
The Curse of Smart People - kposehn
http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201407#01
======
ScottBurson
I think one could be more direct about it: the curse of smart people is
arrogance.

Always allow the possibility that you could be wrong.

~~~
onion2k
Smart people actively seek evidence that they are wrong - finding evidence
that you're right doesn't prove anything. A single piece of evidence that
you're wrong shows _everything_.

~~~
dasil003
That's sort of a no true scotsman argument. People can have astonishing
amounts of brainpower and still do very little critical thinking on their own
beliefs or others' arguments they disagree with.

~~~
dredmorbius
The point isn't about what all smart people do or don't do. It's the power of
_counterevidence_.

There was a great Veritasium video on this while back. The schtick was that
Derek Muller was posing a puzzle to people as a series of numbers. They had to
figure out the rule governing the series by proposing their _own_ series.

The point was that finding other sequences with _matched_ the rule didn't do
much. Finding a sequence which _failed_ the rule, that is, one that
_disproved_ what they thought the rule was, was much more informative.

If you've got lots of brainpower but never push the envelope of your beliefs,
that brainpower's not going to be of much use actually _expanding_ your
understanding.

Which is why _really_ smart people try to break things: software, hardware,
systems of understanding. By pushing them beyond what they feel their limits
are and seeing what happens.

~~~
jerf
While I agree that trying to actively break one's theories is a thing that
_should be done_ by smart people, I think that in the general sense of smart
meaning "possessing raw intelligence", it is _not_ something that I can say
that smart people do in general, nor is it something you have to be that smart
to do.

Intelligence and education have the effect of greatly increasing the number
and variety of "things you can think", exponentially so. Unfortunately the
exponentially-vast-bulk of such new thoughts are also wrong. Many of them
grossly and obviously so (the vast bulk are new ideas that are syntactically-
correct gibbering nonsense), but there's a much more dangerous and still very
large fringe of wrong ideas that require one to dig into reality to determine
are wrong. And what I often find myself calling something like the Prime
Danger of Intellectualism is that our education system is happy to introduce
you into that vast space of new ideas, but while flirting for a while with
ways of determining their truth, a lot of intellectual tradition in the last
50 years or so has given up on it (in many cases wearing this surrender as a
badge of pride!), leaving many modern intellectuals adrift in a massive sea of
ideas with no compass, no sextant, and no map. It's a sad and frankly
dangerous state of affairs, and it is the default in the intellectual world
right now, unfortunately. I know that's a bold statement but once you learn
what to look for you, alas, see it _everywhere_.

~~~
dredmorbius
This is boiling down to what is meant by "smart".

I'll condition my definition as "those _exhibiting_ smartness", not merely
those possessed of an innate mental capacity and facility.

 _Knowledge_ is a container. You can be knowledgeable (full of information)
and either smart or not, though I'd consider someone filled with facts and the
lack of capacity to connect and relate them sensibly not _particularly_
knowledgeable.

 _Intelligence_ is somewhere between a talent and a skill. It's trainable, but
requires an innate foundation. #INCLUDE GLADWELL_10000_HOURS

 _Wise_ is a mix of both. You need the information (much of it acquired
through experience, or at least direct observation), _and_ the capability to
use it. And it's the wise who will almost _always_ exhibit the trait of
questioning their most closely held facts, beliefs, understandings, and
mechanisms.

I've been reading up on Hyman G. Rickover, father of the US nuclear navy. His
approach to technology, organizations, training, and more, are very much what
I consider to be the workings of an absolutely first-rate mind. I'd like to
find a good biography of him.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28uxu6/more_hym...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28uxu6/more_hyman_rickover_mancrush_us_naval/)

And: accepting ideas without testing them is a rapid path to failure. It's
anti-evolutionary (variance without selection).

~~~
mreiland
But when you start your argument off with a tautology, there is no way anyone
can possibly disprove you in a reasonable way.

You get to define what you mean by "smart", but others get to reject it.

------
dosh
Being a parent to two kids, I can definitely see the 'evolution of
rationalization' taking place as kids grow older. Your child will feel angry
about certain events, or about other people and so forth for whatever the
reasons, but usually, it's simply because they are hungry or feeling tired.

What's interesting is when you observe how they are trying to find out reasons
why they are upset, when basically, it's their instinct/emotion that caused
them to get upset. So you will notice the lack of consistency or relevance of
their evidence in backing up their argument.

But this changes gradually as they grow older. They become more logical and
more consistent. I think this is what most adult, or smart individuals learn
to do as well.

It amazes me everyday to find myself rationalizing so many things and at the
same time, persuading others using the same logic, when the other part of my
brain secretly acknowledge/recognize that I'm making it sound all logical and
trying to get others approval for my own sense of security.

~~~
Confusion
Your observation of kids blaming events or people for their 'bad' feeling,
when they are actually hungry or tired is spot on. However this kind of causal
relationship exists in far more subtle and extensive ways and stays
operational all your life! Examples from research: judges give harsher
sentences right before lunch vs. right after lunch. You are less willing to
help others when you are cold. The list goes on and on.

Your kids becoming 'more logical and more consistent' is only them becoming so
good at rationalizing and explaining their rationalization that you believe
them. In fact it is still being hungry that made them lash out.

~~~
mercer
I am absolutely terrible at noticing when I rationalize things in this way,
and I think a big cause of it is that I spend most of my day stuck in a world
of ideas and abstractions that keep me from even feeling hunger sometimes.

Working on balancing that out is what I consider one of my primary challenges
as I enter my thirties. I hear meditation can help, but does anyone here have
any other tips?

------
hamburglar
This is an interesting angle on something I've noticed, and perhaps a better
explanation of it, but I'll put my observation in the ring in case it offers
any other insights: Smart people can end up developing faulty world views
because they are good at arguing, and every time they win an argument, they
convince themselves more and more of the infallibility of their world view,
when in fact all that happened was they encountered yet another person who
couldn't spot the flaw in it.

