
The Curse of Smart People (2014) - luu
http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201407#01
======
yakult
My pet theory: much of 'gut feelings' and intuition boils down to having our
internal black box predict the behavior of other people. When you are
'average', this often simplifies to reasoning about what you would do in the
same circumstances, which is relatively easy. If you are 3 standard deviations
out, you'll have to compensate that consciously, which is inaccurate and
difficult and slow. This is like how UI designers have difficulty to discern
which parts of their UI are hard to use, while the end user could do so
effortlessly.

Smart people end up having to run SmartPerson + NormalPersonVM(pre-alpha) in
parallel. Normal people just run NormalPerson natively. Then they complain
about bugs and slowness ('smart people are out of touch with reality!', etc.)

~~~
yyhhsj0521
Agree. One of my friends is pretty smart (at least, above above-average) and
works in the tech industry. When he was young he had to "simulate" his
emotions to "look like a normal person." He had to think what normal people
would feel under his situation and tried to feel that way (or tried to make
himself looked feeling that way in front of people). For example, he thinks
that crying on funerals is illogical, because the dead are dead already,
nothing can bring them back and the dead would surely rather see people they
love live happily instead of in sorrow. But no. Until he escaped from the
environment he was born he had to live like a normal person, and tried to cry
on funerals.

~~~
benaiah
Not to diagnose your friend, but more as a general note: that kind of
perspective sounds (from my admittedly unqualified perspective) much more
typical of people on the autism spectrum or certain other non-neurotypicals
than it does of "smart people" in general. It might be worth noting that
there's some (mostly-anecdotal) indications that tech, particularly
programming itself, may have higher incidence of people on the spectrum than
other fields.

~~~
mfukar
> Not to diagnose your friend

Then please don't.

~~~
benaiah
His friend might not be on the autism spectrum, and it would be blatantly
irresponsible to claim he was based on such limited evidence with no
qualifications - which is why I didn't.

Rather, I stated that _that kind of mindset_ is _usually more common_ in
individuals on the spectrum. It is, in fact, one of its most common and
defining features - even if, on its own, it's not sufficient for a diagnosis.
It's relevant to the discussion, even if it's not relevant to his friend in
particular.

What further qualification could I have added to make myself clearer? I
definitely don't want to be encouraging lazy net-diagnoses, as they're harmful
to the people who have such disorders, so I'm genuinely curious how you would
rather I have phrased this.

~~~
tomrod
You could not have qualified that statement more. It's just hard to
communicate ideas because the response prediction engine we build in our minds
operates with a high degree of uncertainty.

------
QuantumRoar
I strongly believe that we should not easily segregate people into a smart
kind and a not-so-smart kind. Intelligence comes in many ways and the genetics
and upbringing of a person will make their intelligence manifest in different
ways.

Someone being good at something, does not automatically equate to a high level
of intelligence or smartness but rather a high degree of familiarity with the
topic. Familiarity can be acquired either through a lot of practice or from a
predisposition to understand quickly, which is intelligence or smartness.

However, what can be said is that a person who is good at almost everything,
necessarily has to be smart because there wouldn't be any time to practice
everything in depth. Conversely, I'd never call a person smart who's good at
one thing but doesn't understand anything else.

The author says that smart, successful people are cursed with over-confidence
due to them knowing one thing very well. But how can you call a person smart
if they do not even possess the ability to properly self-reflect. Is that not
the one thing that should define smartness?

Rationalizing things away, ignoring signs that interfere with one's world-
view, and being over-confident are all traits of not-so-smart people. Just
because you know how to code, does not mean you are smart.

I'd say the result of this anecdote should've been that it turns out that
people can be good at their jobs and be idiots at the same time.

~~~
kristianc
> The author says that smart, successful people are cursed with over-
> confidence due to them knowing one thing very well. But how can you call a
> person smart if they do not even possess the ability to properly self-
> reflect. Is that not the one thing that should define smartness?

