You are Probably Mis-Diagnosing People as Stupid

http://jasoncrawford.org/2010/04/how-to-work-with-stupid-people/

by healsdata • 16 years ago

193 95 16 years ago

jasoncrawford.org

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

Easy rule-of-thumb: if you think somebody is stupid, ask "Help me to understand"

I've found that once you understand, very, very rarely do you think they are stupid any more.

mootothemax• 16 years ago

I couldn't agree with you more.

On a personal note, I must admit that the level of arrogance seen in IT is sometimes quite overwhelming. Just because someone can use a computer does not automatically make them smart; other people have other skills, amazing! ;)

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

It's a problem definitely, one that always aggravates me. It's about perception of the job too. I struck up a conversation with a guy on the train the other day; he was a journalist - a field I've always been fascinated by.

As soon as I told him what my job he barely spoke about his own - it was just constant banal anecdotes about what I did, how bad he was with computers and how I must be amazing and...

On one level it attests to how important computers have become in our daily lives. Mostly it just makes me sad because, really, I'm just an IT guy!

LiveTheDream• 16 years ago

"She's not troubled, she's a dancer" - Sir. Ken Robinson on a child whose parents feared she might be learning-disabled, thus demonstrating that different types of intelligence exist. Look up the speech on TED Talks; it is incredible.

frossie• 16 years ago

I don't think I know anybody who I would call stupid. I do, however, know people who are intellectually lazy - they don't know, and they don't want to know. Which is not the same thing at all.

[Edit: in case that sounds obnoxious, I was aiming more for "frustrated"]

mistermann4• 16 years ago

"they don't know, and they don't want to know" I agree, this is usually my experience, as most of the people I interact with are fairly highly competent in their field.

One thing that bothers me is when I raise an idea, "could we do this...." for example. And they say no, it is not possible.

My latest example was, asking if animated characters in a video could have automated lip-synching, based on a text file (this could massively cut production times for new videos). No, it's not possible, was the answer, and when I disagree, everyone in the room kinda looks at me like I'm the idiot. [Of course it can be done, there are lots of products that do just that...and btw, I am the client in this scenario.]

Another example....we needed some customization in SharePoint, two specific requirements, that aren't provided out of the box. I went back to my desk, implemented demos for both in about 4 hours using jQuery. Did a demo at the next meeting....yes, that's nice, but jQuery isn't a standard here. So we turned to an outside consulting firm, and they implemented the easy feature using.....jQuery. (I don't think they knew how to do the other one, at least it hasn't gotten done).

So where I come from, the idea that you are surrounded by "idiots", which is a bit provocative, is often true. I don't pretend to be an expert in law, engineering, etc, but I constantly encounter experts in their field that behave as if they are experts outside their field.

I will always listen to the opposing side of my arguments and always consider that I may be wrong, but I rarely encounter someone I disagree with who is willing to debate the disagreement with an open mind, and consider that perhaps they may be incorrect.

How else should we consider these people?

amalcon• 16 years ago

What looks like stupidity is almost always ignorance.

What people forget is that, half the time, that ignorance is yours.

WiseWeasel• 16 years ago

My practical definition of stupidity is talking authoritatively about a subject one doesn't understand, and is incapable of explaining. Stupid people are often parroting things they've heard in various places, of which they have only the most superficial of understandings. Not being stupid is often knowing when to shut your mouth.

At a deeper level, it all comes down to being poor at evaluating the relative value of information sources, placing value in the judgment of people for social and political reasons rather than for their actual expertise in the subject matter. This inability to recognize expertise, easily vulnerable to misguiding, is the essence of idiocy.

mistermann4• 16 years ago

A more realistic and common definition I think would be talking authoritatively about a subject one knows a bit about (have read some articles, or genuinely has some expertise in), without considering who your audience is.....if you're truly intelligent, and someone disagrees with you, you should change into a different mode, determining whether the person actually knows what they are talking about, and the possibility that they know something you don't.