An example of this is extreme libertarianism. For a long time, I had convinced
myself that it was totally sound because if I argued politics with most people
I knew, I could shut them down with logic and "prove" my case. The logic and
robot-like consistency of it just reassured me that I was unassailably
correct. It took me getting to the point where I realized that I didn't truly
_believe_ some of my own arguments, despite the fact that I had successfully
made them countless times, to snap out of it and realize that my views, as
rigidly consistent as they were, were probably disastrous from a public policy
standpoint. I rationalized a position to others, which ultimately rationalized
it to me as well. Don't do that.

~~~
SilasX
I think the problem is that you never encountered anyone who actually
understood the best reasons for the policies you opposed, or even had a model
(however ad hoc) in which the relevant benefits could be expressed.

I see that kind of thing all the time: I heard bad arguments against the
minimum wage for _years_ before I was even aware of a purported disemployment
effect. Ditto for the relationship between traditional morality and
STD/population growth concerns.

I don't think you can blame yourself for that. To the extent that an idea
makes sense, there should be someone that appreciates it, and can convey its
logic. To the extent that your acquaintances were not those people (and did
not subject their beliefs to the same checks you did), neither did they have
any business being more confident than you in their views.

Sure, your ideas may have been disastrous as policy, but how could you have
known that? You can't update on evidence you haven't gotten -- let alone
evidence which resists revelation by interested adversaries!

~~~
davorak
The issue that hamburglar seemed to have is that he was relying too heavily on
social proof. Something like "My ideas are the best out of the people I know
so I should bet heavily on them" does not work well when your friends to do
not cover most if not all of the relevent solution space with well thought out
arguments.

~~~
SilasX
That's why I said that hamburglar might not have a basis for being confident
in an _absolute_ sense, but definitely had grounds for being _more_ confident
than people who can't even spot a flaw in the argument.

(And FWIW, "trusting social proof", as the term is used, would mean deferring
to the group beliefs; I think you mean to say s/he was overestimating the peer
group's representativeness. But even then, I think the group _was_
representative of the population at large: very few people possess the kind of
understanding to do that, nor hold themselves to the standard that would make
them seek it.)

~~~
davorak
> And FWIW, "trusting social proof", as the term is used, would mean deferring
> to the group beliefs;

I did not know the phrase had commonly held definition. I meant more along the
lines hamburglar's heuristic for deciding when they were more likely to be
correct was overly dependent on not just the people who he happened to be
around but other people in general.

> But even then, I think the group was representative of the population at
> large: very few people possess the kind of understanding to do that, nor
> hold themselves to the standard that would make them seek it.

My comment was not about a group representing the population, but rather
representative of the possible solutions weighted by relevance or similar
metric.

> I think the problem is that you never encountered anyone who actually
> understood the best reasons for the policies you opposed,

hamburglar should have/be use heuristics that do not depend on encountering
the right people to gather and judge evidence when possible.

~~~
SilasX
>I did not know the phrase had commonly held definition.

"Social proof" refers to the general phenomenon of people forming opinions in
alignment with what they observe others believing. I understand what you
meant, but it's confusing to frame that as a social proof issue, given its
common usage.

>My comment was not about a group representing the population, but rather
representative of the possible solutions weighted by relevance or similar
metric.

I know, but that's it's wrong: the group _was_ representative of the typical
arguments and reasoning offered regarding how to model government policy. Most
people lack the understanding to articulate what's wrong with unfamiliar or
"absurd" proposals; casting his net wider wouldn't have helped much, even in
the internet age.

>hamburglar should have/be use heuristics that do not depend on encountering
the right people to gather and judge evidence when possible.

Then what should they depend on? Again, you can't update on evidence that even
interested adversaries can't find! At most, it means you should lower your
confidences all around, but even then, the people he argued with should have
lowered them even further, for the very same reasons.

~~~
davorak
> I know, but that's it's wrong:

When I read your response it does not seem to be about the argument I am
trying to communicate.

> the group was representative of the typical arguments

I was not talking about typical arguments.

> Then what should they depend on?

There are multitude of domain specific heuristics that can be used to gather
and judge evidence.

My post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7969283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7969283)
is about how hamburglar seemed at one point overly reliant on one heuristic.

------
dasmithii
This reminds me a story of an old composer, John Cage.

He's notorious for some really bizarre performance. For instance, he once sat
for four minutes in front of an enormous crowd only to stand up and leave
before making any sounds at all. This action, as he intended, took advantage
of peoples' expectation to listen while in the concert hall. It built up a
sense of anxiety, as he walked in, sat at the organ, and flipped pages atop
the music stand. But then, suddenly, there was silence. And those with open
ears were forced to hear minute sounds in the room, rather than the
presupposed "music".

On another occasion, he composed what ideally would cause expert musicians to
sound amateurish - wretched, actually. But after many trials with different
orchestral branches, he became overwhelmed with failure. These people, having
been trained for excellence, literally could not play nonsense. Any sheet
music you'd give them would result in reasonably coherent output.

Like the smart people of this article, these musicians rationalized Cage's
music, no matter how nonsensical. They could not play _bad_ music.

~~~
haberman
4'33" was a piece that Cage composed, but I'm not sure that he himself
performed it:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3)

------
wallflower
Not just impostor syndrome, but the willingness to see what is actually there.

I think this is why art (particularly drawing classes) can be so hard for most
people starting out at a later age. One of my teachers would constantly say
'don't draw an eye - draw what you see'. While well baked into our "memory"
and knowledge sphere, our mental model of what is an eye or a human head isn't
actually what is there.

See also "Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic
events"

[http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Simons1999.pdf](http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Simons1999.pdf)

~~~
lsdafjklsd
I was always amazed at how many people would paint the eyes on a portrait with
white, when the eyes are one of the darkest areas on the face.

~~~
judk
Do you draw severely jaundiced people? A human eyeball is white, outside the
iris.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Take a photograph, properly color correct it, and see what color the "white"
actually is. It will vary a lot, depending on the color of light falling on
the eye, and be tinged by the blood vessels in the eye.

What it won't be is #ffffff.