I've more often heard the opposite stated, that people who are smart have a
tendency to see multiple sides of every issue and struggle to come to
decisions, whereas people who are less smart are more prone to see complex
things in black and white. If only we had a readily available example of that
phenomenon...

~~~
tankenmate
The Dunning–Kruger effect?

------
WalterBright
> very easy to describe all your successes (project not canceled) in terms of
> your team's greatness, and all your failures (project canceled) in terms of
> other people's capriciousness.

I see this belief in probably about 80% of people I encounter, and it has
little correlation with how smart one is.

I like to hang out with people who take responsibility for their failures
rather than complaining about how circumstance, "The Man", or other people
have it in for them. Such people are far more interesting. Unsurprisingly,
they're also far more successful.

~~~
Nition
It's the same kind of thing as how when you accidentally cut someone off while
driving it's because they were in your blindspot and you're having a bad day
and it's the first time that's ever happened etc etc... and when someone else
cuts you off they're an idiot who shouldn't be on the road and they probably
always drive badly.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
This is called the fundamental attribution error [1]. I thought it was a well-
established phenomenon, but apparently its validity is contested.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error)

------
234dd57d2c8dba
Here's a summary for why smart people are "cursed":

If you are two or 3 standard deviations about the mean, you'll quickly realize
society is optimized and caters to the average intelligence. You'll find it
very boring and frustrating having to deal with rules and decisions that do
not make sense. You must continually push yourself to stay entertained and
meet like-minded people otherwise you'll get very depressed that everything is
meaningless.

-t. "smart" person

~~~
bitexploder
This almost seems like a cliche or a troll. I think smarts also lead people to
miss the world around them and trivialize anything that isnt a "challenge". To
some very smart people I know -- chill out and laern to enjoy the absurdity
and mundane as well as the challenge. Be bored once in a while. Know
satisfaction in the simple.

~~~
jakobegger
To me that doesn't sound like the curse of the "smart" people, it sounds more
like the curse of the arrogant people.

Smart people understand that there is a reason that pointless / absurd rules
are there. Usually the reason is not that everyone else is too stupid. The
problem is usually that people have conflicting interests, and there just
isn't a simple solution.

~~~
dasil003
1000 times this. Raw brain processing power doesn't have all that much to do
with one's disposition to the world. Wise people realize that the smartest
human is still hopelessly incapable of really understanding the universe.
Smart people can come up with better models of reality, but they are still
subject to the chaotic nature of the universe just like the rest of existence.

Forming and dwelling on a belief that society wasn't created for you is
something that can happen for a variety of reasons. The healthy thing is to
accept the things you can't control and figure out how you can best get along
in the environment to which you are subject. For the very smart, there has
probably never been a better time to be alive in terms of applying ones gifts.

~~~
wolfgke
> Wise people realize that the smartest human is still hopelessly incapable of
> really understanding the universe.

Still the best theories that physics has to offer are the best that humankind
has found in recorded history. And they were only found because there were
people that did not tolerate this situation (being incapable to understand the
universe).

> Smart people can come up with better models of reality, but they are still
> subject to the chaotic nature of the universe just like the rest of
> existence.

The moral should rather be: Because of this fact, sit down and develop better
mathematics that will lead to us understanding this kind of chaotic situations
much better in, say, 50 years.

------
tabeth
I wonder how much human potential we're wasting by putting "smart people" on a
pedestal instead of having higher and better utilization of regular people.
Regular people are far more capable than working at McDonalds, Walmart,
Amazon, or whatever wage slave job BigCo is offering.

It's pretty hard to prove, but I bet that we're barely even at 1% utilization
of humanity's potential, given our technology and population.

~~~
czep
Imagine if the world's nail salon workers could spend their time curing
cancer, fighting hunger or homelessness instead of the useless primping of
rich people's hands and feet. If we only had an economic system to allow
everyone to reach their fullest potential despite circumstances of birth, and
social priorities where personal vanity was not placed above the good of
humanity. In 500 years time maybe we'll get there.

~~~
wolfgke
> Imagine if the world's nail salon workers could spend their time curing
> cancer, fighting hunger or homelessness instead of the useless primping of
> rich people's hands and feet.