It's people like this that bother me...I don't know what the proper term for them is.

c00p3r• 16 years ago

Yeah. If one can't explain the thing "on his fingertips" he doesn't understand the thing either.

chmike• 16 years ago

Sometimes there is nothing to understand. Code produced in my project at work is a good candidate for the daily WTF (http://thedailywtf.com/). I tried to explain the problem to the management but they didn't change anything. Now the project is more than a year late because the thing doesn't quite work. It is quite obvious that there are problems and if nothing is done when told, than the only logical conclusion is that they are stupid. My boss's answer to this now is "that's life". "Help me to understand" is in this case a waste of time and resource. Where is Darwin again ?

eru6• 16 years ago

Change your job?

jgg3• 16 years ago

Part of the problem, particularly with Western culture, is the desire to assign everything a rank, without much clue as to whether or not the metric used is credible at all. Your GPA, SAT/ACT/GRE scores, IQ, credit rating, college major, average income and choice of university all form an impression on people who want a nice box to put you in, whether you like it or not. Sure, some intelligence is probably required to achieve high rankings in some of those areas, but it isn't indicative by itself of who you are or what you're capable of. To the perceptive crowd on Hacker News, this probably seems obvious, but to most of society, these facts and figures define who you are and what you should do with your life.

The best hope for humanity, in this regard, is to judge people on what they contribute or accomplish. This will probably never become a viable paradigm for most people, because it isn't inherently concrete; it's much harder to look at someone's entire life and judge their merit relative to someone else, rather than noting that a 3.5 GPA is higher than a 3.2 GPA. In fact, once you look at the big picture, it starts to become rather noticeable that judging people at all is, most of the time, a fruitless task.

mnemonicsloth• 16 years ago

People like linear status orderings. They exist in every culture and get reinvented when there's no culture present at all.

That's why we're prepared to believe things about IQ that we'd never believe about processor or compiler benchmarks.

jgg3• 16 years ago

>People like linear status orderings. They exist in every culture and get reinvented when there's no culture present at all.

You're right, I think I was just letting my cynicism towards the United states bleed through with that comment.

>That's why we're prepared to believe things about IQ that we'd never believe about processor or compiler benchmarks.

That's a brilliant parallel, but also a stunningly-accurate one.

Tycho• 16 years ago

Could you elaborate on the IQ remark? I'm just curious as to what your thoughts are (I have no particular opinion on the matter)

iacvlvs3• 16 years ago

My hypothesis is that the best predictor for belief in the validity of IQ, is IQ. I'm not sure if that would support or contradict your statement. I'm sure it could be used to argue either way.

adammichaelc2• 16 years ago

Great insights. I think I've fallen into this trap more than once.

snowbird122• 16 years ago

I can provide you with a potential counterexample. Acedemics were never important to my family growing up. School was viewed as a waste of time. I wasted a good portion of my life doing manual labor jobs.

One day, I read a book on IQ and took the IQ tests in the back of the book. The description next to my score said something like "With this IQ, you can be anything you want to be". Regardless of the accuracy of the test or the description, I was inspired and have since gone on to do some great things.

jgg3• 16 years ago

That doesn't make the metric any more accurate though. It just means it gave you a result that inspired you. That's good for you, but why the hell aren't schools inspiring kids like this, instead of grinding them into the mindset required to "be successful", which usually boils down to rote memorization and lots of busy work?

spuz• 16 years ago

All of these points assume that someone who is "stupid" is someone who disagrees with your point of view. I find that is very rarely an issue in my day to day job. The real question I'd like to know the answer to is how do you deal with people who require more help and guidance than others? How do you help others to think for themselves and come up with great solutions to problems by themselves?

jasoncrawford• 16 years ago

Great question, and something I'm still learning. I touched on some points I know in the article. E.g., if you have data or lessons-learned that they don't, share that information.

Probably a whole separate post in helping others see your point of view via questions rather than statements, so they learn your method and not just your conclusions.

PonyGumbo• 16 years ago

Agreed. I'm also not sure that we're all talking about the same kinds of experiences here. To me, there's a difference between having a spirited difference of opinion with a colleague and having to walk through a basic set of instructions (e.g. "The red shirts go in the red basket") for the forty-seventh time with an employee.

jxcole• 16 years ago

I had a one hour disagreement with someone at my college who was a creationist. Not only did he believe the world was only a few thousand years old, but he also believed that at some point there were floating layers of ice in orbit around the earth.