~~~
ZoF
I think he/she took offense to the "darkest part of the face" portion of the
comment; which is clearly false for the majority of the earth's population,
particularly since no one draws the iris white so the original comment was
clearly referencing the "white" portion of the eye.

------
whybroke
The author anecdotaly notices a great many work place fallacies such as
"confirmation bias", "the bandwagon effect" etc. Then, seemingly unaware of
these separate categories, lumps them together and ascribes that lump as an
innate characteristic of "smart" people.

Obviously an organization that succumbs to these fallacies is going to have
trouble. Obviously adding "unsmart" people to the mix will only exacerbate it.

But that's not really surprising.

What's interesting is a trend, of which this article is an example, to ascribe
the problems of the alleged meritocracy (which are real) not to the system
itself but instead to clear reasoned well informed thinking. It's possible
that this strange dislike of reason is triggered by pseudo-intellectuals on
the far right cloaking themselves in the language of rationality to argue
against global warming, minimum wages, the cigaret-cancer link etc.

But I'd like to see more conjecture/evidence about what's causing it.

------
mazsa
FYI: [http://amexrap.org/fal/wp-
content/uploads/2012/03/i-f0026d2c...](http://amexrap.org/fal/wp-
content/uploads/2012/03/i-f0026d2c4414eeb4960eae9202eeb8dd-
krugeranddunningfig2.jpg) (Source:
[http://www.physics.uofl.edu/williger/unskilled_and_unaware_1...](http://www.physics.uofl.edu/williger/unskilled_and_unaware_1999.pdf)
)

------
rsp1984
I agree with the author by 100%. What a beautiful article. The experiences
described almost perfectly match my own experiences at Google and they were
one of the reasons I left. (I assume the author is talking about Google here)
If there's one thing to add it would be that: Some smart people (especially
the insecure kind) prefer pre-chewed answers by supposedly smarter or more
senior people over their own scrutiny if the two disagree. I have seen this
countless times. In fact I have met surprisingly few people at Google that
have actually displayed critical and unbiased thinking when it came to the
project they worked on or Google in general. This made the whole workplace
feel a bit cult-like.

~~~
zaphar
Your experience is directly contrary to my own :-)

Of course I worked in the Chicago office so maybe it was due to being a remote
office. But I and my colleagues regularly disagreed with senior people.
Sometimes we were wrong and when we got more information realized it.
Sometimes we were right and when we presented more information on the problem
those senior people changed course.

Both of us are working of purely subjective experiences though so neither one
of us can really comment on Google as a whole.

------
zw123456
A person who I very much respect once told me there are two kinds of people in
the world, stupid and aware of it and stupid and unaware of it. The
implication is that everyone is stupid on some level, meaning there is always
someone smarter than you and there are always things you do not know or have
not yet learned. People who are aware of that are wise. Wisdom and
intelligence are not the same thing. I think that is sort of the key meaning
of the post, and if one can learn that at an early age as the author did, then
they learned it earlier than I did.

~~~
WalterBright
Wisdom is the combination of intelligence and knowledge.

~~~
vinceguidry
This isn't true unless you redefine one of the two comprising traits. You
could make a good case for saying that wisdom is intelligence plus experience,
but to me that too misses a certain essential element of wisdom.

I don't think you can 'buy' wisdom, you either have the capacity to get it or
you don't. I was recently at my dad's retirement ceremony, 30 years in the
Marine Corps. One of his good buddies was there, a similarly seasoned
leatherneck, let's call him Tom.

I have a habit of addressing people I don't know well with 'mister'. This time
he asked me to call him 'Tom', with the explanation that 'you're probably more
grown up than I am, anyway'. It was a joke, but the kind that makes your heart
go out to him.

He'd had a successful career, but his personal life was always a mess. He was
in a particularly reflective mood that day as he spoke at the ceremony, and I
learned a lot about the many mistakes he'd made and all the things my dad did
to help him out.

This was a fairly intelligent man, my dad didn't make friends that weren't
intelligent, and also very knowledgable, something you can't build a 30 year
career in the Corps without, they'd kick out out at 20. He was definitely
experienced. But he wasn't particularly wise, or rather, wisdom was
particularly hard-won for him.

He was one of those people who was just really hard-headed about certain
things. Had he been wiser, he would have been able to let go of perceived
slights and been easier with his family and spent more and better time with
them. He would have picked better women to get involved with. Now he's got a
relationship that works, and it's about time.

Wisdom is the thing that lets you see the essential quality that makes the
important things in life important. Wisdom makes life less complicated and
more pleasant. Intelligence tends to complicate things, and knowledge and
experience move in one direction. Wisdom and experience makes you more
perceptive, knowledge and intelligence by themselves don't.

~~~
zw123456
First thing, your Dad sounds like he was a great man. As for Tom, his story
reminds me of the old saying, regrets are just lessons not learned yet. I can
relate. Cool conversation, thanks for sharing.

------
PSeitz
The curse of smart people is actually modesty, because they know how little
they know. It's hard to be confident and sell stuff with modesty.

~~~
3minus1
I'm tired of this meme; it is way overstated. You could just as easily say
"the curse of smart people is arrogance, because they know just how stupid the
people around them are." I can assure you, I've known plenty of incredibly
smart people who were quite arrogant.

~~~
dreamweapon
Depends how you define "smart" then. Viewed differently, nominal smarts +
arrogance = lack of big-picture smarts = at the end of the day, just not all
that smart.

~~~
mreiland
One of the absolute worst attributes of smart people is their willingness to
argue over the semantics of a word rather than simply accept the overall
premise being communicated by the other person.

~~~
dreamweapon
Except when, as in this case, the underlying semantic confusion of their
premise (or how they articulated it) has a lot to do with why it was wrong in
the first place.

