They&#x27;re clearly talking about the packaging, not the computer case.Without any kind of prior on this person&#x27;s intelligence, I too would, in the position of the Apple employees, gravitate towards the &quot;moron&quot; theory.

Maybe. But now I can&#x27;t get it out of my head -- is it true that the smallest box contains the smallest laptops in general?It raises even more (admittedly pointless) questions, like &quot;Is that true for Apple laptops, or all laptops? I bet Dell packs their tiny laptops with a bunch of peripherals or padding. A larger box might get sold more frequently.&quot;And even for Apple, are the boxes physically smaller between different models? I unpacked an M1 MBP the other day and was surprised how large the box was compared to the laptop. I think there&#x27;s a 13 inch and a 15 inch, and it almost seemed like the box was designed for the 15 inch.Hmm... This calls for an empirical study. Too bad I don&#x27;t live across the street from an Apple store anymore, or I&#x27;d just go look.But &quot;How could any of this possibly matter to a CPU designer?&quot; won&#x27;t be so easily resolved. E.g. even if it&#x27;s true that the smallest laptop comes in the smallest box, why didn&#x27;t they ask for the smallest laptop? The salesperson would&#x27;ve been like &quot;Of course, it&#x27;s right over here.&quot; It sounds like he compared the actual sizes of boxes, which is fascinating.

Yeah but if that is true, why cause so much trouble and just said why you want the smallest box.

Because when paying $1000+ for a computer the criterium is the box it comes in fits in your bag?

My guess was that he needed a small box in order to fit it in his bag to take home?

Presumably you would throw the box away before air travel, and according to the article box size != laptop size.

We keep coming back around to why didn&#x27;t the author say:&quot;I want the one in the smallest box for &lt;reason&gt;&quot;Instead of providing no reason and being smug in their assumption that they are both very clever and the barely over minimum wage employee assumes they are &quot;stupid&quot;.

I&#x27;m going to guess it&#x27;s about luggage size restrictions for (air) travel.

If it happened, he purposefully chose a request that he knew would generate confusion and discomfort in a situation with someone he has power over. It reminds me of the high school bully who fake-punches you, knowing you&#x27;ll react, and then punishing you for how you react.At best he purposefully made things more difficult than they had to be. She was absolutely right to think that he was a &quot;bozo.&quot; I generally strive to make things as easy and painless as possible for service workers I deal with, because I&#x27;ve been a service worker. It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me if he has never spent a day in his adult life working a service job.Regarding whether this actually happened or not: did any notice that &quot;small box&quot; item is one of the few he doesn&#x27;t actually explain and he&#x27;s withholding information from us just like he did from the salesperson? It feels like a &quot;look at me, I&#x27;m so very smart, watch me manipulate my audience&quot; move.His disdain for his readers is pretty obvious from the fact that he puts zero effort into readability; there isn&#x27;t an drop of formatting, it&#x27;s just a massive wall of text from edge to edge of the browser window.

Yeah, I went buy a tablet and I wanted a specific form factor. So when the retail worker asked me what I wanted, I told them the specific product. They mentioned other models that were newer, faster, better, etc. And I simply told them that I was looking for one I could fit in my hand by basically palming it. (Being in person, I could just hold up my hand and say &quot;hold it like this&quot;).Once I explained that, I was able to get what I wanted with no more questions. Now that they knew why I wanted what I wanted, they also knew what information was relevant to me. And I had already chosen the best model they had in that form factor.Communication should be simple, direct, and complete. That&#x27;s where I don&#x27;t care if I &quot;look stupid&quot;. I&#x27;ll go over basics if there&#x27;s a chance someone doesn&#x27;t know the basics. Because you can say, &quot;Oh I&#x27;m aware of X&quot;, but if you aren&#x27;t and I assume you are, you may be too embarrassed to bring that up because you&#x27;re afraid I think you&#x27;re stupid if you don&#x27;t know it.

I agree it&#x27;s condescending, especially as the clerk obviously wanted to find out why he wants the smallest box to better help him. If your experience from working at a computer store is that 50% of the customers ask for thing A but really want thing B because they have little knowledge about computers, it&#x27;s correct to assume that the customer that wants the machine in the smallest box also has a weird idea of what that means, and probably really needs a different selection criterion.Saying &quot;It&#x27;s a gift so I don&#x27;t care about the model but it needs to fit in my carry-on bag&quot; (or whatever the reason) would have explained it, and nobody would have thought the other was stupid. So in this case he&#x27;s actively inviting that judgement.

I wondered about that story and concluded that the author knew which computer they wanted. They also knew that this computer came in the smallest box. So they only had to give that second bit of information to get what they wanted.It is a bit condescending in my view to withhold that information from the clerk. But then again, I&#x27;m only making assumptions. Also, I&#x27;ve done similar things where I refused to let on my internal reasoning for various reasons. Sometimes just to mess with people. And clearly, many people thought me a fool for it. If I&#x27;d actually told them my reasoning? In many instances that would not have improved their opinion of me. So no loss.There are also many instances where I could have benefited immensely from sharing my reasoning, because people could have corrected my mistaken assumptions. Can&#x27;t say I&#x27;ve got it figured out when to keep shut and when to share.

Did the Apple store employee ask why he wanted a computer that comes in the smallest box, or did he just assume the customer is stupid or ignorant?  He doesn’t say either way, but most people will make an assumption instead of asking.  The downside to this approach in retail is that it invites a long story…

I think that this is unfair to the poor Apple Store employee. There is no reason to not state the motivation, why you ask for the smallest box.Other than that, I also try to employ the naive question and to some people these might sound stupid. But they are really useful because they can clear up lots of implicit implications and misunderstandings.

I think it is measure of time, for author it looks simple to put everything in few words instead of having long explanation, I find this typical in IT, where my coworkers all the time trying to compress explanation in fewest words possible. Maybe laziness or type of optimization, but usually back fires as other people ask you multiple questions, arising from their own point of view.

I think this interaction is an example of what &quot;the customer is always right&quot; is supposed to mean. Sure, the salesperson should verify that the person isn&#x27;t using mistaken terminology, but past that, why not just help them? Or why didn&#x27;t the salesperson take the initiative to ask them for the reason, instead of continuing to insist they were mistaken?

I frankly had the same impression. It felt it was less about the willingness to look to stupid, but rather the stupidity of people who surrounded him and their inability to see this individual&#x27;s brilliance.Perhaps this is an unkind reading, but particularly the laptop scenario felt telling that this person might feel above explaining why they might prefer a laptop which comes in a smaller box.On the surface that is very much a ridiculous request, regardless of how sensible it might actually be. Surely that shouldn&#x27;t stop you from making the request, but you must understand that someone is merely doing their job to make sure that you understand what you&#x27;re asking for.If I go to a tuba shop and ask how many litres of ranch dressing it holds, I&#x27;m not going to scoff when the salesperson reminds me that it isn&#x27;t a fancy brass bowl.

&gt;&quot;my questions are not really stupid, I&#x27;m just so smart that others don&#x27;t realise&quot;Sounds like this was the point of the blog post. He also drops that he was &quot;very good&quot; at Overwatch and &quot;#1 in the world&quot;. Usually the people who want to tell others about this in public are not very good.The ones who are very good are the ones who only tell you after you&#x27;ve tried teaching them. Since bad players in games often can&#x27;t tell what good players look like, or how they play.

I have to say this part (and quite a few other parts of the post) come across as quite arrogant. I mean if he really wants the computer with the smallest box, why can&#x27;t he explain why.I agree with the general gist of the post: don&#x27;t be afraid to ask stupid questions. However, the post has an underlying &quot;feeling&quot; of &quot;my questions are not really stupid, I&#x27;m just so smart that others don&#x27;t realise&quot;. I know that I ask plenty of stupid questions when I ask questions, I often realise how stupid they were just after the answer.

&gt;The funny thing is that &quot;I design CPUs&quot; has nothing to do with being able to pick the best possible laptop for one&#x27;s needsNo, but it heavily points to that you know basic things, like box-size != laptop size, or what CPUs do, and how to compare them, which is all the author claims.

The funny thing is that &quot;I design CPUs&quot; has nothing to do with being able to pick the best possible laptop for one&#x27;s needs.It&#x27;s like saying &quot;I know exactly which car I would like to drive every day because I designed the engine of a Ferrari&quot;.

I think it&#x27;s better to be a bit more charitable here indeed.I also found it striking how the post is emphasizing how important transparency in asking questions is which might or might not reveal the intelectual qualities of the person asking, but then failing to be that transparent towards both the clerk and the reader of the blog post about the internal thought process.If one would like people to learn, enlighten them. :-)

&gt;someone with a bit of a spectrum disorder.I&#x27;m surprised I had to scroll this far to see someone suggesting this, since it seems extremely obvious to me that this is part of the case. It&#x27;s becoming fairly well-documented that one of the primary differences in people on the spectrum is a difference in communication style, which anecdotally seems to be more direct and less apologetic or prone to &quot;superfluous&quot; verbal (&#x2F;nonverbal) contextualizing.With the prevalence of people on the spectrum in STEM, it&#x27;s no surprise that you&#x27;d see it here, and indeed looking at the comments you can see quite a few people talking past each other about what OP &quot;should&quot; say with what is clearly a mismatch in communication style.