I completely disagreed with him on all fronts. However, I'm not sure that he was stupid. The impression I got was that he was working with a completely different set of axioms than I was.

At some level, you can't ask why any more. There has to be some sort of core base to your beliefs. My core belief is in things like science and math. His core belief was in the concrete word for word truth in the bible. Intelligence didn't really play into it.

When you think something is stupid, a lot of times it has to be with the core assumptions that underly their beliefs. Unearthing and understanding these beliefs and agreeing to disagree is very important.

btilly• 16 years ago

One of my best friends in grad school was a creationist. We discussed the subject exactly once. He realized that I knew rather more about the debate than he did, I knew there was no percentage in pushing it, and we both knew that neither person was going to change their opinions soon. So we found other things to talk about.

I got him through his topology qual so he could get a masters. (He went on to get a PhD in math.) He introduced me to Linux. On the whole I think I got the better long-term bargain.

eru6• 16 years ago

Seems reasonable.

One interesting question you can ask each other is "What would it take to change your mind?". In a certain sense--which may remind you of Karl Popper, the weaker the conditions you can offer on which you'd change your mind, the stronger your standpoint is.

Of course asking this question can be quite uncomfortable for yourself. For example, I like to think of atheism as the reasonable person's natural point of view. But I could not offer good conditions that would make me change my mind. Because I suspect I'd rather doubt my sanity than accept sensations that would be incompatible with no-gods.

gnaritas2• 16 years ago

> His core belief was in the concrete word for word truth in the bible. Intelligence didn't really play into it.

Intelligence plays a key role in that, that core belief didn't get there by accident and an intelligent mind would not allow such a stunningly ignorant belief like that to take hold. You can't believe the earth is a few thousand years old and also claim to be intelligent. You might be intelligent about other things but in this you'd have to be willfully ignorant to not know how wrong that is.

A truly intelligent mind re-examines any belief that is called into question with reasonable evidence. Sticking to your beliefs against all evidence to the contrary is stupid, and it makes you stupid.

eagleal• 16 years ago

> an intelligent mind would not allow such a stunningly ignorant belief...

I'm not sure about that. Maybe a scientific (ie. exploratory) mind would do that. However you're assuming that ignorance is any axioms except science axioms (which at their time are facts that will time they may change, ie. the more recent Global Warming). Same applies to the evidence reexamining.

An analogy: if you know by experience (a lot of trial-error) that if you touch the red button, you will seriously hurt yourself, would you push it again to re-examine your previous knowledge? I think the same dogma applies to (blind) beliefs if you were not allowed to explore in the "exploratory age".

EDIT: Trial-error of beliefs cannot be based on factual experience, since they can't exist (eg. is there a God? Does the Heaven exist?).

kalid• 16 years ago

You raise a good point re: assumptions -- I think the hidden axiom is "The bible is the literal word of God. Therefore, if there's a contradiction then my idea of a perfect God is flawed, and probably doesn't exist".

Maybe I'm naive, but I cannot fathom how someone could -really- believe the world was N thousand years old (when there are trees 5000 years old!), and not as an elaborate way to defend their faith.

In this context I think "believe" means "hope" -- "I hope the world is 6000 years old, because I need to reinforce my axiom of literal biblical truth" vs. "I believe the world is 6000 years old, and would bet money the radioactive dating on this piece of rock will say so (or that this tree will have no more than 6000 rings)."

The separate question is what you call someone who easily believes / defends ideas which are easily disproven -- if not stupid, then gullible? Naive?

nl• 16 years ago

These ideas aren't easily disproven.

The evidence you are giving (basically carbon dating) is widely disbelieved by creationists: http://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+dating+false

Basically they find themselves enough problems with the theory of carbon dating that it lets them keep an internally consistent model (eg, "yes, I am a rational person, but all those scientist using carbon dating didn't take into account the effect changes in the earths magnetic field have on Carbon 14 production" http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-c14-dispro...)

Yes, you can disprove this too. But soon you are requiring such a level of knowledge that you and the other person are just quoting random sources from the Internet.

