Admitting you don't know something is like a superpower. That's how you learn. Most of the problems in the world are caused by people pretending to know things they don't
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Being willing to admit you're wrong shows you're willing to learn and want to do things correctly instead of focusing on gettin it done.
Confidence feeds charisma, but by now we should have all learned that just because people have charisma and power doesn't mean they're right or make good choices!
I’ve always felt like the greatest benefit I got from grad school was the intellectual self-confidence to say that I don’t understand something and would like to have it explained to me
And let's call out the substantial subset of those people who don't even know they're pretending to know--who confabulate with zero self-awareness, who think if it sounds plausible or like something they've heard online it must be true
This is why so many people can be easily duped into believing unreliable trash like chatGPT (or random influencers): it looks official and sounds confident and plausible, well gosh, it must be right!
Can’t overstate what a respect-earner it is for someone to graciously admit they were mistaken and accept correction without arguing or making excuses.
A top tier tactic I learned from a friend is to pretend not to know something they are quite informed on, to learn what another person’s grasp if the topic is.
I used to have a really hard time with this. I learned a lot from engaging with Indigenous activists. They would call me out on something and I would instinctively get defensive but little by little I learned to just say "I didn't realize that" and do the work of listening and learning.
It helped that my engagement was sincere and in good faith and that I was able to see in those moments that they knew much more than me on the subjects at hand and that I could only learn by admitting I was coming at it from a place of wanting to appear knowledgeable. That had to change & mostly has
One issue is there's enormous pressure to pretend to know things, and often a penalty for actually admitting you don't. But all the smartest & most worthwhile people I know are also the most willing to say "I don't know" or "I didn't know that," so they can learn and improve
Back in grad school I used to attend lectures from time to time where Louis Nirenberg was also in attendance, and he frequently began his questions by saying, “Maybe this is a silly question “ or the like. At the time he’d just won the Crafoord Prize.
Yeah you really cannot gain followers and likes and pings by being like "I don't know something, can anyone help me?" whereas you totally can by inventing a catchphrase & assuring people you know everything about everything & that kinda sucks
Mastodon users have done a good job of cultivating this attitude, which is something I really appreciate about being there. I try to be like that here, too. I think having this conversation is a great step.
Most questions this feed finds aren't curiosity or learning questions, though some are. It's fun to lurk it and reply to stuff. Maybe we could make a curiosity question classifier with, eg, modernbert (non "genai" NLP model)? Not sure that would be cheap enough to host but maybe
I often find myself consciously expressing I don’t know something, (e.g., “I wonder why…”) and then someone who clearly doesn’t know either sees it as opportunity to be the knower. Like, I just made space for us to explore, and you take it right up with that BS!!! Fool, I know you don’t know either!
Yeah one thing at work I'm trying to change is the chef and bar manager making people feel bad for asking questions. "Oh but they should know that already" well they don't, and at one point you didn't either, and now you're pointlessly alienating the next generation of you
I’m in the aviation maintenance world, one of the most frightening things I bump into is the know it all perfect airplane mechanic…
I posted both of these simple self owns cause that’s who we are if we are trying to be better, even sneaking up on six decades
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Confidence feeds charisma, but by now we should have all learned that just because people have charisma and power doesn't mean they're right or make good choices!
*Especially* when they’ve been clearly proven to have been wrong.
More bosses should learn this.
Oh, excuse me, they weren't coworkers, they were "internal customers". 🤮 Ugh.
I do try and stay humble in that regard :P :D
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Nirenberg
I made it because I saw a lot of people asking questions and not getting answers and I wanted to see people interact and share knowledge more.
But sadly I don’t think many people know it exists.
Coworkers: Are you r-word or something?
https://bsky.app/profile/msrpaul.bsky.social/post/3lduvjelfvc22
I’m in the aviation maintenance world, one of the most frightening things I bump into is the know it all perfect airplane mechanic…
I posted both of these simple self owns cause that’s who we are if we are trying to be better, even sneaking up on six decades
https://bsky.app/profile/msrpaul.bsky.social/post/3ldusqjyjfc2h