------
StandardFuture
'Smart People' certainly seems like an ego-stroking classification we enjoy
being placed under (especially here on Hacker News).

I also have trouble seeing how impostor syndrome is viewed as something wrong.
I always thought it was just the new buzzword replacement for the age-old
concept of humility.

>Smart people have a problem ... That problem is an ability to convincingly
rationalize nearly anything.

My apologies to all us 'Smart People' but this can be attributed to _' People'
in general_. When we want to believe something, we will seek out objects,
arguments, 'evidence', etc. that support that belief. If we find enough pieces
(that also seem to complement each other) we will be satisfied.

Maybe 'Smart' just means 'more-equipped' (with ideas, studies, etc.) to
rationalize something (more quickly or more 'effectively'). Which also makes
me wonder if we are just equating 'Smart' (as a classification) to people who
have a relatively wider knowledge/experience base to pull from relative to
someone else? How else could we 'rationalize' something new other than
using/rehashing ideas we have come across already?

>But I think Impostor Syndrome is valuable

I agree. Humility is extremely valuable. It is especially valuable when
solving problems, which is what most 'smart people' do, isn't it?

------
soneca
I didn't read this as a critique to the importance or relevance of logical
thinking. Nor to smart people's arrogance. But as the dangers to rationalize
as a tool for self-dellusion.

Depending how do you feel, how your emotions are, you might want to protect
yourself from changes, from disapointments, from "everything-is-wrong-start-
all-over" situations. So when you are smart, in this definition, when you have
highly developed rational thinking; then you use this to create a illusion
that keep you in your comfort zone. Because you can rationalize pretty much
everything that happens in the world.

I would say this is not a "curse of smart people", just the particular tool
these _smart_ people, according to the author's definition, use to self-
dellusion. Other people, with other intelectual resources, use their other
resources to self-dellusion all the same. The point is, you have to try to
find out when you are on a state of self-dellusion, whatever resource you use
to prolong it. In other words, smart people may not be wise. Just as any other
"kind" of people.

------
bbllee
Reminds me of 'What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational
Thought,' the most interesting cognitive science book I've read.
[http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-
Psycholog...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-
Psychology/dp/0300164629)

In short, rationality is not the same thing as intelligence and general
intelligence does not correlate with rational behavior nearly as well as we
might like it to. Individuals with high intelligence can and do put their
mental endowments to work to argue for mistaken ideas and execute irrational
plans.

I'm now thinking of an intelligent individual who made a small misstatement in
conversation, then, when challenged on that point, proceeded to explain why he
was not mistaken for several minutes... then finally wised up and admitted
that his original statement was wrong.

------
fsloth
Respectfully, I think this is the main contribution of the referred post:

"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."

Having an established revenue stream for an organization is a superpower which
let's an organization absorb ridiculous amounts of bad management, poor
decision making, lackadaisical execution and so on. Compared to a startup or
small company - Good bye scrawny Bruce Banner, hello Hulk. See that bus
coming? Who cares, now you can take it, no need to do anything smart about it.

People moving to large established organizations should be keenly aware of
this. Having an established product and maintaining that product might
sometimes seem like an odd side-effect to large areas of an organization of
all the other busywork done at siloed "scientifically" managed organizations.

------
DanielBMarkham
My day job is working with programmers to find better ways of doing things. As
part of that, I share with them things that folks have found make their lives
better in 70-95% of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time.

You would think this would be easy, but it is not.

Instead of accepting the heuristics I'm sharing, many programmers want to
argue about whether something "works" or not. They want a logical, rigid proof
of why it works. They have tons of objections as to why it wouldn't work. They
have anecdotes about other people who tried the same thing and it didn't work
(Remember, I'm sharing things that mostly work, not Newtonian Laws) Anything
at all besides actually trying it out to see for themselves!

Smart people, indeed all humans, reason emotionally and then use logic to
justify reasons for their conclusions. People who aren't so smart are used to
demurring to others for answers -- a priest, a counselor, a politician, a
teacher. After all, they've learned they're not so smart. Society has told
them that folks in authority are there for good reason.

People who are smart will also demur -- but to somebody who already agrees
with them. And the internet is full of authority figures taking every position
imaginable.

I really love working with extremely smart people, but you don't ever want to
get in an argument with them. It's not good for either of you. They'll be able
to convince themselves -- and you -- of just about anything they want. It's
truly a terrible thing to be super smart, have blind spots, and be completely
in the dark about it.

EDIT: And to the other commenter's point, this is not about arrogance. Even
nice, humble people do this. This is about smarts -- the ability to use
resources and solve problems creatively. When you put that to work to justify
something (or avoid something, as in this article), it's amazing the things
you can come up with. Even if you're the most humble person in the world.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _They want a logical, rigid proof of why it works. They have tons of
> objections as to why it wouldn 't work. They have anecdotes about other
> people who tried the same thing and it didn't work (Remember, I'm sharing
> things that mostly work, not Newtonian Laws) Anything at all besides
> actually trying it out to see for themselves!_

The problem with "actually trying it out" is that it's extremely costly. They
might be afraid to risk wasting two weeks on something that ultimately didn't
bring any benefit. That's understandable. Part of this is also because a lot
of "better ways of doing things" probably actually don't work. People think
they do, but that's because of a mix of popularity, good marketing, just-so
stories and the fact that it's often incredibly hard to measure actual impact
of such changes on work performance. Add to the last point that majority of
people seem to not understand data, statistics, and that 86% of population
believes any number they read on the Internet. So I completely understand that
they ask for "logical, rigid proof of why it works" \- because most likely it
doesn't, otherwise you could provide a reason why it does.

------
tensor
The author seems to attack logical and rational thinking a lot, however, their
argument is not convincing.