I have to say, this example did make me switch my view of  the author from some one who wasn&#x27;t afraid to ask the &quot;stupid&quot; questions to being either a deliberately &quot;just asking questions&quot; asshole who likes to fuck with people or, to be more charitable, someone with a bit of a spectrum disorder.

ive done exactly this and it was a gift that i needed to fit in cabin bag on a flight. you cant check-in items with lithium batteries.

Also needs to state what he means by &quot;smallest&quot;. Volume? Width? Height?

I&#x27;ll try my best to alleviate you bewilderment. I think people are offended because there is a certain &quot;contract&quot; to social interactions that people are expected to comply with, and this behavior broke that unwritten contract. Furthermore, it&#x27;s not apparent to readers what could be gained from breaking the contract like that, so it seems like breaking the contract for no reason.

It sounds like they politely tried to clarify. Dan was amused that they thought he might be stupid. But asking for a laptop based on such bizarre criteria without attempting to set any context for the human person who deals with not CPU designers 99.9999% of the time, and then smugly calling out said human person for not immediately giving him the benefit of the doubt, then blogging about the exchange in a self-glorifying post… I mean, I’m not personally offended, but I can see why people would be bothered.

It&#x27;s amusing how many people are literally offended that they didn&#x27;t explain why.  But the answer we have is: because they wanted the smaller box.  They are paying for it, no further explanation is required to the employee or anyone else.  The employee should get the smallest box as requested and then they can try something like &quot;may I know why you want the smallest box?  I might be able to provide better help&quot;.

You can also take out all the awkwardness with a disclaimer: &quot;This may sound stupid, but I really care just about the packaging here: Would it be possible to show me... &quot;

Only half plausible reason I can think of is for a &#x27;Pass The Parcel&#x27; prize.
Anything else, surly the smallest laptop would be preferable and you could repackage it.

I&#x27;m thinking the reason why people think the author is &quot;stupid&quot; is because each is working with a different set of base assumptions. The worker can&#x27;t imagine a case where the box dimensions would be material as that box is likely to be in the trash can in n minutes. The author wouldn&#x27;t hit so many cases of being looked at crossly if they worked to bridge understanding with the other person. All of the cases presented suggest to me person may have some emotional intelligence to develop.

I&#x27;ll venture a guess why they asked for the computer that comes in the smallest box. They were buying a computer as a present, and they needed to pack it for travel before unboxing.

Here’s a hypothesis: Dan needed to transport the laptop before opening it. It could have been a gift and the goal was for it to fit, wrapped, in a small suitcase. Or for some reason he needed a shrink-wrapped unopened laptop somewhere (as evidence that it hadn’t been tampered with) and the quality of the laptop made no difference whatsoever.Even if this is wrong, I bet telling the salesperson that it was a gift and he wanted the smallest package would have avoided funny looks.

What would be funny would be if in some alternate universe the small box contained the biggest, bulkiest, most powerful computer.

Or at least, if you don’t want to say why, it could be smoothed over with “I know this is going to sound like a bizarre request, but I want the one that comes in the smallest box. I have my reasons.”Acknowledging that you know your request is unusual makes it sound a lot less stupid.

&gt; Going into an Apple store and asking for (and buying) the computer that comes in the smallest box, which I had a good reason to want at the time&gt; The person who helped me, despite being very polite, also clearly thought I was a bozo and kept explaining things like &quot;the size of the box and the size of the computer aren&#x27;t the same&quot;. Of course I knew that, but I didn&#x27;t want to say something like &quot;I design CPUs. I understand the difference between the size of the box the computer comes and in the size of the computer and I really want the one that comes in the smallest box&quot;, but just saying the last bit without establishing any kind of authority didn&#x27;t convince the person&gt; I eventually asked them to humor me and just bring out the boxes for the various laptop models so I could see the boxes, which they did, despite clearly thinking that my decision making process made no senseOh c&#x27;mon, that&#x27;s not fair. You have to tell us what the goal was. :) I&#x27;m super curious what a CPU designer wanted with the &quot;laptop that came in the smallest box.&quot;Perhaps smallest box = smallest laptop = they wanted to study the form factor. But does the smallest laptop really come in the smallest box? And did the results of this experiment influence your future CPU design decisions? I feel like this arc deserves its own page.

Right, I don&#x27;t care. It&#x27;s my opinion now that I have to be open about what I think or feel because it&#x27;s just how I am. So if I don&#x27;t find a common language with someone, then so be it. There are 7 billion other people on the planet.

(OT, but nice username. &quot;I hate when I get locallost on the way to localhost&#x27;s LAN party...&quot;)The judgmental people tend not to matter in the long run, by the way.Sort of. There are two types of judgmental people. One, the people building a team, or making a bet. Two, the people looking to talk about others.The latter don&#x27;t matter. The former are quick to judge because they have to be. If they&#x27;re wrong about their bets, it&#x27;ll soon become obvious. Which means the optimal strategy is to make many bets, or to interview as many devs as possible, and then cull most of the candidates.It&#x27;s not personal. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;judgement.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;judgement.html</a> helped me care way less about rejection, which seems to decrease the odds of getting rejected.

I felt too insecure to ask (stupid) questions previously because, well, people around you are always confident. But with time I saw there&#x27;s often not a lot behind this confidence, that someone who has a high opinion of himself is capable of really failing in a very basic way, and that most people are more or less the same. So I talk more freely now, and yes, some people are quick to judge. But whatever.

&quot;Looking stupid&quot; is an assessment of what other people think. Eg, asking for the smallest box isn&#x27;t stupid - Apple expects all the boxes to be good products. Even picking a product randomly isn&#x27;t stupid and therefore shouldn&#x27;t look it. The looking stupid part is an assessment of what the store clerk is thinking.That is a very subtle, fraught and complicated assessment. There is a lot going on to do with the audience, context, risk and the truth. There is a lot going on behind the term &quot;looking stupid&quot; and it undersells the complexity of the social interaction. There are two parties, multiple issues and a lot to think about.

&gt; It is important to ask [...] &quot;how do I measure &#x27;looking something&#x27;&quot; when this sort of topic is bought up.Why is that?

I think this is a good observation about the impact that confidence can have on some (mine included) peoples ability to learn.
In this way, low confidence can have both the direct effect of denying you access to information that would allow you to improve, but also more sinister, it can deny you the mental ability to actually learn something, even if the information was available to you, since the learning itself will mean that there&#x27;s things you don&#x27;t know. Being aware that you don&#x27;t know or can&#x27;t do something can feel very bad if you lack the confidence in your ability to get to know or do it, and we tend to avoid feeling bad, and so may abandon the endeavor.

This is true when it comes to actual decision making, but what about asking questions? Isn&#x27;t being willing to look stupid clearly important here regardless of how smart you are? Even if you actually are stupid, you&#x27;ll end up knowing more if you ask stupid questions, then you would have if you tried to hide your stupidity.

Have you never seen a restaurant location that is always changing owners, names, etc? Or downtowns of smaller cities where there&#x27;s tons of empty shops? Cheesegraters.com ?People are hilariously bad at induction, deduction, and making decisions based on their own research.We&#x27;re biased because we&#x27;re already on the internet, on this site, and nothing is on fire in our vicinity.

&gt; Most people, if they rely on their own research and decision making, will do poorly.That&#x27;s an interesting assertion. I would have guessed the opposite is true.

In my experience, there is a slight nuance in the frame here. It isn&#x27;t just that Mr. Luu is &quot;willing to look stupid&quot;, it is that he has confidence that his decision making process will on average turn out better decisions than the go-to default strategy that most people employ (&quot;copy the crowd&quot;).Most people, if they rely on their own research and decision making, will do poorly. And even moderately clever people generally do better by copying the rare stray geniuses that float around in polite society. This manifests as an &quot;unwillingness&quot; to &quot;look stupid&quot;. It is important to ask &quot;what does stupid mean&quot; and &quot;how do I measure &#x27;looking something&#x27;&quot; when this sort of topic is bought up.I am - and I don&#x27;t think this is that unusual - willing to go about a decade ignoring the opinions of others if I&#x27;m really confident that I have an objectively good idea. It is a high-risk high-reward strategy and not for everyone.

the problem is that it frees you from your assumptions, but you&#x27;ll encounter many more assumptions from others

i struggle with adhd and have both the same problem (frequently misplacing things) and a similar solution (checking everywhere, twice, even if im &quot;sure&quot; it wont be there)

Some years ago, I learned that I&#x27;m better at finding things when high. For context, my GF misplace things a few times a week, and I like finding them before she can. I realized pretty quickly that I did better under the influence, because I didn&#x27;t rule out places the things might be. When sober, I wouldn&#x27;t check certain places, because, That&#x27;d be a ridiculous place to leave that.Sounds kinda dumb, but it was an ah-ha realization that extended beyond finding misplaced items.

Asking &quot;stupid questions&quot; frees you from the trap of assumption. This is why people who are good at solving (or helping others solve) problems ask &quot;stupid questions&quot;.I suppose &quot;rubber duck debugging&quot; is a form of this.

More often than not when I ask a &quot;stupid&quot; question it turns out that the answer isn&#x27;t known (to the people I&#x27;m asking). So I try to do so more often. I&#x27;ve noticed that it also makes others feel empowered to ask &quot;dumb&quot; questions too (which usually aren&#x27;t), so it&#x27;s a good policy for the team as well as the individual.I&#x27;d imagine that it&#x27;s not so viable in more aggressive&#x2F;competitive&#x2F;toxic environments though? But I&#x27;ve been lucky avoiding those.Edit: Oh and sometimes my questions do turn out to be ... a bit dim. Most recent case that springs to mind was asking the local equivalent of &quot;what does SSN stand for?&quot; in a context where I really should have known. But the average outcome is good.

