
The Case for More Intellectual Humility - a-smith
http://nautil.us/blog/the-case-for-more-intellectual-humility
======
jph
Intellectual humility is a key trait of great hackers and coworkers, in my
experience.

Google's Laszlo Bock described hiring for intellectual humility like this...

"What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we
want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be
zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and
they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’ You need a big ego
and small ego in the same person at the same time."

~~~
sbardle
How does a big ego and small ego exist in the same person at the same time? It
sounds like a square triangle.

~~~
signa11
> How does a big ego and small ego exist in the same person at the same time?
> It sounds like a square triangle.

 _personally_ i think, the person who can't change his/her mind in light of
new facts (which is what seems to be emphasized here) is dangerous.

i have _heard_ / _read_ that steve-jobs was known for changing his mind
instantly in the light of new facts.

not sure, why this would be misconstrued as _weak_

~~~
mercer
The problem wasn't Steve Jobs changing his mind, but rather pretending that he
did so all by himself.

Whether that's weak, I can't say.

------
dkarapetyan
Whatever can be said on the matter was already neatly captured by Feynman

> The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the
> easiest person to fool.

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dmichulke
Personally, I take special note of people who can say "I was wrong and you
were right" and usually these are rare and smart and often they become very
good friends of mine.

Similarly, if you haven't said these words to anyone for a long time, it's
likely you're not intellectually humble (or you're just always right :P )

~~~
elcapitan
It's also a good negotiation strategy. Admit early on in the negotiation that
you were wrong about one thing, and you'll get a commitment to admitting being
wrong later on by the other side.

~~~
abalashov
Sometimes. That would be a losing bet when negotiating with the current
presidential administration or its GOP allies.

I'm not being flippant or scoring a cheap shot. Intransigence was the entire
strategy, the core messaging of their campaign and the reason for their
popularity. They don't do compromise. Any concessions are simply treated as a
sign of weakness.

~~~
Spooky23
The mechanics change, but it's still a good technique.

Negotiators like this often are really insecure. They're often playing some
lame poker style bluff and brinksmanship strategy. If you have some insight
into their insecurity, the counter is really easy. You introduce some minor
"wrong", let them run and while they are busy puffing around making noise, you
have an opportunity to screw them later.

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bernardlunn
It is a key trait of good traders/investors. The stockmarket is referred to as
the "great humiliator".

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alexashka
This is just 'wisdom' in a different wrapper.

Some folks have a knack for acquiring wisdom with age - some don't. It's not a
matter of articles - I'd say it's mostly a matter of personality.

Some are curious and want to see how things work - others only want to know
how to get that specific thing they want, come upon a stumbling block,
rationalize it as 'outside of my control' and spend the rest of their days in
complain-mode :)

I'd say the ratio of philosopher vs complainer is maybe 50-1? If not 100-1.
Either way, they're rare birds, them folks who seek wisdom it seems.

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squozzer
We should try these principles at our next job interviews and compare notes.

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rimliu
What baffles me that it is still considered OK to indoctrinate children with
provably false beliefs.

~~~
blowski
What's the alternative? A civil servant deciding what is allowed to be taught
to children? Can you teach skepticism by saying "you're not allowed to learn
this stuff over here"?

Seems to me that allowing science to win out in the 'market of ideas' is the
healthiest solution.

~~~
rimliu
Not fair competition when indoctrination is given a headstart. There is a
difference between being allowed to learn this stuff and being indoctrinated
since the days you are not even able to read.

~~~
khedoros1
So, should children be given to the care of the state at the earliest possible
age? Or you'd rather have mass prosecution and re-education to stamp out
beliefs that you dislike?

In the long run, maladaptive beliefs will die out and useful ones will
survive, head start or no.

~~~
cyborgx7
I don't understand. I'm not advocating for the state to stamp out beliefs I
disagree with. But the believes that should win out and survive should be the
correct ones, not the useful ones.

~~~
khedoros1
The person that I replied to seemed to be saying that certain beliefs should
be disallowed, and that's what I was responding to.

As to what _should_ win out: Truth is a fine ideal to work towards, but one
should never expect that it's what will actually win. "Should" is like
"deserves". They're nice to think about, but not always realistic.

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dan-compton
Intellectual Humility doesn't go far enough. The goal should be to reap
knowledge from all sources and to disassociate the emotional and intellectual
self from that knowledge set.

I believe that the primary issue is the formation of heuristics about
knowledge sources. e.g. Person B provides person A with knowledge of class
"low-value in domain D" N times and knowledge of class "higher-value in domain
D" K times in some time period T. At some time T_n A internalizes a heuristic
about Person B's overall knowledge set. Depending on internal characteristics
of A, all subsequent knowledge expressed by B may be ignored.

This is problematic. Not only does A ignore that the difference set of A and
B's knowledge (even in D) is likely nonzero, it effectively assumes that A's
knowledge is a superset of B, and that A's rate of knowledge aquisition is
greater than that of B for all T. It ignores that A and B are dynamical
systems.

In my opinion, formation of these kinds of heuristics and being dismissive of
knowledge is a sign of intellectual weakness. It's akin to internalizing
knowledge to the point of belief and belief is bounding.

~~~
metaphor
>> ...all subsequent knowledge expressed by B may be ignored.

Given that we're human with a finite amount of time and attention at our
disposal, it strikes me as intuitively sensible that we tend towards (but
never firmly settling on) this outcome, especially where instances of N >>
K...a sort of "survival of the fittest" feedback loop, if you will. I think
Johnny Lee's analogy framed in the context of the user experience[1] is
applicable here.

>> ...it effectively assumes that A's knowledge is a superset of B, and that
A's rate of knowledge aquisition is greater than that of B for all T.

Sounds like narcissism. Surely we can have our pragmatic feedback loop without
deteriorating into such a state.

[1] [https://youtu.be/kuhVfuhCcG4?t=220](https://youtu.be/kuhVfuhCcG4?t=220)

~~~
dan-compton
> it strikes me as intuitively sensible...

This might be intuitive if A weighted each N of some class equally, and
N>>Kevin for each _class_, but observation indicates this is not the case.
Also certain N tend to be overweighted regardless of the knowledge class to
which they belong.

IRL I have observed that B can work around A's bias by framing knowledge
expressed as a question.

> Sounds like narcissism.

I think this is a common bias with implications in the "machine consciousness"
question, but I'll have to wait ton finish that point. Look for an edit.

~~~
metaphor
Why do I feel like I just failed a bloodninja-style Turing test.