 _" But I think Impostor Syndrome is valuable. The people with Impostor
Syndrome are the people who aren't sure that a logical proof of their
smartness is sufficient. They're looking around them and finding something
wrong, an intuitive sense that around here, logic does not always agree with
reality, and the obviously right solution does not lead to obviously happy
customers, and it's unsettling because maybe smartness isn't enough, and maybe
if we don't feel like we know what we're doing, it's because we don't."_

Most importantly, consider the quote _" logic does not always agree with
reality"_. Logic neither agrees nor disagrees with reality. Logic itself is
flawless, but the assumptions you put into it can be wrong. The problem is not
with thinking logically, thinking logically is _good_. Rather, it's an issue
with holding incorrect assumptions.

Leaving aside the problem of defining _smart_ , the claim, then, is that the
smarter you are, the more false assumptions you hold. That's quite a bold
claim. It needs a lot more evidence than personal anecdote for me to accept.

~~~
MRSallee
> ... the claim, then, is that the smarter you are, the more false assumptions
> you hold ...

I disagree, the claim wasn't that smart people are wrong more often. But that
smart people, even when they are wrong, are too good at rationalizing their
wrongness to ever realize they were wrong in the first place.

~~~
thret
Unskilled people fall into the same trap
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

------
ameister14
This doesn't seem to be the curse of smart people. Many bureaucrats don't care
if a project succeeds, instead focusing on whether or not it is approved and
who's name is attached. That isn't because they are smart. It's because their
environment rewards this behavior.

People can rationalize anything. It has nothing to do with intelligence,
merely experience and current environment (which is most of what's written in
the article).

~~~
XorNot
Most bureaucrats are smart. Most politicians are smart. When you lament why
the people in charge seem so dumb, its probably worth reflecting that they're
still in charge. They understand something you don't.

~~~
nitrogen
It seems highly likely to me that power brokering (i.e. social intelligence)
and analytical intelligence are orthogonal skills (and not the only orthogonal
axes on which one may be "smart").

"Smart" is inadequate as an adjective, because it leads people to say things
like, "If you're so smart, why aren't you the boss/senator/president?" If we
separate these forms of intelligence in our daily conversations, we might make
it easier for the oft-exploited analytically intelligent to appreciate and
take advantage of social intelligence, and gain more recognition from those
who have social but not analytical intelligence.

~~~
a3voices
> "If you're so smart, why aren't you the boss/senator/president?"

I think it mainly has to do with comfort. Most people don't want to step
outside of their comfort zone to pursue political power. There's too much risk
and not enough to gain from the time commitment.

~~~
nitrogen
Speaking as someone who helped with someone's unsuccessful political campaign,
it takes a lot more than just discomfort to be successful in politics. I think
the "just don't feel like it, but if I did, I could win" excuse for avoiding
politics is like the "I could probably get in, but I don't want to be a
member" excuse for avoiding Mensa. Both things are probably harder than they
seem (though I only have experience with one).

------
kmtrowbr
As I have grown (just a little) older, one of the best lessons I have learned
is just about the limitations of intelligence, of rationality, even, of
language. We are intelligent animals. However, we are more animal, than we are
intelligent. And that's not even necessarily a bad thing. I grew a lot when I
realized that 'being intelligent' is not the only important way to be a good
person.

------
nileshtrivedi
> Smart people have a problem... an ability to convincingly rationalize nearly
> anything.

This has a simple solution really. They should be actively trying to prove
their assumptions _false_. Rationalize that their premises are wrong until
compelled with extraordinary evidence. Be a contrarian.

It will also help if all the smart people in the group have a diversity of
beliefs so that everybody gets his assumptions cross-examined.

~~~
saraid216
And if you fail to prove your assumptions false, it's only because you haven't
tried hard enough.

~~~
Mikushi
Or because they are right.

~~~
saraid216
That's possible, but given that it is one possibility out of a nigh infinite
possibilities that they are wrong, what's the probability that they're right?

------
emerson_clarke
This reminds me of a kind of intelligence scale ive seen before:

First there are stupid people, and then there are stupid people who know they
are stupid, then there are smart people who think they are smart, and finally
there are smart people who know they are actually not that smart.

Self awareness is the differentiating factor at every level.

Intelligence comes in many forms; practical, creative, mathematical, logical,
social, emotional, etc. As members of society we are more or less forced to
specialise and must accept that being really good at something usually means
we are terrible at something else. So if you are half as smart as you think
you are, you will learn to recognise all the areas where you really are not,
which vastly outnumber the ways in which you are.

Which is a bit like saying: "I dont know half of you half as well as I should
like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

I for one am not that smart, im just a lot less stupid than most ;)

------
lightyrs
tldr; Imposter syndrome is not the problem — it's the cure.

I loved this article. Thanks for posting.

~~~
ggambetta
You make it sound like it's good - it isn't. It's not something you enjoy,
it's something you suffer. I'm trying to get out of that particular tar pit
right now.

~~~
lightyrs
Cures are often unenjoyable — it doesn't make them less effective. Think of
chemotherapy for example.

------
coldtea
> _Answer: I think it 's really true. A suprisingly large fraction of the
> smartest programmers in the world _do* work here.*

Not so sure about this. There are people that are smart for solving math
problems and IQ style quizzes and such, and there are also people that are
smart with language, patterns, empathy, creativity etc ("Emotional
Intelligence" also doesn't cut it to describe this kind of smart completely).

I've met several IQ 140+ people that are basically stupid in lots of ways and
incompetent of doing anything with their lives, much less contribute to
society. Some of them thrive only on some small niche areas (like chess or
speaking many languages).

I think there are smart programmers in both of the categories that I have
described, and a process like Google's is mainly getting the first kind.

~~~
dualogy
> a process like Google's is mainly getting the first kind

They might have decided long ago that they largely need just the first kind
but how are you going to communicate that sort of preference and why should
you..

------
chippy
What the author describes is an US and in particular a Silicon Valley
attribute. That of a concentration of smart technical people in their own
bubble in a nice climate, outside of a wider community.