&gt; I don’t think I fully understand why, but asking dumb questions is often a subtle act of leadership.Very much so. It helps establishing an environment with less ego, more helpful people, and people who aren&#x27;t afraid to learn. It also diminishes feelings of imposter syndrome in other people, by showing that not everyone knows everything.All of those are things leaders should incentivize.

Yeah. Its weird but I find doing this makes people respect you more.If you ask dumb questions, the person speaking (if they’re any good) will start looking to you to figure out if they’re pitching their language correctly. The other people in the room who didn’t understand will be relieved and quietly thankful of you because they didn’t have to be the ones to ask. And people who understood already are usually way more chill about this sort of thing than you would expect. Especially if you give them the opportunity to explain something in front of everyone. And then thank them for doing so.I don’t think I fully understand why, but asking dumb questions is often a subtle act of leadership.

I find such willingness very helpful in many meetings with difficult vocabulary. Instead of nodding to sentences which make no sense to me I like to take the risk and admit that I have no clue what is going on. More often than not I&#x27;m not the only person who got lost so it ends up beneficial to the meeting as a whole.

I wouldn’t say “whole medical establishment”. All Asian countries and their medical teams were using masks by that time.

Yes, and because `the medical establishment` cannot risk that failure, they have to be much surer.And they have to be able to communicate it in an effective way such that people believe it... AND can act on it. AND can act on it in a way that doesn&#x27;t trigger panic or totally mess with supply chains needed to get proper equipment to front-line responders.like Lawrence from azangru&#x27;s quote above, the medical establishment needs to consider many more factors than &#x27;common people&#x27; before making a public statement.

&gt; I think this is remarkable, how common people with some level of scientific literacy were able to get this correct much better than the whole medical establishment.I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s remarkable at all. Common people with some level of scientific literacy took basically all kind of stances about masks. Some of them had to be right in the end.&#x27;The medical establishment&#x27; otoh had to come to one single common recommendation and as it&#x27;s only one there&#x27;s a chance of failure (there were, ofc. individual medical professional and scientists who got it right as well).

The medical establishment knew N95s were critical from SARS and, at least in, North America had plenty of circumstantial evidence that COVID was, at least, somewhat reduced by masks; as did the authorFurther, my former co-workers from my stint in HIV testing were ALL saying wear masks and don&#x27;t count on a vaccine being available until 2021 at the very earliest. They all started self isolating very early.The whole &quot;medical establishment&quot; DID know this.This was a failure of leadership of the medical establishment to either listen to the rest of the medical establishment or to effectively push back on the political leadership.

Another note to the same quote: for me it looks like classic half mask respirator is not that &quot;good&quot; against COVID, as it only filters on the intake, not the way, out. At least my cheap one does. Therefor, while it prevents you from getting it, it does not stop you from spreading it. Right?Sure, that might very well be what you aim for, but from my understanding, FFP2 should prevent both, at least theoretically, since wearing them correctly is another point of failure.

&gt; Covid: I took this seriously relatively early on and bought a half mask respirator on 2020-01-26 and was using N95s I&#x27;d already had on hand for the week before (IMO, the case that covid was airborne and that air filtration would help was very strong based on the existing literature on SARS contact tracing, filtration of viruses from air filters, and viral load)I think this is remarkable, how common people with some level of scientific literacy were able to get this correct much better than the whole medical establishment.

Richard Feynman&#x27;s lectures are available for free online:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu&#x2F;</a>

It was a long time ago that I read it, but I&#x27;m pretty sure Richard Feynman says something similar in &quot;Surely You&#x27;re Joking...&quot;I can&#x27;t remember his exact words, but my takeaway was not to be afraid of asking super basic questions.(Also, it probably doesn&#x27;t need to be said on HN again, but that really is a good book.)

In my experience this is what humility is; not making yourself out to be more than you are, as well as not putting yourself down (deprecating humour aside - which is more about connection).&quot;You don&#x27;t need more control over everything, you need more courage&quot;. In a lot of ways that dovetails with Dan&#x27;s comments.

I&#x27;m not sure if this is the same thing but insecure people like me find the lack of affirmation of others troubling sometimes. How many of us get upset&#x2F;offended if what we think is a high-quality comment on HN gets voted down by a load of people?We should be confident enough that we stand by comments even if we expect some of them to be misunderstood&#x2F;unpopular. There are always people who will agree and always some who will agree. Once we can judge ourselves fairly, we won&#x27;t care what other people think - we can be judged by our outcomes.

&gt; No question that most of us needs to have the ego take a backseat more often.Nothing says ego in the backseat like an iamsosmart blog post. Bonus points if the website looks like it&#x27;s from 2005 and if you write it in a tone as if you just invented penicillin.

No question that most of us needs to have the ego take a backseat more often.But I cannot help but compare this to negotiation. It is a lot easier when you negotiate from a place of abundance. Negotiating salary is easier when you do not need the job. Negotiating a house is easier when you do not need to buy that house.I feel like the same applies here. Willingness to look stupid is a lot easier in situations where you have confidence and nothing to lose.

Thanks you said this much better than I did a bit further up. The whole post smacks a bit of arrogance to me, even though the advice is good.

That feels unfair. Part of the point of the article is that though looking stupid has a cost, it&#x27;s sometimes worth it, for example, to ask an important question or to share an interesting idea, but maybe not just to prove that you&#x27;re okay with looking stupid.

The title is about looking stupid, but that&#x27;s not what the author is communicating, to me or many others in the comments here. At no point did the author ever risk any ego, because they knew they were right every time, and no morons were going to convince them otherwise. Willingness to look stupid isn&#x27;t just about ignoring other people&#x27;s opinions, it&#x27;s about actually being willing to find out you _are_ stupid sometimes. Nobody can avoid being stupid their whole lives, whatever cherry picked lists we might publish on our blogs. You are either willing to suffer the risk of people seeing that, and learning something, or you can hide from that risk. The author clearly has a good track record of hiding from that risk, because everything they&#x27;ve ever done has turned out to be correct. But that seems deeply uninteresting as a life lesson. Much more important is what happens when you try something, and the people telling you you&#x27;re stupid are _right_. How you and your ego handle that is an important part of your character.Maybe that&#x27;s a subtle distinction, but I think it&#x27;s important.

But the article is specifically about looking stupid. The point being, as I understand it, that you should avoid being stupid but not looking stupid.

There&#x27;s a bit of a disconnect between the the purported theme of this article, being okay looking stupid, and the actual contents, which is just a catalogue of times other people were stupid, posted on the internet so everyone knows the author is clever.Being willing to look stupid involves actually being able to deal with mistakes and failure, with actually _feeling_ stupid sometimes. Just listing a bunch of great decisions you made that other people thought were stupid seems less life-changing to me.

I have also heard this. Even the other day I asked my own sister about data about her own profession. She genuinely thinks I am asking too much&#x2F;bothering her so she just replies &quot;just let it go&quot; or &quot;you think too much&quot;.Well, if I think too much, probably I think more than you about your own profession, so, I do not want to say this, but you are not the best possible professional, because sometimes I had the feeling that she just follows the trend instead of getting genuine opinions about some of the topics in the discipline.

&gt; Friends have been chiding about this for years and strangers, dates, and acquaintances, will sometimes tell me, with varying levels of bluntness, that I&#x27;m being paranoid and stupidThere is way to much of this bullshit all over the place (e.g. PPE use) and I&#x27;m quick to judge people who do it, because I find it a truly moronic attitude.

Honesty and transparency aren&#x27;t the same thing. Dan Luu has a non-transparent process, but that doesn&#x27;t mean he wishes to deceive you. Most people aren&#x27;t transparent.

A honest man would not &quot;Willingness to Look Stupid&quot; if he is not stupid.

Consider that the shop is unlikely to have the laptops stored or annotated by box size.Dan was asking the employee to expend considerable additional effort to find the smallest laptop box when he potentially knew the model number, or least had a reason that would justify the extra work. I would have just said &quot;I&#x27;m really tight on carry-on space&quot;, not to avoid looking stupid, but to assure the employee I wasn&#x27;t breaking their balls for no reason.

I disagree. He might not be morally obligated, but his is certainly socially obligated. Customers ask for the wrong thing all the time. A problem solver, as any good retail sales person should be, will ask questions to help the customer understand their own needs and the available solutions. That story just shows that Dan Luu doesn&#x27;t understand the social process that happens in the retail environment.That he doesn&#x27;t care if he looks stupid is besides the point here. He looked stupid to the retail worker not because he didn&#x27;t explain his underlying reasons for wanting a small box. He looked stupid because he didn&#x27;t understand the retail sales process. That is to say, he was stupid, about that one thing, and that is why he looked stupid.

But Dan Luu isn&#x27;t obviously motivated by a desire to antagonize the Apple employee, and neither is he socially or morally obligated in the slightest to explain his consumer intentions during a purchase at the Apple store.And was the encounter really antagonistic? Dan Luu is the one who left looking stupid.

&gt;But why can&#x27;t you just ask for what you want without people automatically assuming you&#x27;re stupid?I guess the reality is that huge majority of customers in those shops aren&#x27;t proficient at technology at all,so it&#x27;s incredibly good bet that customer has no idea what s&#x2F;he&#x27;s doing.

