

Ask HN: Who do you respect, and why? - h34t

People here seem to diverge from mainstream in how we value achievements -- in how we define what is truly 'prestigious' and what is merely faking / pathetic.<p>Google lets us make snap judgments on people dozens of times a day. When you google someone, what grabs your attention most? What do <i>you</i> consider to be prestigious, or worthy of respect? ...examples?<p>And the converse: What do you see people emphasizing about themselves over and over again, which actually signal they "just don't get it"? (What do people do in their online/public lives that you think are really stupid?)
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calambrac
I really respect people who know their own shortcomings, and work hard to
overcome them. In an effort to live up to my own ideal, I acknowledge that I
often fail in this regard, and often catch myself dismissing something I don't
immediately understand.

The converse of that is that it's always sad to me to meet someone who can't
admit what they don't know, or can't acknowledge the achievements of others.
All of the people I've known that I consider brilliant have also had an
amazing amount of humility about what they didn't know, and have been fast to
praise the achievements of others. It's a goal I strive for, but again, I know
I often fall short.

~~~
h34t
_"All of the people I've known that I consider brilliant have also had an
amazing amount of humility about what they didn't know, and have been fast to
praise the achievements of others."_

I agree. I think this has something to do with the fact that a "learning
attitude" is actually _necessary_ to become brilliant in a field. If you
haven't jigged your brain up to be really open and accepting to new ideas, you
become too rigid quickly fall behind. By admitting what you don't know &
praising achievements of others, you're not just doing the people around you a
favour by being pleasant, you're also setting yourself up to become smarter.

I like how with this particular quality, "social" considerations (ie. being
liked) overlap strongly with "mental/learning" considerations (ie. you become
smarter). You win both ways.

I've definitely erred on this one too -- misjudged situations and thought they
called for too much forcefulness/rigidity. Leadership and openness aren't
mutually exclusive, but sometimes people make them out to be (eg/ "a good
leader doesn't change his mind"). Probably because if you are in politics, you
frequently have to abandon your intellectual ideals for pragmatic results.

(This is the reason why _Meditations_ by Marcus Aurelius is one of my favorite
books. He rose to the greatest position of power in the world of his day,
without losing his ability to be thoughtful and aware, at least with himself.)

------
swombat
I respect only one thing: competence.

In fact, that breaks down into 3 things: competence, knowledge, and
experience, but only because the last two are often indicators of the first,
so it would be unwise to dismiss them.

Achievements are a symptom of competence, so I do respect people who have
achieved what I consider great things.

However, even where someone is knowledgeable, experienced, and having
apparently achieved great things, if they display something which indicates a
severe lack of competence, my respect for them will automatically decrease -
not to zero, of course, but still, it can take a severe hit.

~~~
nostrademons
The irony is that people who have competence, knowledge, and experience
usually got that way by taking risks and pushing themselves out of their
comfort zone. And if you observe them taking a risk that doesn't pan out, it
looks like incompetence.

Everyone was a novice once, and even experts are novices when they enter a
domain outside of their expertise.

~~~
alex_c
>And if you observe them taking a risk that doesn't pan out, it looks like
incompetence.

Maybe... but everyone makes mistakes. There has to be a difference between
making mistakes, and making the same mistakes over and over again. I
definitely think part of competence is how someone handles failures.

~~~
nostrademons
You don't get a chance to observe most people over and over again - that's
usually limited to friends and immediate coworkers (team members). Not
coincidentally, those are the groups you should tap for startup cofounders.

The original question seemed to be about celebrity personalities and casual
acquaintances - "when you Google someone..." etc.

~~~
swombat
We're not talking about "like" or even "can bear the company of" here, we're
talking about respect. I'm friends with many people who I don't respect in a
work sense.

Perhaps my mistake was not to append "in a work sense" to the word "respect".

Also, part of being competent at evaluating other people's competence is not
to base your evaluation on a single sample.

------
maxklein
I think that what I respect is anyone who is unpretentiously humble. People
who just do their thing, do it the best way they can, and do not constantly
introspect about how good they are, or how they are in a better class that
other people.

The difference is that if a humble person who has a lot of experience in a
field talks to someone who is new to the field, once he realises that the
knowledge of the person does not match his, and it would be impossible to have
an interesting conversation, he just switches the topic to something else. But
the non-humble person will insist on trying to teach the other person, or tell
the other person how things should be done, even when his opinion is not
solicited.

~~~
DaniFong
Isn't that a harmful effect of humbleness? Less teaching happens!

I can tell you, most of what my parents and teachers and mentors and peers and
students have taught me was completely unsolicited. I didn't know they had
something to teach me. But I sure am glad to have their wisdom with me now.
Even in the dim light of memory, I've had things people taught me decades ago
finally flower to utility in recent years.

~~~
maxklein
That's an interesting point you bring up. There is nothing wrong with people
giving you advice, but there is a fine line between people telling stuff
because they want to show how much they know, and peope telling you stuff
because they care for you and want you to progress in life.

~~~
DaniFong
I don't think there's a line between them, really. There's a gradient. People
have egos, but what they do is not solely for self-aggrandizement, nor solely
for altruistic motives.

------
njharman
> What do you see people emphasizing about themselves over and over again,
> which actually signal they "just don't get it"?

Hard to answer, "it" has many values...

That the have _the_ or all the answers. That they _know_ and they have nothing
to learn on a given topic.

Hubris, ego.

Also anyone who worships "personalities" like PG, joel, Jobs, Greenspan, Rand,
etc.

In other words I care little about prestige, can't stand celebrity and value
achievements lightly(which are often little more than being at right place at
right time and not totally sucking). A person's character is vastly more
important.