It's self selection filtering, it's team belonging and humans in groups. It's
earnestness, it's bright eyed optimism.

It's not socially awareness, it's not a healthy cynicism. It's not
cosmopolitan. It's isolation.

It's why the largest pure technical efforts and successes come from SV and why
more socially concious and digital humanities and world humanitarian technical
efforts occur elsewhere in the world.

~~~
_mulder_
Isolated community bubbles are present in many industries with equally
damaging effects. It's arrogance to assume it's just Tech because the 'unique
selling point' of tech seems to be intelligence (ironically, probably the most
common 'unique' selling point). Fashion, Film, Finance, Politics all have
their own problems stemming from a self-selecting isolated elite.

~~~
danelectro
I look at it more like de-selecting the non-elite non-insiders.

------
eivarv
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that both the author and a few of the
commenters here suffer under the misapprehension that impostor syndrome is
equivalent to a lack of confidence or arrogance, or to humility.

As far as I understand the phenomenon it is rather an inability to internalize
accomplishments, resulting in a skewed perception of one's own competence.

Humility is, of course, important; but it is altogether something different
from an irrational amount of self doubt, and impostor syndrome is thus clearly
not valuable.

Please excuse any errors in the text above, as english is not my first
language.

~~~
igravious
If English is not your first language God help the rest of us :)

I think your observation and analysis is spot on. And I think I may add to
your assessment with a couple of other points.

1) "Imposter Syndrome" is an 'in' phrase at the moment, its use as currency
marks out the speaker as being part of an 'in' crowd. Similarly when people
use the expressions "onboarding" or "I'll just leave this here" or "ping" or
"tl;dr" or any of the countless other expressions that serve as social status
plumage.

2) The entire article implies being the author is smart. Look at me, I'm smart
-- this is an unwritten all-but-explicit large part of the message of this
post.

3) This is the type of post that HNers lap up. It's hip, it's got the right
bounce, it talks about trendy social phenomena, weaves a satisfyingly yummy
narrative. You have to ask yourself why these types of posts get so many
comments and upvotes.

~~~
eivarv
Thank you! I wholeheartedly agree with your points.

How ironic it is then that the article lamenting the ability of "smart people"
to "convincingly rationalize nearly anything" may, in a sense, itself be a
rationalization of the author's own perceived smartness (as well as the
smartness of those that might identify with him).

This is, of course, not to say that there are no good points in the article
itself - there certainly are.

------
metacorrector
good grief, yes, smart people can be arrogant, yes, smart people can be many
other negative things.

but my experience walking around the world is that most people are too stupid.
Too stupid means, for instance, that they could never begin to fathom
programming a computer in C or C++. So pursuing that narrow example (doesn't
mean that you can't choose quantum physics instead, if you are distracted by
that re-read what I said) and restricting ourselves to the population of
people who can fathom programming in C and C++: again, my experience of them
is that even they are mostly too stupid to do a good job of it, these are
difficult and dangerous languages, and we as a society do not have enough
people who can actually use them safely.

So, from where I'm sitting, the arrogance of the world is not concentrated
among the small numbers of truly exceptionally smart people, the arrogance is
mostly found among all the other people--as we see in this discussion--who
focus all their criticism on smart people.

Yes, we smart people are arrogant, but we are not stupid, so shut up in order
for you to get what you can from us, and do not wish that we could somehow be
more like you because that would entail us being more stupid. Don't be
insulted; just as I am not insulted that you can't see what I can see, I'm
simply saying stop complaining about this, it goes with the territory. Do you
complain that the brilliant brain surgeon who saved your life is also very
arrogant, or do you kiss his ass for saving your life? Would you trade the
pleasure of watching Michael Jordan play basketball away because you don't
like the arrogant way he acts off court? No, you wouldn't.

Yes, there can be super smart people who are also super humble, but so what?
there can also be super smart people who are not humble, just as there can
also be super humble people who are not very smart, and the worst of all,
arrogance that is not accompanied by extreme skill, which is what I am
complaining about. It is arrogant of all of you (no, not you personally, just
look down the discussion) to all jump into the same discussion on the same
side--ooh arrogance is bad--as if what you are saying is interesting. And this
is not a topic of great interest to me, I'm simply trying to represent my side
since I didn't see it represented anywhere else here.

~~~
dreamweapon
_Too stupid means, for instance, that they could never begin to fathom
programming a computer in C or C++._

It seems you're confusing "could never begin to fathom X" with "just not all
that interested in X."

------
circlefavshape
"I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next man. In fact,
being – forgive me – rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be
correspondingly huger"

\- Albus Dumbledore

------
rasur
Depending on which side of the pond you reside, one could be forgiven that
this is an issue with the sartorial sensibilities of people, rather than how
intelligent they are.

------
akuma73
I think a lot of the discussion here assumes that smart people are unable to
make proper decisions under uncertainty. That has not been my experience. I've
found that truly smart people are able to discern when there is uncertainty
and apply the proper analysis using probabilities. They're also able to
sanitize the inputs to avoid the garbage-in, garbage-out problem. Perhaps the
"smart" people he is referencing are not so smart?

------
teddyh
From _The Jargon File_ , Appendix B, “A Portrait of J. Random Hacker”, section
“Politics”¹:

[…] _Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to_ […] _entertain
peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them
day-to-day._

1)
[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/politics.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/politics.html)

------
fortuitous
I am guilty of imposter syndrome, however I recently heard myself speak about
a subject I care a lot about. And I giggled because I actually sound smart.
That was a revelation, although I am still not convinced.

------
qwerta
Smart people I know also have a critical thinking. They verify their ideas and
learn from their mistakes. What author describes seems more like management
issue.

------
stretchwithme
They're also better able to avoid backing the wrong horse to begin with and
better at rethinking and cleaning up after their mistaken rationalizations.

------
treme
"you can probably figure it out if you bing around a bit.."

I can't tell if this really happened or the person was pseudo-cheating because
he worked for MS.