The writer conflates &quot;the person at the Apple Store was trying to be helpful&quot; with &quot;the person at the Apple Store thought I was stupid&quot;.Part of the job of someone working in a customer-facing, sales job is to understand what the customer wants. A sales associate at an Apple Store probably has dozens of interactions every day where they&#x27;re able to help people understand the products better and enable them to make a more informed decision. That is their job.Saying &quot;I just want the one that&#x27;s in the smallest box&quot; makes you look like a customer that&#x27;s in need of guidance and help, and someone who&#x27;s probably going to have a bad experience with the product if they don&#x27;t get it.Getting irritated by a response that is trying to help just shows a lack of empathy. People are not robots and there is a really good reason that the &quot;white lie&quot; is a thing.

But why can&#x27;t you just ask for what you want without people automatically assuming you&#x27;re stupid? If you care that strangers think you&#x27;re dumb you have to adjust your behavior a lot and some people would rather just be genuine. Besides, the easiest way to not look stupid is to make up a reason that sounds reasonable (i.e. lying) to get what you want. This is what many (most?) people do. If they want the Apple computer that comes in the smallest package they&#x27;ll make up a BS reason (i.e. flight luggage restrictions) in order to seem reasonable to the stranger who works at Apple.The question is really what kind of person do you want to be? Do you want a person who habitually lies about unimportant stuff in order to accomplish goals? Do you want to be a person who is genuine but gets unfairly judged by strangers? Or do you want to be a person who justifies themselves to strangers in order to avoid getting judged?If you think lying is wrong and seeking the approval of strangers is a bad habit only one option remains.

&gt;So this story does not come off as an example of &quot;I don&#x27;t mind being seen as stupid&quot;, it comes off as a very strong example of &quot;I&#x27;m holier than you&quot;-attitude which is the entire opposite than the article author&#x27;s is trying to make.Exactly my thoughts.Even the way the story is told to the reader with: &quot;which I had a good reason to want at the time&quot;, has the same sentiment towards us.&quot;My reasoning is even above explaining to you, my reader.&quot;

Yeah, the &quot;smallest box&quot; story comes to me very wrong. It basically shows him as really stupid -- as he is simply failing the &quot;describe the goal, not the step&quot; rule in most &quot;how to ask questions&quot; guides -- e.g., <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.catb.org&#x2F;~esr&#x2F;faqs&#x2F;smart-questions.html#goal" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.catb.org&#x2F;~esr&#x2F;faqs&#x2F;smart-questions.html#goal</a> .Not only that, but he is also implying that people &quot;who design processors&quot; must also know our way around shopping for computers. This couldn&#x27;t be farther from the truth.So this story does not come off as an example of &quot;I don&#x27;t mind being seen as stupid&quot;, it comes off as a very strong example of &quot;I&#x27;m holier than you&quot;-attitude which is the entire opposite than the article author&#x27;s is trying to make.

I particularly liked the juxtaposition of their behaviour in the Apple situation with their later comment ...&gt; I try to be careful to avoid this failure mode when onboarding interns and junior folks and have generally been sucessful, but it&#x27;s taken me up to six weeks to convince people that it&#x27;s ok for them to ask questionsI kind of get the impression that asking the author questions is actually a very painful process.

It was antagonistic and condescending. But it&#x27;s being framed in an &#x2F;r&#x2F;iamverysmart &quot;ironic&quot; way.Extrapolating from this article, this individual is likely a nightmare to work with due to their closed nature and unwillingness to share thoughts or decision making points.

You can always explain in a few words why, even without stating your actual underlying reasons. The clerk doesn&#x27;t need all the details. This person clearly struggled more than he had to if he would have just provided a reason the clerk could understand. I bet his lack of social skills and perceived &quot;stubbornness&quot; were a much higher contribution factor to the clerk being puzzled and may be even thinking he was being stupid.

Are you really that smart if it takes 10 minutes to justify buying the computer with the smallest box?Probably not.

Because the answer might take 10 minutes to explain.

I truly do not understand this attitude and I can only guess comes from repeated exposure to an unfriendly environment. We&#x27;re not talking here about exposing your soul to the world, a few words to explain why you want the smaller box would actually save a bunch of time and misunderstandings. Given how society works today, it&#x27;s just easier.

&gt;why don&#x27;t you reveal your goals or thought process when challenged after asking a question that might be perceived as stupid?People are shallow and often don&#x27;t spend a lot of time trying to understand other people.You won&#x27;t always have the luxury to explain yourself.

Agree. To put it in the context of the article, if the author looked at getting desired outcomes as a video game, then this article is just a rant, and time would have been better spent analyzing the situations for how  to improve. The recurring failure mode is ineffective communication.

I guess the &quot;stupid question&quot; I&#x27;d ask of this article is: why don&#x27;t you reveal your goals or thought process when challenged after asking a question that might be perceived as stupid? Take the Apple Store example: why not explain the reason why you were asking for a product by the size of its box when they responded by saying that size of the box does not map to size of the product? Being open about your goal would&#x27;ve probably made it easier and less antagonistic as a process, right?

My variation on this is based on years of management. My quip:
+ I only hire people who are smarter than I am.
+ I am the dumbest bloke in the business. Everyone is smarter than I am.Like &quot;Willingness ...&quot; it&#x27;s a tool to remove your ego from and look-for&#x2F;work-with &#x27;talent&#x27; thru a (slightly more) objective lens.As an individual contributor, it opens you to alternative ideas (learning from others). As a manager, it allows your team to build confidence and be open with you about problems and potentially radical alternatives.A variation on this idea:
+ the only things I know I learned from other folks.

&gt;The benefit from asking a stupid sounding question is small in most particular instances, but the compounding benefit over time is quite large and I&#x27;ve observed that people who are willing to ask dumb questions and think &quot;stupid thoughts&quot; end up understanding things much more deeply over time. Conversely, when I look at people who have a very deep understanding of topics, many of them frequently ask naive sounding questions and continue to apply one of the techniques that got them a deep understanding in the first place.Just be like this girl :P<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=7q89tdSjE-0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=7q89tdSjE-0</a>&gt;Learning a sport or video game: I try things out to understand what happens when you do them, which often results in other people thinking that I&#x27;m a complete idiot when the thing is looks stupid, but being willing to look stupid helps me improve relatively quicklyOverall author came up with this concept of &quot;looks stupid&quot;, yet it does already exist as &quot;failure teaches more&quot; or just &quot;curiosity&quot; in my opinion.Overall2:MaybeWhy Is It So Hard to Be Rational?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2021&#x2F;08&#x2F;23&#x2F;why-is-it-so-hard-to-be-rational" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2021&#x2F;08&#x2F;23&#x2F;why-is-it-so-h...</a>

I think OP is referring to this:&gt; For example, if a date thinks I&#x27;m stupid because I ask them what a word means, so much so that they show it in their facial expression and&#x2F;or tone of voice, I think it&#x27;s pretty unlikely that we&#x27;re compatible, so I view finding that out sooner rather than later as upside and not downside.

the dating example is stupid. when you assume you make an ass out of you and me.

&gt; But, the more comfortable I got at being a beginner led to even faster learning. This attitude has spread through other parts of my life, even areas where I&#x27;m not a beginner, and has led to improvement across the board.I think there&#x27;s a ton of wisdom in this. You learn to learn by, surprise surprise, being a beginner at something. Exposing yourself to broad areas in which you&#x27;re a total newb can teach patience (I&#x27;ve yet to learn basic carpentry because I am one of those people who hasn&#x27;t got the patience to measure twice), too.This is really insightful: being a beginner is going to teach you how to learn things, and that&#x27;s a hugely transferable skill. (Besides, it&#x27;s also really enjoyable.)

Martial arts are a hobby where I think this happens often. You could practice your whole life, but then you change disciplines or face a new teacher and suddenly you&#x27;re doing everything wrong.

Exactly! We should practice being a beginner for our entire lives. It&#x27;s a constant reminder to have that beginner mindset even where you think you are an expert.I took up Jiu-Jitsu at age 40. Talk about humbling. I also catch myself occasionally doing what you did and mention how terrible I am&#x2F;will be as a defensive mechanism.But, the more comfortable I got at being a beginner led to even faster learning. This attitude has spread through other parts of my life, even areas where I&#x27;m not a beginner, and has led to improvement across the board.

I am starting to teach at my local University and this was just the thing I needed to read. Thanks a lot Sam.

There is a pretty well known speaker who wrote about his first public speech. He was to record himself, and it would listened to by some 5,000 people. He spent hours and hours re-recording himself, until a older friend stopped by and laughed at him, as follows:&quot;You are being nervous because you think that you might not be perfect, and doubt creates a feeling of nervousness and unsurety.Well, I can dispel the doubt. You won&#x27;t be perfect. In fact, you will be pretty lousy, because it is your first time, and it it is in front of a relatively large crowd.So two pieces of good news. You needn&#x27;t be nervous. And its not so bad that it will go lousy. Because everyone knows it is your first time, anyway, and they are expecting you to mess up. And this way, in the future, you will actually be great!&quot;A lot of wisdom there, IMHO

Similar situation here. One of the things I found useful for skill-based activities is to take video. I took my kid&#x27;s swim lesson from 3-6, the improvement is obviously drastic. Now, my oldest is starting to understand that while she&#x27;s not good at something right now, she just need more practice. It&#x27;s a huge mental change for her.