The nail salon workers could use their free time for this purpose if they
wanted. They (perhaps with some rare exceptions) don't do it. On the other
hand: The fact that someone is willing to give money to the nail salon workers
for getting hands/feet pimped shows that someone values this kind of work.

~~~
rickycook
well, i think the point is two-fold.

first, that it can be more difficult for people to get an education (and in
many cases, a professional job) depending on their background and thus have a
much higher barrier to "cure cancer" type work. simply saying that they could
is all well and good, but it ignores some harsh realities of life.

second, the fact that people value something does not necessarily make it
important. so what if someone values their nails being done? who does it
benefit? capital is a distribution of resources in order to maximise output.
some of that output is chaff, but i'd argue that less chaff and more useful
product is better for a society to prosper.

~~~
wolfgke
> second, the fact that people value something does not necessarily make it
> important. so what if someone values their nails being done? who does it
> benefit? capital is a distribution of resources in order to maximise output.
> some of that output is chaff, but i'd argue that less chaff and more useful
> product is better for a society to prosper.

Markets form a democracy: Everybody can vote with their wallet what they want
and consider as important.

~~~
tabeth
Perhaps if everyone started from the same point this would be true. However,
not only has everyone _not_ started from the same point, there are forces --
those who already have money -- who are spending money in an effort to
brainwash those who do not into doing things that benefit them indirectly.

~~~
wolfgke
> Perhaps if everyone started from the same point this would be true. However,
> not only has everyone not started from the same point

By deciding to have children or not (and if yes: how many?), parents vote
about the distribution of the startup positions for the next generation.

EDIT: In other words: Poor people should rather be angry about their parents
than about the system.

~~~
tabeth
I honestly don't even know what to say...

1\. "Parents vote about the distribution of the startup positions for the next
generation." What?

2\. "Poor people should rather be angry about their parents than about the
system." Are you serious? What good is that going to do?

Sorry, but you must be living quite a privileged, or sheltered life if you
believe these things.

~~~
nitrogen
Reproduction has a very well-earned taboo thanks to the terrible eugenics
trends of the early 20th century. But, this taboo prevents us from seeing some
things clearly. One of those things we tend to avoid thinking about as a
society is the who/when/why of parenting, and the long-term effects of those
decisions (or lack thereof).

The movie Idiocracy satirized one aspect of this, but it still doesn't get
much discussion in terms of family planning on a societal scale -- whether to
encourage or discourage childbearing, whether some groups should be encouraged
more than others and the moral questions thereby raised, etc.

So, acting shocked and invoking "privilege" doesn't move the conversation
forward, when there is ample underexplored territory in which to do so.

------
BrailleHunting
Perhaps "smart" is too un-nuanced by conflating the real performance of many
types of intelligence areas (social, emotional, political, spatial, logical,
etc.) into a singular narrow attribution based on brief interactions? (Also
yet another example highlighting where language constrains thinking.) And
therefore the overvaluing of maximizing possession of one strength at the
detriment of avoiding complementary strengths in other areas? Effectively, a
personality monoculture where greater personality diversity would likely have
tangible benefits (leadership, sales, marketing, strategy, design, etc.)

~~~
moxious
Smart is a hard thing to talk about. Like the concept of "quality". There are
hundreds of different kinds, and I can't really describe it, but you and I
both know it when we see it.

I can forgive them for being overly broad with "smart". You're also right that
it's not one thing, but it's just hard to talk about, because it's like a wet
bar of soap.

~~~
throwaway91111
The human brain is insanely good at consistent dimensional reduction. Our
conscious interactions struggle with the same task; it's Herculean to approach
general purpose ordering in many-dimensional situations.

------
jstewartmobile
My experience has been that most "smart" people are actually high-functioning
autistic savants. I mean, if they were actually +2 std deviations above on the
whole enchilada, their lives wouldn't be such a mess.

You can make a lot of money and still be a hot mess. Look at celebrities.
Alpha nerds are just a variation on the theme.

~~~
rak00n
I don't disagree with you. But celebrities have a far wider audience. Your
rockstar programmer doesn't have that.

A lot of social problems disappear when you're accepted as a famous
accomplished person. So a celebrity can be weird and not face the same social
isolation.

~~~
_null
Technical skills have higher economic value but lower social status than
skills in the arts. An eccentric painter or musician achieves a level of
cachet that an eccentric programmer doesn't. Dysfunction has a certain glamour
if you have artistic talent; there's no such thing as a tortured engineer.