Character is something you can only discover up close. So, I personally know
the people I respect and you have no reason to have ever heard of them.

------
Eliezer
I respect people who, on at least one occasion, have been right when I'm wrong
and think I'm right. The only way to really get my attention is to defeat me.
Other qualities like kindness and honesty earn my regard and I'll do things to
help that person, but that's not the same as hesitating to disagree with them.

Regardless of what this reveals about my personality, it's true.

~~~
h34t
_"Regardless of what this reveals about my personality, it's true."_

Interesting. One thing I've seen in my personality -- something I didn't
consciously choose to do, but I've observed enough times to know it's a part
of me -- is that I am attracted to people who others typically view as
intimidating. The more "intimidating" the person is -- the more attention in
the room they command -- the more I seem to expect that I can learn something
from them, and so I do the opposite of what most people do and address them
directly and confidently.

------
13ren
I try to respect everyone, because I've found my own happiness seems to vary
directly in proportion with how well I do this. In both directions.

I think you're also asking about who you admire, and what achievements you
admire. Great questions, need some thought.

~~~
h34t
Hmm. Do you try and respect everyone purely for personal happiness reasons, or
do you really believe that everybody should be respected, no matter what kind
of person they are?

~~~
13ren
It's not a "should", but a belief that everyone is the same, in some sense; an
identification. By happiness, I mean an experience of freedom and clarity that
tells me this is the right way: that to think less of another human being is
to think less of this one.

 _No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is
the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's
or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in
mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls
for thee._

~~~
h34t
That's an interesting perspective.

So... if I think along the lines of "some _ideas and actions_ are much better
than others" instead of "some _people_ are much better than others" ... I can
retain my ability to differentiate from good/bad or better/worse, without
heaping judgment on human beings themselves... I can retain the ability to
empathize with others, even when how they act disagrees violently with my
personal values? Makes quite a lot of sense to me.

It seems that we have our natural way of thinking working against us on this
one... from _Fundamental attribution error_ on Wikipedia: _"People have an
unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind"
of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces
influencing the person"_

------
jnovek
Like everything else that we feel, I sense that we don't have a lot of control
over who we feel great respect for... we only have the opportunity to justify
it in hindsight.

I think that the people that I respect the most are people that I feel are
honest and trustworthy. I have no patience for those who play politics or talk
out of both sides of their mouths.

You could be the most talented coder or illustrator or kung-fu master or
whatever fits the bill for the project that I'm working on... and if you're
not honest and trustworthy, I really can't build any kind of working
relationship with you.

------
qhoxie
Well-roundedness. Programmers who can write, designers who can code, and so
on.

------
ericb
I respect people who can silence the the inner voice that fears embarrassment
--people who can "dance like no one is watching." I've been working on this
personally. I'm convinced it is one of life's great keys to success.

------
DaniFong
More than anything, I respect awareness. I respect people who are self-aware,
and cognizant of the world around them. I respect people who appreciate
themselves and other people and the universe around them as the mystery they
are, yet who still try to make inroads of understanding.

Compared to awareness, creativity, determination, and integrity, awareness
stands alone.

~~~
h34t
> _people who appreciate themselves and other people and the universe around
> them as the mystery they are, yet who still try to make inroads of
> understanding_

I like this sentence. Accepting and appreciating mystery seems to be a real
key to unlocking openness and understanding... maybe because reason, as
powerful as it is, often fails to capture all of what is meaningful and
valuable in life? So many people seem to put 100% of their faith in a form of
"reason" that is demonstrably incomplete... they think they're being rational
by leaving out mystery, but I think it's the opposite.

I've learned that if I hold the belief that "reason is my only god, and I
possess it entirely" I miss out on a huge chunk of what I actually care about.
But when I accept that there's a vast swath of important stuff (relating to
people and relationships and meaning-of-life in particular) that I currently
have no way of adequately describing my thoughts on, or fully understanding,
but that I want to experience and discover -- then I seem to be able to live
in a much healthier way.

------
daniel-cussen
The guy who stood up to those tanks in Tiananmen Square.

~~~
h34t
Hmm. How do you draw a line between respect for standing up for morals vs.
pragmatic action that drives results?

I'm not criticizing the Tiananmen Square students -- I just spent a year in
Beijing and I sympathize with their plight as much as you can imagine. But
sometimes I think people are too quick to justify any action so long as it is
done for honourable/high purposes, even to the point of setting themselves up
to lose. For awhile now I've been wrestling with this balance between standing
up for rigid moral codes vs. pragmatic getting-things-done. If you make
something big and important happen, almost any means can be justified in
retrospect. And if you do something with a high moral purpose, almost any
pragmatic failure can also be justified in retrospect. What's more acceptable:
justifying poor performance as 'honourable loss', or justifying questionable
means with 'I made something important happen'?

~~~
daniel-cussen
He got the world's attention.

------
vaksel
I respect people who go above the call of duty. Sure you may be great at X,
but if you only do whats assigned to you, it shows me that its just a job for
you and not something you truly enjoy.

------
gstar
Collectively, HN posters and commenters seem to 90% get it. Unbelievable for a
website like this.

Reddit runs at about 50%

Metafilter runs at about 40%

Digg at 5%

~~~
gaius
Slashdot is into negative figures.

------
froo
I think the people that I most respect are the people that inspire me to be
better. So in no particular order:

Steve "Woz" Wozniak, Sir James Dyson, Yuri Gagarin & Fred Hollows are the ones
that I could name off the top of my head.

------
cglee
People who are diligent, intelligent and most importantly, compassionate.

------
ricardo
I respect those that have found a job they truly enjoy doing.

------
edw519
I respect demonstrated performance.

Is is done? Does it work? Does it bring value to others?

Anything less is just posing.