~~~
lionheart
He works for Google, I believe.

~~~
somerandomness
It is obviously Google.

~~~
nandemo
I could tell it was Google after reading this:

> _A suprisingly large fraction of the smartest programmers in the world_ do
> _work here. In very large quantities. In fact, quantities so large that I
> wouldn 't have thought that so many really smart people existed or could be
> centralized in one place, but trust me, they do and they can._

There are certainly other places with lots of smart programmers, but it seems
every time I read something self-congratulatory like this, it's Google.

~~~
cscurmudgeon
I agree. How do you know someone is a Googler? They will tell you how their
entire company is the most smartest in the entire multiverse.

If you are so smart why are twiddling around bits in gmail for breadcrumbs
when you could have started your own company or gotten into academia?

~~~
vacri
Intelligence != entrepreneurship. And plenty of smart people _flee_ academia
because they want to avoid the politics (and get paid better to boot).

~~~
cscurmudgeon
Exactly. At the same time, Intelligence != being a Googler. That is the point
I am trying to make.

------
norswap
Does someone know what company he's talking about?

~~~
billmalarky
I was curious myself so I followed his advice and googled him.

Turns out, he works for google.
[http://www.linkedin.com/in/apenwarr](http://www.linkedin.com/in/apenwarr)

Which makes this line all the more hilarious.

"But it's not really a secret; you can probably figure it out if you _bing_
around a bit for my name."

~~~
LaikaF
I thought the bing was the hint and they worked at Microsoft.

~~~
spb
I thought that, too, but that didn't line up with the part about hiring smart
people.

------
WalterSear
I don't think that smart people are any more prone to rationalization than
others - the author just hasn't spent any time with them.

------
luikore
The curse of smart people: they look smart but not really smart to realise
that they are not smart enough.

------
walterbell
Is someone "smart" if they cannot explain how they arrived at the
correct/optimal answer?

------
javert
Aw man. Imposter Syndrome x1000. Can I put that on my resume? Is that now
considered a good thing? :)

------
wfbarks
hubris develops because you don't get the humility of failure. Great article!

------
mililani
I thought this was going to be about existentialism and depression.

------
alexvr
I can relate to the author. Therefore, I am a smart person.

------
bogrollben
Finally: an article that makes me glad I'm not smart.

------
michaelfeathers
Smart.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
\- Indigo Montoya

~~~
crgt
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inigo_Montoya](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inigo_Montoya)

------
eng_monkey
Wow, that was arrogant.

------
a8da6b0c91d
High IQ people have the "clever silly" problem.

"... an increasing relative level of IQ brings with it a tendency
differentially to over-use general intelligence in problem-solving, and to
over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which
could be termed common sense. Preferential use of abstract analysis is often
useful when dealing with the many evolutionary novelties to be found in
modernizing societies; but is not usually useful for dealing with social and
psychological problems for which humans have evolved ‘domain-specific’
adaptive behaviours. ... when it comes to solving social problems, the most
intelligent people are more likely than those of average intelligence to have
novel but silly ideas"

[http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/11/clever-
sillies...](http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/11/clever-sillies-why-
high-iq-lack-common.html)

~~~
Xcelerate
Haha, this is great. I'm not claiming to have a high IQ; however, the article
you linked resonates a lot with me.

In my previous relationship, I had a difficult time figuring out if what my
(ex)-girlfriend said corresponded with what she actually meant, and I often
thought she was playing "mind games" of some sort with me. So I began
recording the intervals of time between our text messages and plotting them to
search for discrepancies in our texting patterns.

Lately, I've also been putting on different personas at parties I attend (I'm
a grad student) and taking notes on the varying responses I get to each type
of personality. I'm attempting to optimize charisma with this data, but I'm
not having a lot of success yet. People always say to "be yourself", but if
that was the case I simply wouldn't interact with others at all, so I have to
develop _some_ kind of personality to use.

I was telling my sister about these types of social experiments, and she told
me that overanalyzing everything to a fault produces the opposite result of
what I'm trying to achieve. So far, she seem to have a point, because I still
have difficulty deciphering how most people interact socially with each other.

(I hope none of my friends know my HN username...)

~~~
SilasX
When arguing with someone, or even just trying to understand their advice, I
often find myself thinking:

"If I actually understood this topic as well as you claim to, I would reveal
that understanding much better than you currently are."

The advice to "be yourself" is an excellent example: you can pretty trivially
reveal "yourselfs" that the adviser recommends you not be, and "non-yourselfs"
that you _should_ be.

And yet ... most people recommending that, cannot open the black box and
reveal any greater precision to that heuristic, which I expect I would do if
and when I gave such advice (or _any_ heuristic advice).

It's why I distinguish between levels of understanding[1]. There's the level
at which you can emit the correct answers with no ability to introspect on
them, and the level at which your understanding "plugs in" to the rest of your
world-model. If you acquired the former without ever having to reflect on it,
you may never turn it into the latter, nor need to. But neither will your
advice make much sense.

[1]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/1yq/understanding_your_understanding...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1yq/understanding_your_understanding/)

~~~
tormeh
Being yourself doesn't mean what you think it means. It doesn't mean doing
what feels natural or easy, it means that you should be honest and open about
who you are, how you feel and what you want. Just knowing the latter things is
hard and being honest and open about them is also hard.

~~~
SilasX
Considering that I didn't say what I think it means, it seems you may be under
the very same illusion of understanding I was criticizing, in which one thinks
one's explanation, metaphor, or heuristic has caused a specific model in the
other's mind, when it has not.

In the same way, about half of the people who have offered that advice,
operationalize it _oppositely_ from how you just did, because they
(mistakenly) think that the correct behaviors _do_ result from doing what
feels natural or easy.

Furthermore, for many people, "being honest and open about who they are and
what they want" means directly conveying things that are socially
inappropriately to convey, which leads them (including you, probably) to
immediately update the advice in unpredictable ways, revealing it to have the
same lack of content or understanding that I claimed.