------
Animats
The author may have been headed somewhere with that idea, but he didn't get
there.

~~~
barrkel
I think there was a germ of a theory why companies full of smart people do
dumb things, or are sometimes evil, or something like that; but it didn't get
that explicit because it might criticise the employer too directly.

~~~
Profan
Tentative new title: "The Curse of Stifled People"

Well, maybe that sounds a bit mean, but the constant fear of saying something
wrong about one's employer (past or present) is a bit sad sometimes.

------
soufron
I am fascinated by the number of comments made by people who actually think
they're so smart, it's the society (made of billions of people) that's dumb.

1 Mind > 7.5B Minds ?

I tend to think these companies don't hire smart people. They hire
psychologically deviant people who will both comply without a problem, and who
will do mean things to others because they have a superiority complex... a
little like german engineers during WWII ;)

~~~
edanm
"1 Mind > 7.5B Minds ?"

In some cases, yes. 7.5B people didn't discover relativity or invent the
airplane. Some few specific people did.

"I tend to think these companies don't hire smart people. They hire
psychologically deviant people who will both comply without a problem, and who
will do mean things to others because they have a superiority complex... a
little like german engineers during WWII ;)"

Maybe you're just trolling. But do you have any possible reason to think this
is true? It certainly doesn't seem like it based on any experience _I 've_
ever had, that's for sure.

~~~
soufron
Invention is a continuous process.

If you can't detect deviant people in these companies, you might consider
reading JG Ballard for example.

------
nerdlogic
I like how everyone has a different opinion about how a smart person has to
be, but in most cases people are referring to certain traits that do not
correlate with intelligence (and frequently could indicate deviation in either
direction), and that's plausible since intelligence is such an abstract
notion.

For instance, recognising patterns, and acting on those patterns are two
different things. One might notice that acting on the patterns can bring him
success/economical safety and what he considers joy or effortlessly having
goods. But the other one can make a step further and consider that in the
steady state he will not be any happier. If both happen to make this logical
step, they might have to make a decision based on their preferences, which is
highly subjective.

For me, intelligence is not comparable. To be more honest, I think there is
only a partial order, and for that, I'm not sure.

~~~
pizza
A worldview is like a sampled model of an ultrafilter which is in reality more
like a leaky sieve

------
arjie
Author takes issue with the following attitude in a certain way.

> Smart people, computer types anyway, tend to come down on the side of people
> who don't like emotions. Programmers, who do logic for a living.

There's another way to take issue with that, though. In _The Righteous Mind_,
Jonathan Haidt argues that emotion-processing is critical to decision making
(and that we use emotion-processing to guide reason), citing some work that
people with damaged emotion processing suffer analysis paralysis on simple
tasks.

It's an interesting idea. Of course, emotion processing etc. is also the stuff
that causes us to have a negative emotional reaction on seeing weird code. The
rest of the book argues as to how we form moral opinions, but that part was
interesting without the stuff about morality.

~~~
bootload
_" In _The Righteous Mind_, Jonathan Haidt argues that emotion-processing is
critical to decision making (and that we use emotion-processing to guide
reason), citing some work that people with damaged emotion processing suffer
analysis paralysis on simple tasks."_

The balance between logic, emotion and decisiveness is a theme explored in
Star Trek S1E16, _" The Galileo Seven"_ [0], [1] Spock taking command and
following ^flawlewss logic^ almost gets them marooned and killed. I have a
theory smart people who assume a rigid logical mindset make the worst leaders.

Reference

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Galileo_Seven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Galileo_Seven)

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708465/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708465/)

------
tempestn
The lesser known Curse of Smart People, but one that follows directly from
this this article, involves hours spent reading about wifi routers and signal
processing.

------
camdenlock
> Working at a large, successful company lets you keep your isolation. If you
> choose, you can just ignore all the inconvenient facts about the world.

Is this why social justice extremism is so popular in Silicon Valley? I mean,
social justice is critical to a well-functioning and fair society, but the
brand of it that SV folks tend to sell is fairly detached from the realities
of living in a human civilization.

~~~
kmicklas
What do you mean by this?