This might be culturally dependent, as in some cultures there is much more emphesize on competition than in others. Have you reflected on your behaviour towards your children with respect to this?

&gt; Fear of looking stupid as a beginner is something that most people have right from the startI&#x27;m a parent of a 5yo and surprised this is your experience. If anything, I&#x27;d say child behavior is the perfect anti-example of fear of trying new things.Take one of the examples you provide: language. Young children ages don&#x27;t care about using incorrect grammar or using the wrong words. This is why they&#x27;re so good at progressing so quickly. Kids are way less afraid of failure than adults.I also wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if there&#x27;s a significant environmental impact to children&#x27;s behavior as well; in most ways, they&#x27;re blank canvases when it comes to skill-based behavior. Personality...not so much.

&gt; For me, it had been too long.I have a 5 year old and a 2.5 year old, and hang out with lots of small children. Fear of looking stupid as a beginner is something that most people have right from the start: I have watched kids be afraid of incompetence (to the point of not wanting to try) at riding a bike, running, swinging across monkey bars, drawing, singing, reading, learning a new language, ...

As the great Shug Emery[1] says, &quot;You only get to be new at something once, so enjoy it!&quot;[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;shugemery" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;shugemery</a>

I don&#x27;t know, I generally like being bad at things. Not because of the state of being bad itself, but because if I&#x27;m not doing something new, it&#x27;s boring, and to be doing something new is to be doing something you&#x27;re bad at. So I&#x27;m basically trying stuff and asking everyone for help all the time. I don&#x27;t care what others think of me, I like learning.I don&#x27;t even think they think I&#x27;m stupid, I&#x27;m sure they appreciate the fact that I&#x27;ve made every mistake before when they come to me for help later. I enjoy doing stuff more than I enjoy looking like an expert.

Can you tell me more about how you are learning to draw?

After a terrible breakup years ago I took a trapeze class. Before we got up on the trapeze bar, I spent most of the class telling everyone how bad I was going to be at it. When I got home I lay in bed confused. Why did I do that? This article is spot on. I was afraid of being seen to be bad at something.Have you noticed? We spend almost our entire adult lives doing things we’re good at. Anything we do that we’re bad at, we either stop doing or we get good at it. So all roads lead us away from the experience of being a beginner. For me, it had been too long. And I’d accidentally forgotten how to do it.So I took up dancing (which I’m bad at). That was really terrifying. And trampolining. And more recently improv. At the moment I’m learning to draw - which I spent most of my life wanting to do. But I never stuck with it because I hate drawing badly. But that’s just what it feels like to be a beginner. The trick is letting that go, because it doesn’t matter. You don’t get to be good at anything without first being bad at it. And being comfortably, visibly bad at something gives everyone else permission to play.

If they&#x27;re not really an expert then they cover up their lack of knowledge and then get promoted into a management position telling the actual subject matter experts how to do their jobs.

I learnt a long time ago by a director (CEO) of a large UK company on how to assess people, their technical abilities and personalityand that is to act stupid&#x2F; daft - not just one question, but for periods of time. and see how they respond to youa very effective technique when dealing or interacting with so called Subject Matter Experts. If they&#x27;re an expert they should be able to explain complex stuff at a High&#x2F; medium&#x2F; low levels or just say they do not know.If they&#x27;re not really an expert then they cover up their lack of knowledge

From the wording, it sounds like he only answered the one question. Since he kept his work, all they know is that he answered at most[0] one question correctly.[0] It&#x27;s possible he gave an answer that wasn&#x27;t what they expected and it was &quot;incorrect&quot;.

The moral of the story is that Lawrence was an idiot for not properly understanding what answer the test administrators wanted him to give?

There&#x27;s a beautiful illustration from Neal Stephenson&#x27;s Cryptonomicon on this topic:===They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back?Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat. Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the average speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river. Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations. Along the way, he realized that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem. If that didn’t prove his intelligence, what would?Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal.Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada. The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else.

Agreed, that blog post was pure cringe from start to finish.

I don&#x27;t change anything about myself when I interview for jobs. I can&#x27;t even fathom why I would, in this industry (or really any not customer-facing industry, really).They saw my weird resume - it always gets a comment. It was revised and edited under direction from a retired entrepreneur and CEO who explained how employee employer and employee&#x2F;employer&#x2F;HR&#x2F;hiring managers interactions work &quot;in real life&quot;.They did a phone interview. They called me in. The only times I get the &quot;thanks for interviewing, but&quot; calls is when the recruiter or headhunter obfuscated the job description to prevent poaching and&#x2F;or losing their commission&#x2F;bonus and I had literally no idea about any of their stack&#x2F;business&#x2F;whatever.I could just be lucky, I guess, not having to lie or embellish or present a facade.

Exactly. E.g. this:
&quot;Although there are some downsides to people thinking that I&#x27;m stupid, e.g., failing interviews where the interviewer very clearly thought I was stupid&quot;This isn&#x27;t just looking stupid, this is being stupid. Why in Heaven&#x27;s name wouldn&#x27;t you at least adjust your behavior when you&#x27;re in an interview?Acting stupid can be a convenient way to hold up your belief that you&#x27;re smarter than the rest. Nobody will ever challenge your belief because hey, if they think you are stupid, it&#x27;s because you made them believe that, which means that they are actually the stupid ones!

This post seems like some sort of humble-brag about not really being stupid, but being &quot;willing to look stupid&quot; to people who are actually stupid.To be honest, this entire post make him look stupid, but we all know now that he doesn&#x27;t care what we think. I&#x27;m probably stupid for falling for another one of his clever schemes where he&#x27;s just pretending to be stupid.

The fact that the author withheld information from the Apple clerk suggests to me that the author thought the Apple clerk would not understand the “real” reason why he wanted the smallest box.I believe the author thought the clerk was too stupid to understand the real reason and it would be a waste of time to explain to the clerk why.

<pre><code> &gt; Naturally, the established powers and polite society didn&#x27;t find this to their liking. We all know how his story ended.
</code></pre>
Socrates was sentenced to death not for exposing how little everyone else knew. The esteemed philosopher was sentenced to death because he was deliberately annoying people - like a fly - with badgering questions that would force the questionee into a corner.Today we call this method of exposing contradictions in one&#x27;s mindset the Socratic Method.

social reflexes and egos are immense streams of hurdles in the way of knowingi like the term abandonment these days, drop your assumptions, drop your habits and try to see things as they are

I don&#x27;t mean to be that person, but &quot;knowing that you know nothing&quot; is a contradictory statement.

I recently learned that there were two other maxims inscribed after the famous “Know thyself” at Delphi:“Nothing to excess”, and “Certainty brings insanity”.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Know_thyself" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Know_thyself</a>

Socrates  was deeply ironic, and usually only played the fool. In very few (maybe all but one) of his dialogues is he actually less informed than the people that he’s talking to.

This reminds me of the simple brilliance of Socrates. He began from the premise that he knew nothing, and would ask all manner of simple questions building on top of the previous answers. It wasn&#x27;t long before he uncovered how little everyone else actually knew, but what separated Socrates was his honesty: he knew nothing and admitted it.Naturally, the established powers and polite society didn&#x27;t find this to their liking. We all know how his story ended.

For the unaware:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;OODA_loop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;OODA_loop</a>

Confucius says there are 3 ways to gain wisdom:Imitation, which is easiest.Meditation, which is noblest.Experience, which is bitterest.Anytime I learn anything new, I imitate until I can’t anymore, then I meditate to understand why I think I can’t imitate anymore, then I experience my meditation, then I go back to mediating based on that experience.Repeat until you can’t OODA loop effectively anymore.

&gt;but practically, how much influence does a person (who is not in a position of authority) have?Surprisingly much, for the kind of people who stay quiet. They underestimate their own potential impact.

So, there&#x27;s that saying, &quot;stay quiet and be thought a fool; open your mouth and remove all doubt.&quot; In a team meeting, it&#x27;s easy to feel like you&#x27;ll not only look foolish because you asked a question that everyone else knows the answer to, but you&#x27;re also wasting everyone&#x27;s time.I certainly remember feeling that way when I was a junior engineer. It was kind of a shock to me when I realized how many others generally had the same questions I did.

I think people who are afraid to ask questions are conditioned to be that way. It is just easy to keep quiet in a team meeting than risk asking&#x2F;saying something that might expose one&#x27;s lack of knowledge on the topic being discussed. People also secretly hope that someone else might ask the same question that they are thinking about, so the other person can take that risk.The environment largely shapes people&#x27;s behavior. Of course, we can argue that we should work towards changing the environment for the better, but practically, how much influence does a person (who is not in a position of authority) have? In the end, people simply take the easy way out, which is keep quiet and only speak when they&#x27;re absolutely sure that whatever they&#x27;re about to say&#x2F;ask is fully accurate.

this^. it took a lot of intentional practice for me to shake the fear of looking dumb when in front of peers. however, i&#x27;ve since realized that pretty consistently the people who share this willingness to come off as uninformed are the best people to work with -- they openly admit gaps in their knowledge and are eager to close them.conversely, when interviewing or evaluating people, if i observe someone pretend s&#x2F;he knows something, that&#x27;s often a really bad sign…

There are questions and there are questions. Some questions in meetings are &#x27;smart questions&#x27; intended to show you off and boost your stock a little, or move conversation to an area beneficial to you. Some questions are just ridiculous time wasters asked to show that you are there. There is a slim minority that asks questions to actually learn something and from experience I learned that those questions are best asked after the meeting directly to the person.

