nothing about whatsoever, not even how they look or act. It's impossible, isn't it? It is those we know the best that we feel love for, is it not? Now consider what the opposite of insecurity is. Security in one’s abilities and self, knowledge of one's limits as well as one's capabilities, and an acceptance of who one is. The more one grows, the more they change, so it is possible to know oneself and then not, as it is also possible the view others have make one to muddle their own perception. You won't find confident people who aren't aware of their own abilities or cannot accurately access what tools they have at their disposal. Confidence in abilities one doesn't have is not confidence, but overconfidence, and overconfidence is false confidence, which is as maladaptive as insecurity. I'll focus on those with low self esteem, because you fall into that category; these people are aware of their shortcomings or their potential shortcomings, their 'uselessness', because the higher you are the easier it is to fall, perhaps even inflate how many shortcomings they have. When you accept your "uselessness" you may produce some bad ideas, a few good ones, but in the end the fact that you're ok with it it makes you feel less distress about yourself, does it not?

Tie these together; you cannot love someone you do not know, and people who love themselves know their limits and what they can achieve, to be insecure is to misjudge your achievements, so because of this I assume, could be wrong, you do not love yourself enough. And watch, I said "enough", because knowing oneself completely is impossible. Similar to how reaching the truth is impossible, but becoming less wrong isn't.

Now uselessness. No one likes being bad at something; even babies are afraid of failure. I do not remember my time as a baby, but I remember being frustrated when I couldn't do certain things, like reaching a high place, as a toddler. Perhaps one of the reasons babies cry is because they cannot move their legs by their will. "Uselessness" can be overcome, but sometimes one may be actually useless and never learn how to walk. Does it sting, being called useless? I don't mean it as an insult here. I am using the literal definition of the word; complete inability to do something, rather than partial/subpar. It stings because it has been instilled on one that incompetence is negative, and thus something that should not be a part of you, a flaw needing purification. But if incompetence didn't exist, neither would competence, similarly to how life wouldn't be valuable without death or happiness without sadness.

However I like the gist and the thought behind this article.

Overall, I think acceptance that one might be unable to do certain things, can make one's life easier. The bad ideas you produce are as much of a part of you as your good ones. And accepting both is crucial.

It tells me immediately up front if they’re a retard in competition with me or a retard I can work with.

Bears are the same thing as bulls. Just the opposite.

You can look like a degenerate wallstreetbets gambler, being a bull, buying puts.

You can equally look like a degenerate wallstreetbets gambler, being a gay bear, shorting the stock.

The "beauty" of our modern stock market, is it provides both sides the avenue to lose stupid amounts of money.

    input(“ask me any question”)
    print(“I don’t know”)

Impostor Syndrome (noun), pathologic avoidance of identifying mediocrity in oneself, e.g. "I'm not mediocre, I just have impostor syndrome!"

    He who writes on bathroom walls
    rolls their shit in little balls.

    He who reads these lines of whit
    eats these little balls of shit.

The class that brought most of the innovations, citizens of Rome or Athens, a privileged ruling class, had a strong in-group honor system. The rest of the society was not so, but they were so divided that those other parts didn't even count.

We already have "high-crime society" and "low-crime society." What this has to do with overall levels of trust in different parts of the system, say, education, is not immediately clear to me. Do all high crime societies have untrustworthy education systems as well?

> To state the obvious, the difference is "profit".

To make my intention clear, the other difference is "popularity," which exemplifies the precise confusion I was reacting to.

> What's the difference between "creative" and "truly creative" work.

I didn't invoke it. The GP did. I'm willing to admit to whatever their subjective judgement is. I wonder if their connection between trust and "true creativity" is valid regardless of any possible definition. My gambit above was to openly suppose a good faith reason for the difference in my point of view.

Reputation is as harmful as it is good. Anyone who survived being unpopular in high school, or seen the dummies that can be elected in democracies, should be able to explain how.

No, it is better to judge works by their merits than it is to judge people by their popularity. Though it is far more expensive.

PS: I'm not talking about fake "honor" based power systems.

So what in your mind has ever been "truly original" then that someone couldn't argue is just "incremental improvements" instead?

> People shill Apple products even when they suck.

I agree, but don't think I'm doing so myself here.

I never claimed this and I have no idea why you would think I did.

What I do know is that nearly 1 in 3 JavaScript developers, based upon large anonymous polls, self identify as autistic. If that is representative of software employment as a whole then software employment is full of self-indulgent and highly neurotic people at levels far exceeding the outside population. Everybody wants to think they are more awesome, creative, and highly intelligent compared to everybody else, but that is numerically irrational.

Low neurotic people are generally less scared of just about everything including third party observation. Less fear and less anxiety is the very definition of low neuroticism.

Lots of amazing artists, creators and researchers are obviously highly neurotic.

I was also once an art student myself. Creativity extends far beyond individual contributions, which becomes evident in resource and personnel management. Creativity is highly correlated to openness, as is intelligence, and is least restricted by those who are most eager to exercise decisions and try new things without fear of consequence, whether real or perceived.

Creativity at the deepest level is seeing the cultural slope you're doing gradient descent on, and taking a hard left through the trees to a hidden slope that's way better rather than the one you were on.

I like Van Gogh as an example because of how hard he failed and the cultural U-turn, but hostility towards things that challenge the entrenched paradigm is a common response. Maybe Einstein and relativity is a more relevant example for you. People didn't read it at first and nod their heads, thinking to themselves "yes, of course!"

To restate your argument: openness is correlated to creativity (not controversial) and being neurotic dampens that because you care a lot what people think (no evidence).

There is no correlation between neuroticism and creativity. Neuroticism doesn't effect openness so it makes no sense. Either your argument is that neuroticism influences openness and that influences creativity or your argument is I just think neuroticism makes you less creative because I just think so. You might as well not even mention the Big 5 because it doesn't effect your last point.