alt Hacker NewsWillingness to look stupid
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Reading this makes me think of the effect of doing something you do all the time, and are pretty great at, but when someone is watching you, you inevitably make a stupid mistake.
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.
I am immune to this as I will never be "great" at anything. I am average, and I am OK with that.
This is true. It's okay to overshare and look stupid.
yep; happened to me, too;
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.
What has potential AGI teached me is that no matter what I write, as long as I do it manually, it has value. Not because it is good but because it is genuine.
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.
It’s actually a blessing when people don’t have huge expectations of you. The higher their expectations get, the more your stress increases and your productivity drops. Forever the underdog :)
Never make it to management that way. Other people have to do the failing.
I have very little pride or shame.
It's a superpower.
Look like an idiot and you'll learn the fastest!
Queue obligatory Weird Al: https://youtu.be/SMhwddNQSWQ
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".
I really liked this article, thanks Samin
My burner account here, I be stupid so I learn
Just a few sentences in and the author is already comparing himself to nobel prize winners. Love it! Nice article!
Been out here lookin stupid since before I wasn’t and yet very few upvotes. Whst does that tell you?
It is probably the most difficult and the most important life skill you need to develop
It's true that a Nobel prize can blunt a scientist's productivity, but for balance, the kind of extraordinary result that merits a Nobel might also not be replicable in one scientist's career, regardless of how the world reacts to it.
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?
Definitely needed to succeed in theater and take risks in life.
"There’s this unfortunate pattern that happens when someone wins a Nobel Prize. They tend to stop doing great work."
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.
The best teams are the ones where “stupid” questions are always alowed.
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.
I think I was 35 when I first said to myself: "When you don't understand something, it's either because it's difficult, or because you don't have all information you need yet."
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.
Need someone to look stupid for me, $100/hr.
There is sibling concept of the Nobel prize winner ending up doing less meaningful work after they received their price. In history there are countless examples of the underdog emerging from the shadows and the dominant empire collapsing under its own weight; a natural rotation of roles. It is explained in detail here: https://youtu.be/ybufqRY77PQ
Great article.
I've observed this behavior at work. It doesn't present itself only as not sharing. People with recognition and political leverage can share wrong ideas confidently, and others will naturally follow them. If they're challenged on that idea, and even presented evidence that it's wrong, they often push back and double down on it, or don't acknowledge the correction at all.
I think this is more detrimental to the team and organization than the fear of sharing the wrong idea. For some reason, some senior people will do anything to avoid losing face in public, yet they still seek recognition for their work.
On the other hand, it is a real pleasure to work with senior people who can acknowledge their mistakes, are willing to learn from them, and course correct if needed. It shows maturity and humility, and sets a good example for others, which is exactly what good leaders should do.
I'm a nearly 40 year old man and I skip through the halls at work most days. It's something I've been doing for a long time because it's fun, it's faster than walking, and it looks silly. It seems to help some people loosen up when they see their colleague skipping down the hall and I think that helps team morale.
> So instead of trying and occasionally failing, they just... stop trying. The fear of making something bad is worse than producing nothing at all.
"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...)
> Overshare, but look stupid
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.
“Fragile ego” is such a tired trope. It is certainly a factor, but its effects are way overestimated. Something about “fragile ego” seems to stop people from thinking any further.
“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.
dude's RSS feeds return 404
Human society is too stifled by expectations of how every should behave, from the people who raise you and you grow up with and shows and movies, so much that we try to match that and be happy/sad/angry/prim/proper/etc. at times even when we don't really feel that way.
It’s not only a moat but a filter.
It tells me immediately up front if they’re a retard in competition with me or a retard I can work with.
"Failure is the mother of success."
A certain president?
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.
Nice work
In this comment I'll use the words useless and "useless". The former's definition is the one we are most familiar with, while the latter, in quotation marks, is the literal definition if you break the word useless into its two components: use + less. So we have of no use whatsoever and of less use. Reminder: I am not using these words as insults, but rather neutrally. Also, I am using the general "you" here, similar to using "one", rather than referring to the reader or the author of the article in specific.
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.
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Ward said it succinctly, as was his wont: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law