You&#x27;ve mistaken &quot;wanting to be right&quot; with wanting to &quot;be correct&quot;.I&#x27;ve never inferred stupidity or lack of intelligence with asking questions. The only thing I&#x27;ve inferred was lack of knowledge. And the best way to get knowledge is to ask. People who ask want to know. They want the information to get to correct.People who don&#x27;t ask questions eventually make assumptions that are wrong. Because they&#x27;re so wrapped up in &quot;looking smart&quot; and they think being &quot;smart&quot; means having all the knowledge. They &quot;want to be right&quot; so they don&#x27;t look information because looking would expose they don&#x27;t already have it.Smart people seek information so they can apply it. Genuinely intelligent people just have faster processors.

If you don’t know the answers to stupid questions you originally don’t understand the topic fully .

It definitely gets much easier when you stop worrying about other people think of you.

What helps me is to view intelligence as strictly a matter of brain power. I can use my intelligence to do things that are stupid, unwise, misinformed, harmful, etc.What I take from the article is that saying stupid things is the best way to avoid doing stupid things.

Read the &quot;Mindset&quot; book by Dweck.  Was introduced by our school, and it felt like it was written for me as well.

This article speaks to my soul. All my life I&#x27;ve been told how intelligent I am. It&#x27;s been such a massive driver for my own insecurities and fear around anything I do, since my identity is tied up so much in being right and not being wrong, in continuing to present this image of infallible intelligence. It&#x27;s likely also fed into my issues with depression I&#x27;ve had all my life. I can consistently get people to see how intelligent I might be, but it&#x27;s always such a struggle. It&#x27;s like walking a tightrope. I hate it.

&gt; you don&#x27;t want to be hired by people who can&#x27;t see thisThe issue with this is that you might not even work with this one person declining you.

&gt; the reason they were so much brighter was (in part) exactly because of what made them initially seem dimThe causality also goes the other way. Very smart people see their limitations more clearly and so tend to be humbler about what they know.They realize they can learn from others and so ask a lot of questions that others might feel foolish asking.

This is especially tough because of how much skill it takes for you the questioner to not make the other person feel stupid when they realize they can&#x27;t answer your questions.

Sometimes there are details one doesn&#x27;t need to know to make a good decision. All of mathematics is built on this.However this only works when there is enough knowledge to know why the unimportant details won&#x27;t matter.

Whenever I ask questions, I tend to go to the very bottom of it. And I am not satisfied as long as I get a very intuitive and fundamental understanding of the topic. I have seen, however, that this can be tiring. Unless you are having the conversation with someone who has the time, willingness, and the knowledge to satisfy my curiosity, it is pointless to keep probing. People would often be exasperated or would be unable to provide me the intuition.
Therefore, these days, I pretty much probe very little and if it seems that my questions won&#x27;t really be answered, I leave it at that, mentally noting to do some independent research on the internet.

When I was younger, I often met people who seemed kind of dim to me, at first, and later found the majority of them to be orders of magnitude brighter than me.
It was not hard to connect the dots, the reason they were so much brighter was (in part) exactly because of what made them initially seem dim.. They asked questions, honestly. Not the showoff kind of question you ask to show how much you know, but real, honest questions that not only showed how little they knew, but importantly, allowed them to actually learn and understand, rather than just nod and not get it.My intuition has changed from this, I find it that most times, when someone shows genuine interest and asks honest, revealing questions about some new topic, they often excel at many other things (and will likely on the new topic as well).I&#x27;m adapting this myself, being honest, asking honestly, and sometimes looking really stupid (because, in that context, I am!), and I appreciate greatly both the wealth of information that allows me to access, and that almost anybody worth their salt recognizes this trait as well.Failing an interview due to looking stupid is probably a blessing in disguise, you don&#x27;t want to be hired by people who can&#x27;t see this, and you don&#x27;t want to work next to people who&#x27;s just pretending to understand, not learning because they can&#x27;t afford to look stupid when they are (and thus stay stupid, and be much more inclined to try to pass blame to someone else, like you, who look stupid).

Yeah, well, corporate. If you’re in that situation, you have some self-splaining to do. ;)

&gt; ...you have an obligation to ask the “stupid” questions...I really agree with that but it&#x27;s all about being willing to take a risk.Many settings, especially in corporate environments, are intrinsically hostile to inquiry. These are places where meetings are run with semi-parliamentary rules-- just pro-forma affairs to mark project transitions.In such situations, it may be that the others know better than you do and thus STFU or else be silently, immediately, and permanently dismissed for future consideration by those who call the shots.

Seth Godin has a whole schtick on the high value of what he calls “intentional serial incompetence”. Basically, if you’re unwilling to be seen as incompetent, you can’t deal with change. Good summary here - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&#x2F;38442&#x2F;change-agent-issue-31" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&#x2F;38442&#x2F;change-agent-issue-31</a>My own experience has been that if you’re pretty sure you’re one of the smartest people in the room, you have an obligation to ask the “stupid” questions, because the rest of the room will be too afraid to look stupid.

Willing to look stupid == not caring what other people think of you.
Most humans spend terrible amount of time thinking what others think of you. It&#x27;s normal, but and good to some extent.

Nowadays it doesn&#x27;t even end there. You risk getting &quot;cancelled&quot; by social media mobsters.

Maybe. He didnt add the caveat &quot;I don&#x27;t mind looking stupid except when the entire internet can see&quot; though.I thought it was heavily implied from the way the article started that we&#x27;d be reading some embarrassing stories.I was somewhat disappointed to see that he was presenting himself as just a humble genius who thinks different.

Or it is an unwillingness to be vulnerable to the entire internet. Why? Probably fear of being misinterpreted and pilloried by strangers.It is a justifiable fear. For example, it is easy for people to interpret an imperfect amount of courage as &quot;humble-bragging&quot;.

“What is the Apple store employee supposed to do to not make someone feel stupid when they ask for the smallest box?”Maybe ask the customer, “can I ask why you would like the one with the smallest box?” instead of making assumptions? Although note that this might also be classified as a question where the person asking is admitting they don’t understand why someone would want this aka “looking dumb” in the wording from the article

I had exactly the same impressions as you, and initially I thought that it was my non-native English interpretation (I felt sort of stupid), happy to know I am not the only one considering those examples (more-than-a-little) self-entitling the author as the ultimate genius on earth.It seems to me like he puts some intentionality in attempting to look stupid and a sort of satisfaction when this happens.

Yes, he clearly states he thought that the student group that thought he was stupid were stupid. And later that the only people that would think his test thing was stupid would be the incompetent ones.So his thesis is also that stupid people assume that intelligent people are stupid. He considers himself more intelligent than those people.I wonder if he would be as willing to look stupid in front of people that he considers as intelligent as him.It sounded to me like he was saying: I am willing to look stupid to people that I consider inferior (dumber than me).

On the other hand, he doesn&#x27;t spend much time talking about the case that could have him die or the one that could have him go blind. If something like that happened to me, I would probably have a position like the author. There are also a few cases (COVID, air filtration) where people disagreeing with him had relatively serious health consequences.

&gt; The insurance dealer does his job and tries to get a higher premium? Not surprised.This is actually an example of where the author IS stupid. You will often be found &quot;at fault&quot; in cases where you are not actually at fault (the other driver lies better than your truth) and there are many cases (at least in Ontario) where you are legislatively at fault even if you did nothing out of the ordinary (making a left turn while overtaking traffic attempts to pass rather than yield). That the broker was trying to protect them from this isn&#x27;t even a conflict of interest for the broker.I wonder how many insurance brokers encounter the &quot;I&#x27;m such an amazing driver, I don&#x27;t really need insurance.&quot; macho man ... I&#x27;m presuming the broker, at least initially, assumed the author was one of &quot;those drivers&quot; and not &quot;stupid&quot;.

Good points, to which I&#x27;ll add, how the heck is he surrounded by so many people who a) give a shit at all, and b) are so willing to let him know they think he&#x27;s stupid? No one cares or dares in my case. Maybe it&#x27;s my &quot;tall privilege&quot; again?

Agreed—- it somehow ties into the opposite of the ability to fake sincerity: the inability to show sincerity. I am still traumatized by the times the second case happened. The times when people dismissed me because they thought (perhaps rightly?) that I was acting like a self entitled genius.. (and I am inferring, because why would normal intelligent adults say such things??)Another perhaps relevant thought, which is perhaps crass: If PG or Alan Kay ever claim that they are willing to look stupid, I feel like people would not believe them. On the other hand if Feynman does it, people would feel the sincerity. (At least the version of Feynman Feynman marketed, not the Feynman who couldnt suffer Gellman)Another thought: maybe its better to be willing to look immature.

Totally.There&#x27;s distance between:&quot;people think I&#x27;m stupid because I&#x27;m not scared to show that I don&#x27;t know about something&quot;and some of the examples which are more along the lines of&quot;people think I&#x27;m stupid because I act as a self-entitled genius who provides little context or reasoning behind choices and expect everyone to line up behind with no question&quot;What is the Apple store employee supposed to do to not make someone feel stupid when they ask for the smallest box? What are the chances they&#x27;re not a clueless customer in need of help and have solid reasons behind?The boss raises an eyebrow when someome proposes to skip half of the test suite? Means a lack of trust.The insurance dealer does his job and tries to get a higher premium? Not surprised.There&#x27;s quite a bit of narcissism here: &quot;They though I&#x27;m stupid but I&#x27;m not&quot;, &quot; I was right in the end&quot;. It&#x27;s actually arguing how everyone else is dumber in the end.A more sincere approach would have been to explain how he realized how stupid he actually was and how not being defensive about it helped. But perhaps the author knows better after all.