~~~
mfukar
As well-off as people are, they tend to view problems they don't face as
solved. Therefore they turn their attention to what _they_ view as a problem.
In a very crude example, the Bay Area people don't care about the wars in the
Middle East - they're not a problem as far as they're concerned. Their
exclusion from places they want to work and the climbing housing prices
though, yuck.

------
watwut
It sounds to me a bit that the company had a culture where premium is given on
looking smart - so people took great efforts to look smart. Which lead to
rationalizations and inability to admit mistakes (I can not just say that I
made decision cause I did not knew better, I have to find smart sounding
reasons).

Any positions higher then junior programmer needs to make intuitive decisions.
Everything above junior programmer position deals with uncertainties - whether
it is prioritization, organizational decision (who to hire, what position to
put new person in), architectural decisions when working with new technology
and so on and so forth. You make a lot of value judgement. If everyone is
pretending all those decisions were logical, then there is collective denial
going on. That is not the same thing as everyone being smarter then all other
companies around.

Tl;dr: A lot of rationalization going on is not consequence of everyone being
smart, it is flag of workplace where people cant afford to talk honestly about
mistakes and decisions.

------
bootload
_" What I have learned, working here, is that smart, successful people are
cursed. The curse is confidence."_

Things to remember when smart people appear confident:

\- the correlation between confidence and ability to actually "do" something
can be low

\- smart people can live in their heads

\- smart people can overestimate their expertise in areas they may be familiar
or ignorant of, equally

\- street smarts can kick smart, smarts arse

A quick question I ask is, _" Have you done this before?"_. I use this
question to determine perceived verses actual smartness.

Here's an example of why you need to do this. Back in '10 I went on a 220km
hike from 200 meters above sea level to 2,228 (about 7300ft). [0] I was with a
mixed group of people, fit, smart and motivated. On the last day, mid point to
the final destination, we took a photo at the summit of the highest point in
Australia. Lots of smart people in that photo, PhDs, Masters students etc. By
the end of the day, one suffered frost bite, three got lost and of the
finishers who covered the entire distance, maybe 20% came away without some
sort of injury. Why?

    
    
      "Have you done this before?"
    

A lot of smart people ^thought^ running and riding then walking 30+Km/day was
easy. A lot didn't think going into an alpine area in early autumn would be
cold. The PhD with blue lips who I marched off the coldest place in Australia
wore jeans and jumper, had taken a 600ml container of water and no food. [1]
The three who sparked a search, decided to take break in a hut, but not inform
anybody. [2] Now nobody really got hurt or lost. But they could have, had luck
not been on their side. Smartness breeds a certain type of arrogance that left
unchecked, can get you into trouble quickly.

Time and time again I remind myself, depending on the circumstances, _" street
smarts"_ whip _" smart smarts'"_ arse.

Reference

[0] @samh, "Australian Economist who lost bet will walk from Parliament to
Mount Kosciousko"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126054)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126078)

[1] At the top the wind was 50km/hr and in fog.
[https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4603144874/in/album-72157...](https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4603144874/in/album-72157623796441755)

[2] Tail-end charlie (me) also missed checking inside the hut.
[https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4797709801/in/album-72157...](https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4797709801/in/album-72157623796441755/)

[3]
[https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157624081287855](https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157624081287855)

[4]
[https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157624081287855](https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157624081287855)

~~~
mncharity
> "Have you done this before?"

Very nice. And to estimate _robust competence_ , perhaps:

"Have you focused on this? Long-term, with reflective practice, and embedded
in a critical community?"

I don't know how to make that pithy. "Is this your thing?", "Is this your
life?", "Are you a contender?", ...?

I'm interested transformative improvement of science and engineering
educational content, through greatly increased use of domain expertise. So
I've spent a lot of time scraping against the limits of people's expertise.[1]

The steepness with which people's expertise drops, as you move away from their
primary focus of effort, is greatly and pervasively underestimated.

There's a news story genre, an example of which is "Harvard MBA's confused
about what causes Earth's seasons!" But why is this surprising? If the last
time someone focused on something was in middle school, then their having a
middle school understanding of it shouldn't come as a great surprise.

A professor wizzy in their own subfield, may have a graduate student's grasp
of nearby subfields, an undergraduate's grasp of the rest of their field, and
a high-school grasp of other fields.

A non-biology MIT professor may have no idea what DNA is. An MIT chemistry
lecturer no recognition of dimensional analysis. A Harvard physicist, hard-
nosed and empirical, in teaching "just has a feeling for it", "intuitively
knowing" what will work and not and how well. If you want to find out what
crayon color to use for the Sun, don't ask a random first-tier astronomy
graduate student - they will almost always get it wrong.[2]

The unadorned adjective "smart"... has startlingly large negative utility.

[1]
[http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6)
Scientific expertise is not broadly distributed - an underappreciated obstacle
to creating better content

[2]
[http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Jw6yo](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Jw6yo)
"What color is the Sun?" \- An example of science education pathology.