~~~
tormeh
Well, I assumed you held the normal interpretation. I'm OK with being wrong
occasionally.

If who you are and what you want is socially inappropriate to your friends or
romantic interests then I suggest finding new ones. Seriously. Similarly with
everyone you can choose. Of course, with colleagues and family, certain masks
have to be worn... But minimize mask-wearing!

Someone once told me that "If my friends didn't know me, they wouldn't be my
friends". Best thing I ever heard. After I became more honest with my friends
I feel a lot less lonely and it turned out they were very accepting.

~~~
SilasX
So you advise, in at least some cases, people go to those whom they haven't
met, and express an explicit desire for sex, exactly as it comes to them in
their mind?

No? Then this is exactly what I'm criticizing: you have some classifier that
you have black-box access to, with boundaries you can't really specify when
prompted. And I would not have the confidence to convey something as advice
unless my understanding yielded an intuition for these boundaries, which yours
does not. Hence:

"If I actually understood this topic as well as you claim to, I would reveal
that understanding much better than you currently are."

Now, the black box, for you, may certainly emit the correct answers, but not
in what that allows you to convey it as meaningful advice.

------
notastartup
I've worked with lot of engineers with the described "logic bubble", often
coming off as an asperger or rude. It's rampant. Engineers just don't know how
to admit ambiguity, everything is solvable with logic, and this rubs off as
arrogance.

Like the author I also experienced early on in life that the real world is
much more unpredictable. Day trading, reading books have opened my eyes quite
a bit. Also starting my own business selling my own software has really
enforced the view that the only certainty is uncertainty.

Such a beautifully written article. I'd put this right up there with Dr.
Nassim Taleb's article on smart people or experts with no respect for
fallibility of the human condition, or the innate limitation as humans, the
absolute guarantee to incorrectly perceive our point in time, space, and make
poor decisions and walk off with a large check because of a certain pecking
order in society that awards chutzpah or blind confidence in one's own ability
or a groups ability. It probably comes from the evolutionary practice of
hunters and gatherers.

~~~
watwut
Funny ... I had the same impression of some managers. Simply could not accept
that certain things are unpredictable. The other thing is that there are
places where ambiguity is wrong e.g., documentation. Which was hard to accept
for some managers and analysts. I can not write ambiguous code, it ends up
doing either one thing or another.

Notice the some in my sentences. I managed not to offend whole profession of
people.

------
a3voices
The most useful logic is that which predicts reality. Smart people are best at
this. So I disagree with the author.

~~~
politician
_Realistic_ people are best at predicting reality, by definition. Street
smarts -- realism -- belongs to those who have deep domain expertise rather
than pure raw IQ.

Anyway, logic itself, as a system of reasoning, is known to be
<strike>inconsistent</strike> incomplete (Godel, etc).

~~~
quatrevingts
Incomplete, not inconsistent; i.e., not everything that is true is provable.

~~~
politician
Thanks, fixed.

------
atmosx
I'm very sceptical when reading quotes like " _smart people_ [...]" because
IMHO it's extremely complicated to define _smart_. That said, I believe the
following statement is 100% wrong:

> "Smart people have a problem, especially (although not only) when you put
> them in large groups. That problem is an ability to convincingly rationalize
> nearly anything."

Rationalizing is not something _smart people_ do. IMHO it's more of a cultural
thing in large scale. Take a north European (or American, must have to do with
the weather) and you'll get a huge % of the population rationalizing things,
instead of being emotional like the south Europeans/American.

I understand that most HN readers are programmers with strong mathematical
background but try to picture this: Ghandi didn't knew any math compared to
Godel, Einstein or Von Neumann. Ghandi achieved a gunless revolution by
_convincing poorly educated people_ to follow his lead. To me this is
EXTREMELY hard to do. Nearly impossible. Ghandi was a social genius. Can we
say that he wasn't _smart_ because an average mathematician would probably had
_more analytical thinking_ when talking about algorithms?

The author (and not only the author) confuses the analytical/non-emotional
thinking that he does with _smartness_. I believe that's a bold mistake.

ps. Of course there are situation where school teachers think of introvert
children as _not that smart_. This thing plays out both-ways unfortunately.

~~~
seizethecheese
Nobody would assume Ghandi was dumb because he didn't know algorithms, how
absurd.

More intelligent people absolutely are more adept at rationalization if they
have that particular difficulty.

~~~
shadowfox
It also helps that Gandhi was highly educated (for his time), was a lawyer and
quite a good writer, orator and politician. Not exactly the characteristic of
an unsmart person.

------
raving-richard
Bah. I raided an Egyptian tomb, and ever since I've been followed around by
smart people. They talk complex philosophy, discuss string theory, rave about
Haskel, and talk about some the boast some French fella or another wrote in
some book (in the margins I think). It's really annoying. Now that's a curse.

This article is just about how smart people have issues just like everyone
else. Gee.

Edit: Ooh, some of "smart" people can't take a joke.

~~~
saraid216
It's standard practice to downvote jokes.

Thank you for letting me know it was one. I wouldn't have realized I needed to
downvote this.

~~~
raving-richard
Could you explain why it is standard practice to downvote jokes? I don't get
it. If it's funny, then people might want to read it. Over on /. a lot of the
best comments are modded funny.

~~~
vacri
It's tradition on HN, in an attempt to lower the chaff and keep things on-
topic. It used to be that _any_ attempt at humour would get you canned, but
now it seems the pendulum has swung to 'if there's no other content in the
comment'. The same goes for comments about people not being able to handle
things like in your edit - they don't really contribute anything. Snark is
frowned upon.

~~~
philh
I don't think pure jokes automatically get downvoted, if they're funny enough,
though I have no recent examples in mind. But this particular example is more
condescending than funny.