I can think of examples of stupid things I&#x27;ve done, but I have a hard time thinking of when a willingness to admit I don&#x27;t know something, was itself a stupid thing to do? Can you give an example? For me, actually being stupid involves something I&#x27;m stubbornly wrong about, and willing to look stupid is openness and vulnerability to admit I don&#x27;t understand something I &quot;should&quot; know.

The article is interesting, but it fails for me to make a convincing case that looking stupid is necessary, most of the time.Particularly in interviews, what I&#x27;d like to read is a reflection not on how to avoid thinking in the way that results in saying or asking things that sound stupid, but how to keep the same internal process without communicating the results in a way that confuses quite so much.An analogy: a mathematician proves a non-obvious theorem. In their proof, they skip so many steps that it looks like they say intuitively wrong things.It is NOT that they should stop thinking of these proofs in the same way, it&#x27;s merely a failure of communication.

You can construct an argument that we never landed on the moon if you cherry pick your data carefully.That’s the point being made here: not that his examples are wrong, that they are cherry picked to support his views.It may be superficially thought provoking, but it is not compelling as a logical argument.There are tangible downsides to ignoring expert advice; you are not a god. You cannot be an expert at everything.It is not possible to be an expert at everything.Therefore, yes, asking questions to understand a topic is good, but no, ignoring the advice of an expert is not good.The examples given only show examples where the result of ignoring the expert, or third party advice was positive; it can’t possibly be true that this can be the case in all circumstances, except by sheer good luck.I whole heartedly agree that asking questions is more important than looking smart… but:&gt; Overall, I view the upsides of being willing to look stupid as much larger than the downsides. When it comes to things that aren&#x27;t socially judged, like winning a game, understanding something, or being able to build things due to having a good understanding, it&#x27;s all upside.You don’t have to look stupid to be able to do all those things, you just have to be humble and work hard.

This article does not undermine its own point. In fact, very, very few articles ever undermine their own point. In order to undermine your own point it means you&#x27;ve failed to construct a logical chain of thought. But that is what people do all the time in their daily lives. Maybe children would undermine their own points, or someone posting their first ill-thought comment on Facebook. But I think most people will learn how to construct an argument by their second time publishing one.In this case, the article is not about &#x27;the joys of being too dumb to breathe&#x27;. It&#x27;s about how 1. looking stupid is not the same as being stupid, and 2. looking stupid can be beneficial in the long run. The author does not need to actually be stupid once in order to support this idea.And I have to worry if you think he&#x27;s &quot;bragging&quot; about merely looking stupid, as if that weren&#x27;t bad enough. Maybe if you identify as stupid I could understand the offense.To the author, Dan Luu: I like your article and I think you&#x27;re on the right track!

&gt; explain oneselfI hate this, the idea that I should have to explain myself to a random stranger in a shop as if they are entitled to know anything about me. I buy a lot of sweets on Friday for the weekend and regularly the clerk behind the till will make a comment, &quot;Thats a lot of chocolate! Who is going to eat all that! You must be having a party whats the occasion?&quot;. In front of a line of customers who are eager to get home I have to explain myself to the clerk &quot;Im depressed!&quot;... and then just stand there awkwardly waiting for them to finish doing their job.I get it they are just trying to be friendly but I don&#x27;t want it no one in the queue behind me wants it, no one wants to explain themselves to a stranger we will never meet again, I just want the sweets &#x2F; laptop please and thank you.

maybe a better title is &quot;how to ask questions so I can be smug later&quot;.  I&#x27;ve done this for sure but I&#x27;ve never advertised it later.

In would say it goes even further than humblebragging, and ventures into narcissism and an inability to handle criticism, explain oneself, or accept help.If the car insurance salesperson disagrees with you, maybe you should try to understand why? Did you really consider the possible that a tree branch could fall in front of your car or that you could get caught in a hail storm?If the Apple store employee doesn’t understand why you’re obsessed with box sizes, explain that the MacBook in the smaller box is the one with the features you want and that’s the easiest way to identify it.If someone gives you a look like “you’re stupid” it’s most likely that they don’t understand your decision not that they think you have an inability to reason. Sometimes you simply need to explain yourself, but it seems the OP has such confidence in their own decisions that they won’t accept any help or input from even the experts. After all as you noted, it appears that the OP has always been right in the end.

Yes. It seems the point of the article is to take revenge at those who might have thought he was stupid (although they didn&#x27;t say anything at the time) and tell them: &quot;See? I was right all along!&quot;He sounds more like my mother in law than like a keen philosopher.

Absolutely. There&#x27;s a kernel of wisdom here, but the argument buckles without examples where the OP actually was &quot;stupid&quot; and wasn&#x27;t proven to be &quot;the smart one&quot; in the end.Learning isn&#x27;t a straight path. It&#x27;s unusual to not veer off and misunderstand something for a while, during which time others might be right to assume you are &quot;stupid&quot;.The willingness to look stupid will sometimes reflect that you are, in fact, actually stupid. A lack of any examples in this category makes this post read more like a humble brag.

Yes, every example is &quot;I sounded stupid but I was actually correct&quot;. From the title I thought the article was going to be about not being afraid to learn new things.

Agree with everything you said.The unusual level of hostility the author encountered didn&#x27;t seem right... Like you said, there&#x27;s some over-sensitivity, a lot of jumping to conclusions, and hostile thinking from the author himself that led him to believe that so many people thought he stupid. Definitely some social anxiety in there as well, which is fine, but letting that turn into hostility is not.It&#x27;s a shame because the articles overall message isn&#x27;t bad at all. Have the willingness to feel stupid for personal improvement is good advice but he just comes across it the wrong way.

&gt;humblebragging that you&#x27;re an unrecognized geniusand this is why this article is popular. Everyone has to deal with looking foolish or telling a doctor they know their body better than them. I think playing it up this way and in this format really sells this idea of being this underappreciated genius in a sea of stupid people, which unfortunately a lot of people relate to, instead of attacking the social and systemic issues this person is actually experiencing. For example, poorly trained and non-empathic nurses or mask disinformation early during covid. Obviously these things are strongly liked to ruthless for-profit healthcare and how the right has politicized covid.Most of the examples are bizarre. The air filter thing makes no sense. Its extremely rare to develop asthma in your own home because of being near wildfires. So there&#x27;s no evidence his filters did anything. Also most of these are just being over-sensitive at not looking 100% competent all the time. Being bad or silly at videogames at first? That&#x27;s a universal experience! Being right at work while others are wrong or lazy sometimes! That too. Doing the right thing when no one else is? That&#x27;s universal too!And like you said, they don&#x27;t list the times they made a big seemingly merit-based action but ended up just being wrong.This person just sounds socially maladjusted and probably suffers from a certain level of social anxiety. If they think acting normally is constantly making them look stupid, there there&#x27;s something going on with them mentally that isn&#x27;t healthy. Worse, it may reveal how they see others who aren&#x27;t competent in the moment, which is really unfair to them. Does this person see us as stupid when we do everyday things? I suspect they do.So the real take away here isn&#x27;t &quot;btw aren&#x27;t we all geniuses if we&#x27;re like this,&quot; I think he was aiming for intentionally or not, but a lesson on being tolerant of others who may not seem competent in the moment.Lastly, this obsession with who is and isn&#x27;t stupid is really unhealthy. I see it in a lot of tech people, and its just an ugly form of toxic masculinity. These people will mock sports people for being traditionally over-competitive, but don&#x27;t see it in themselves when they do it in regards to smarts.

The examples he lists are not even interesting. The fact that other people make obvious mistakes does not make you a genius.

The entire post is peak &#x2F;r&#x2F;iamverysmart material and I&#x27;m not surprised it is popular here because a lot of the HN crowd fits into that category as well.

Yeah or for that matter, what about the times when people wrongly thought he was smart?

&gt; The person who helped me, despite being very polite, also clearly thought I was a bozo and kept explaining things like &quot;the size of the box and the size of the computer aren&#x27;t the same&quot;. Of course I knew that, but I didn&#x27;t want to say something like &quot;I design CPUs. I understand the difference between the size of the box the computer comes and in the size of the computer and I know it&#x27;s very unusual to care about the size of the box, but I really want the one that comes in the smallest box&quot;. Just saying the last bit without establishing any kind of authority didn&#x27;t convince the personThis is not &quot;willingness to look stupid&quot;, it&#x27;s obviously the will&#x2F;need&#x2F;want to look mysterious to stroke one&#x27;s ego.He could have chosen to behave like a good human and say why he wanted a smaller box so no one looks stupid (he to the the employee and the employee to him) and even give some new insights to the employee to help another customer with the same needs.

One way to prove that he truly doesn&#x27;t mind looking stupid would be to list times when he risked looking stupid... and it turns out he actually was.It&#x27;s happened to all of us though we dont like to admit it.I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s happened to him too and I looked but I didn&#x27;t see any of those examples listed.Giving only examples of when people thought he was dumb and it turned out he wasn&#x27;t... that&#x27;s kind of just a roundabout way of humblebragging that you&#x27;re an unrecognized genius.Sadly I think this undermines the point of the article which otherwise makes a good point.