~~~
sokoloff
> A non-biology MIT professor may have no idea what DNA is.

I would be fairly shocked if more than 0.1% of the time this was the case.

PS: I loved the second link!

~~~
mncharity
> shocked if more than 0.1%

MIT has ~1000 non-emeritus professors. So order 0.1% would permit 3 cases. But
that's including biology, and non-science/non-engineering, which I didn't
include. So it's at least low order 1%. And I'd be unsurprised if it's at
least several percent. And not shocked by ten.

Consider an old professor. They may well have not had a biology class in high-
school or college, let alone graduate school. And never touched biology
professionally. And either not have had kids, or was not deeply involved in
their science education. So we're down to "ambient general knowledge". What
percent of the general population of PhD's with only ambient exposure, have
any idea what DNA is? And many professors are among the busiest people I know.
Imagine asking a serial startup CEO, what do you mean you don't know who
entertainer-X is, aren't you watching TV and following popular culture? Well,
no. So no need for shocked?

Very rarely, a professor giving a talk, will put the audience on the spot. A
room of EE/CS professors may not recognize astronomical tidal forces. Half a
room of MechE profs may think red blood cells are thinly scattered in blood.

Sure, common curiosity trims the numbers. But it's not universal. A now-
retired physics professor might respond to a suggestion that they use
biological examples in their intro physics problems, with "WHAT! You want me
to teach... _biology_?!?!?!".

At the other extreme, there are a few impressive polymaths. But even there,
out of field, competence is uneven and has holes. Impressive, impressive, WTF
basic misconception, impressive... Similar to comments that when Hans Rosling
started doing immigration, he tripped on some basic misconceptions.

Out of field, one isn't "embedded in a critical community". Part of how
science works, is people being very afraid of being embarrassed by getting it
wrong in front of their peers, and so putting in the effort and questioning to
avoid that. Out of field, no one cares. One still has some habits of thought,
but the edge isn't there.

And baseline unmotivated competence is not high. There's an old video[1] made
out of Harvard, which includes graduating MIT and Harvard students, given a
battery, one long wire, and a small lightbulb, and asked to make light. And
failing, and failing, and...

[1]
[https://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html](https://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html)

Re "PS: I loved the second link!", thanks! :)

------
faragon
Being "smart" is not easy. From conflicts with others because of Dunning-
Kruger effect [1], because your own ego (no matter how "smart" you think you
are, you're not that "smart" in the whole "smartness spectrum"), etc. So in
the end, most "smart" people learn to deal with his own ego, idiots, and just
try to be nice, because life is very short for fussing and fighting [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyclqo_AV2M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyclqo_AV2M)

------
bambax
Based on this article, the curse of "smart" people appears to be lack of self-
awareness.

------
espeed
Hubris born of success (overconfidence, arrogance) is "stage 1" in _How the
Mighty Fall_ by Jim Collins:

[https://charlierose.com/videos/12443](https://charlierose.com/videos/12443)

Humility (know you don't know, always be asking questions), a focus on the
greater good (is it about you or something greater than you?), and having a
"growth mindset" are part of the antidote:

[https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-
mindset...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/)

------
redant
The author and some comments tend to confuse skills, success, and
intelligence. I think the author describes successful and skillful software
engineers who are far from being highly intelligent. It just happened that
their skills of constructing program is highly valuable in the current market
conditions. Which feeds their arrogance and leads to all kinds of ugly
consequences. The hardware engineers of the 20-th century had the same issues.
The main hero of the movie Falling Down is an excellent example of such guy.

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soufron
LOL. What you call "intelligence" is simply being a prick :)

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nradov
Outside of software, my favorite example of this principle is Donald Rumsfeld.
He's clearly one of the most brilliant people to have ever worked in
government, and yet through overconfidence he contributed to the worst foreign
policy blunders in modern US history and got thousands of people killed. So it
seems that being smart doesn't necessarily help with making good decisions,
especially in complex situations with incomplete data.