&gt; The other day I got confused by a decimal separator on Hacker News and posted a comment saying so. I am pretty sure some people assumed I was stupid. Perhaps they did not want to put in the effort required to understand why some one might get confused in the given situation.When you try to post low-level questions on a high-level forum (no matter what trade it is), you will get negative responses, because you dilute the topic. It&#x27;s like having speed bump in fast lane.

Wow, this describes me to a T. The only difference being, you (Dan Luu) are much smarter than me.The other day I got confused by a decimal separator on Hacker News and posted a comment saying so. I am pretty sure some people assumed I was stupid. Perhaps they did not want to put in the effort required to understand why some one might get confused in the given situation.I will admit sometimes I fall into this trap too and assume the other person is stupid. Nobody is perfect.I have nothing profound to say, just wanted to share this.

There&#x27;s some &quot;willingess to look stupid&quot; here, but also some lack of emotional intelligence (which is probably not conscious&#x2F;willed). There&#x27;s a humble-brag&#x2F;arrogance element too (which also marks for some &quot;emotional stupidity&quot;).As in, the reasoning applied to some of those cases is quite Vulcanian-like, maybe a comrade on-the-spectrum?

&gt; Also even if you are in the highest echelons of intelligence making yourself look stupid will close access to some opportunities that might propel you forward.But maybe we should educate our society so that this isn&#x27;t the case anymore? I know this sounds unattainable, but we should still try to make such outcomes invalid.

This is terrible advice, I would call it a lack of willingness to communicate openly. Also even if you are in the highest echelons of intelligence making yourself look stupid will close access to some opportunities that might propel you forward. Also, over time this behaviour might form a habit that will also influence your personal life.

This is a great premise, and in my experience spot on both in terms of avoiding feelings of being stupid.But some of the items are more about presenting information in a way that makes people change their actions without feeling stupid.Like the ones about blood draws. I&#x27;ve seen my wife do this so well, and I honestly never knew it was possible to live so harmoniously with society. People are just so much more helpful and flexible with her and I attributed it to her Dale Carnegie levels of persuasiveness.

The premise of insurance is that you pay more on average over time but remove very expensive tail events. Basically you pay the insurance company to reduce your risk.If you are wealthy enough (and mentally prepared) to absorb tail events without much negative effect on your life, it can be perfectly rational to not insure damage to your car.

&gt;&gt;&quot;I had to confirm three times that I only wanted coverage for damage I do to others with no coverage for damage to my own vehicle if I&#x27;m at fault.&quot;But.. why tho?

*Learning things that are hard for me: this is a &quot;feeling stupid&quot; thing and not a &quot;looking stupid&quot; thing, *When I was younger I found out that things that were hard for me were making me angry. I would say that &quot;this thing is stupid&quot; or &quot;it sucks&quot;. Where in reality I was stupid and I sucked.At some point I realized it was that I simply don&#x27;t understand something that made me angry and then I started using that emotion as a telltale that I should step back and learn a bit more about the thing.In the end it evolved that I don&#x27;t get angry anymore at things. I directly realize that I don&#x27;t understand something and accept that I have more work to do on understanding it.

Unpopular opinion here.I sometime find myself deliberately avoiding looking stupid because it could possibly damage my career. And that&#x27;s because the people who make decisions are not some divine being who see through you, they are just humans like the rest of us.

If you have ever read a supreme court transcript and thought &quot;why did one of our justices ask this really obvious question&quot;, this is half of the reason.The other half is ensuring that certain things get into the official judicial record.

This article starts with a nice premise but then devolves to one long humblebrag.

There are many skills where to acquire them you need to power through a phase of looking very stupid to make any initial headway at all. Getting through this is the difference between success and failure.Recently, I&#x27;ve been learning to sing better, with a focus on my higher register. One of the reasons most people cannot sing high notes well is that you inevitably have to go though a phase of singing high notes badly (and very loudly) first. Being a &#x27;bad singer&#x27; (especially thanks to TV talent shows) is often seen as a paragon of looking like a dumb, shameful, naive idiot who overestimates their ability and lacks talent. This is despite the fact that every good singer was once a bad one.I&#x27;ve noticed this same pattern in varying degrees of extremity across many sills I&#x27;ve picked up over the years. It is when you are in the &#x27;stupid&#x27; phase, regardless of what is is you are learning, you&#x27;re unlikely to get any sympathy positive reinforcement from the world, before then hitting an inflection point where you get loads. Knowing that you need to push through this to succeed is golden.

Once I&#x27;ve heard &quot;never let your ego stand in the way to your goals&quot;. It does marvels, both in personal and business life.

Some of the things mentioned in the article make me think the opposite of what the article is titled. The lack of transparency into the thought process of the individual shows that there is a willingness to not look stupid by giving away reasons which might seem silly, otherwise they&#x27;d be more direct in the way they ask questions so as to also reveal their thought process.If you care about what people think of you, perhaps you should first ask if there&#x27;s anything you can change instead of expecting more from others.

This whole post just reads as a shallow attempt to justify odd behaviour and poor communication and try to disguise it as some argument against vanity (while ironically being quite vain as his tone comes off as high handed).I wonder how many times he thought he knew better and it bite him in the arse? He did allude to it, but I suspect it far more often than he would be willing to admit.&gt; Car insurance: the last time I bought car insurance, I had to confirm three times that I only wanted coverage for damage I do to others with no coverage for damage to my own vehicle if I&#x27;m at fault. The insurance agent was unable to refrain from looking at me like I&#x27;m an idiot and was more incredulous each time they asked if I was really sureThis is typically more expensive as people that get third party insurance are usually newer (and younger drivers) so the insurance company will charge you more because their algorithm for determining cost will factor that in. So I don&#x27;t doubt he was getting strange looks because it likely cost him more money and you don&#x27;t get the obvious benefit of full comprehensive.This and the laptop situation screams of &quot;I made a strange request and didn&#x27;t explain my motivations and then I wondered why I got strange looks&quot;.It is just him communication poorly. Which isn&#x27;t anything to brag about.&gt; On the flip side, the person I was living with at the time didn&#x27;t want to wear the mask I got her since she found it too embarrassing to wear a mask when no one else was and become one of the early bay area covid cases, which gave her a case of long covid that floored her for monthsThe whole mask effectiveness isn&#x27;t as straight forward as he thinks it is. His flatmate after the mixed messaging from the media probably thought it was a wash and decided to just fit in with everyone else and was unlucky as a result.I have no idea why this guy is so popular. Whenever I read anything from him he seems completely unlikeable.EDIT: Rephrasing.

After reading the first couple paragraphs it felt like Dan was telling stories about my life, not his, down to the detail it&#x27;s almost creepy. Specifically this paragraph stood out:Back in college, there was one group of folks that, for whatever reason, stood out to me as people who really didn&#x27;t understand the class material. When they talked, they said things that didn&#x27;t make any sense, they were struggling in the classes and barely passing, etc. I don&#x27;t remember any direct interactions but, one day, a friend of mine who also knew them remarked to me, &quot;did you know [that group] thinks you&#x27;re really dumb?&quot;. I found that really delightful and asked why. It turned out the reason was that I asked really stupid sounding questions.And that group of people, when they failed tests or scored badly, it was always the test that was &quot;unfair&quot;.I wanted to write a blog post about this very topic for a long time, but it has now become obsolete because there&#x27;s no way I could do a better job than Dan. Outstanding.

This title spoke to me. I work with some very talented engineers. I often feel like I&#x27;m asking stupid questions. A couple coworkers treat me like I&#x27;m an idiot. But I don&#x27;t really care. I&#x27;d rather know than have an ego.

&gt; I added more air filtration capacity when I moved to a wildfire risk areaWell, okay, but maybe the non-stupid thing is to not move to a wildfire risk area.In general the list of circumstances where the author was willing to &quot;look stupid&quot; to strangers because he was, in fact, clever and seeing into the future, is mildly irritating.Feynman&#x27;s first wife put it better: &quot;what do you care what other people think?&quot;

&gt; It&#x27;s taken me up to six weeks to convince people that it&#x27;s ok for them to ask questions and, until that happens, I have to constantly ask them how things are going to make sure they&#x27;re not stuck.I never considered that this might be common. I guess I shouldn’t take myself as an example.

I expected a &quot;don&#x27;t be afraid to ask the stupid questions&quot; article and this is sort of that.The first few paragraphs are meandering and, seemingly, deliberately obtuse. Many of the examples are examples of a kind of &quot;I&#x27;m so much smarter than you, I can play the stupid&quot; arrogance that is incredibly off putting in real life because it leads to a bunch of bad faith questions and interactions.I really get the impression that the author is an unreliable narrator and that they are always the hero of their story. It is pretty easy to read many of the examples as the person NOT thinking the author was stupid, but rather that the author was a arrogant, condescending ass (especially the Apple store employee, their insurance brokers and every medical professional they have seen).

It&#x27;s more like &quot;willingness to be confident no matter what&quot;, isn&#x27;t it?I mean, stupid people do exactly the same stuff. The difference is their thought process is actually flawed but they&#x27;re confident they&#x27;re right.The only difference is in being objectively right or wrong - either way, just be confident.Smarter people seem to have trouble with that because they are often open to learning&#x2F;being corrected and second guess their decisions.

If I want to ask something online I intentionally make the question sound stupid and uninformed since that provokes better and more clear replies.

People who are unwilling to look stupid often have nothing to offer.