~~~
pizza
I'm not saying I'm skeptical, but I am saying I want to learn more about
Rumseld's brilliance.

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norswap
But isn't the fact of being smart _and working at a big company_ selecting for
exactly this trait?

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dschuetz
Reading the article, I wasn't sure which ones were the smart people there:
those who are confident that they are smart, hence successful, or those who
constantly question their smarts, but are successful nonetheless?

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stianstr
Very true. I use to say that I'm too smart to be confident :-P

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pizza
How many rabbit holes have I been down, and would I prefer discovering more of
them or following one to its end?

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soufron
I also tend to think you DONT need 5 days of interview to detect that someone
is smart... ;)

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unstatusthequo
"bing around a bit..."

Lol is that really a thing?

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InclinedPlane
I worked at Microsoft too, in one of the best divisions full of the smartest
developers in the world. I worked with some truly amazing individuals, some
outright geniuses in their field, in fact. Some of the lessons I learned from
my coworkers while I was there I still carry with me and value very heavily.
But I wouldn't say I was awed as the author was. Nor was it my experience that
there was a distinct lack of clueless people. I interacted with a number of
folks that didn't have what I would consider a full toolkit of talent, skills,
experience, and judgment (maybe my standards are higher than the author's, I
don't know).

I'd say the problems that exist in that environment and in that group of
people (and other similar groups at dev shops all around the world) go well
beyond the ability to rationalize anything. The biggest problem I've
experienced consistently, everywhere, is a lack of caring about the right
things. A lot of engineers live in a little fantasy bubble divorced from the
real world. Separated from the consequences of their actions, separated from a
connection with the actual practical _use_ of their product by real humans.
They too often don't have an understanding of how what they're working on fits
into the "real world" and instead just enjoy twiddling the knobs and levers
behind the scenes because that's a fun hobby for them.

A big problem I've seen consistently is the willingness to accept the status
quo regardless of the way it is because it "works". And this is one case where
being "smart" and capable can actually be a detriment. Being smart and capable
means that you can take an incredibly broken tool or process and still make
productive use out of it. And to some extent there's a pride or a bravado that
comes from doing so (relevant xkcd:
[https://xkcd.com/378/](https://xkcd.com/378/)). But that sort of thing is
self-defeating. It doesn't matter that you _can_ get by with horrible internal
tools, because in reality existing in that state destroys an enormous amount
of productivity. Programmers too easily fall into the trap of thinking that
the hard way is the better way, and you see this in code too where devs think
they're smart by writing complicated "sophisticated" code for no good reason
when plain old run of the mill highly readable code would be vastly preferred.

As the author touches on the curse of excessive confidence is also a big
problem. You see a lot of developers who fall into the know-it-all trap and
think that because they completed a challenging degree program, work in a
highly paid highly impactful field, and have some degree of expertise in some
tiny corner of that field that somehow that makes them einsteins or something.
The reality is that no matter how much you as an individual can possibly know
your ignorance will always outweigh your knowledge by huge orders of
magnitude, even within a given field. A big problem this causes is developers
not realizing their limitations in certain areas and just papering over those
problems, perhaps even thinking that they are fundamental to the discipline or
the field in general. I've seen countless examples of systems put together by
very smart very competent devs who had some significant gap in their overall
skillset and instead of seeking outside help or advice or taking the time to
learn something new they instead just came up with some horrible hack rooted
in stuff they _were_ comfortable with but applied in a totally inappropriate
manner. And those hacks are often so deep into the system that it takes a ton
of work to refactor them out and away, on top of all the problems caused by
the system being fundamentally flawed in design. Whereas spending just a few
days or a week of time learning something new could have resulted in a much
more robust system from the outset, if they'd simply have checked their
confidence a bit.