Sure, your sources may be real peer-reviewed journals and theirs may be blogs, but then you'll have to prove your sources are better than theirs (which isn't easy, given the amount of valid criticism peer-reviewed journals get). Soon the argument will come down to authority on the internet you'll end up arguing that Perelman's (Fields medal winning) non-peer reviewed solution to the Poincaré conjecture is okay, but other crazy theories in the same pre-print archive are not okay because umm.. they just aren't.

I agree they are gullible. But I don't think proving it is as easy as you may think.

microcentury• 16 years ago

Obvious as all this seems, I've found in managing people that it's generally something they have to learn for themselves from scratch. And it was something I had to learn for myself. It's so much easier to wrap yourself in the comfortable delusion that you're right and everyone else is a moron - those idiots in Department X have no idea how anything works and have no sense of the strategy etc etc. Engaging with the full complexity of a situation and still finding a path forward is something that comes with maturity.

boredguy8• 16 years ago

Thanks for sharing: this is a pretty succinct summary of a much better way of approaching the world than the "everybody sucks, only I see the light." It's almost NEVER true, and the people who I know that are right often enough to say that, never would.

"To know that you do not know is the beginning of wisdom."

latortuga• 16 years ago

This seems to be sort of a primer on rhetoric - how to effectively address an argument instead of dismissing it as merely stupid. He touches on a number of rhetorical techniques somewhat informally and I like his treatment of the subject. If you found this interesting, I'm in the middle of a book on the subject of argument and rhetoric that is actually quite engaging, called Thank You For Arguing by Jay Heinrichs.

tensor• 16 years ago

We all have vastly inflated images of ourselves. Every single person.

BerislavLopac• 16 years ago

You mean, everyone is above average? ;)

praptak• 16 years ago

Well, most people have above-average number of fingers :)

jdietrich• 16 years ago

That is massively, dangerously wrong. Dunning, Kruger and an array of later researchers have shown that while the inept do strongly overestimate their own abilities, the highly able strongly underestimate them. The very able assume that if a task was easy for them it must be easy for everyone, while the completely inept assume that a task seems difficult because it is objectively difficult, and that they must be very able to have made the progress that they did. The lower you estimate your own ability to be, the more likely it is that you are in fact highly able. CF Downing demonstrated that people with high intelligence tend to overestimate the intelligence of people who are similarly intelligent to themselves and underestimate their own. If you think that the people around you are more intelligent than you, you're statistically likely to be the most intelligent person you know.

Personally, I think this is a highly pertinent cognitive bias, so pervasive as to affect nearly every aspect of modern life. I think that our most able thinkers keep quiet for fear of being wrong, whilst the stupidest and least informed in our society shout from the rooftops in blissful ignorance. I think that between the natural effect of "the more you know, the more you realise you don't know" and the pervasive anti-intellectualism in our society, we are becoming dominated by the loud and inept.

In my work as a gambler, I rejoice in this bias, as it is what pays my bills - bad gamblers can't even conceive the idea that there might be skill involved. Unfortunately, I think it is fucking up society - while professional scientists are careful to speak precisely, avoid hyperbole and only make statements that are backed by strong evidence, their opponents feel free to rant and rave, to extrapolate one anecdote into compelling evidence, even to deny the possibility of objectivity.

tokenadult• 16 years ago

the highly able strongly underestimate them.

I think that's a lot less generalizable than you suppose. For details, see

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238...

Both behavioral economics and cognitive psychology show that most people overestimate their abilities most of the time.

anamax• 16 years ago

> while professional scientists are careful to speak precisely

Umm, no. They're almost always careful when speaking to cohorts about their field, but if either of those change, all bets are off.

And, they're often willing to let proxies rant, and often encourage it, to go beyond what they'll say, to maintain their plausible deniability.

Scientists are people too.

jrockway3• 16 years ago

Remember when that article about Facebook had 100 comments along the lines of "what have you done with the old Facebook login page? I hate this one!"?

We are probably not misdiagnosing them as stupid.

pavs3• 16 years ago

They are computer illiterate (or internet illiterate to be more precise), but not stupid.

jrockway3• 16 years ago

Or just plain illiterate.

chc• 16 years ago

Not just Internet-illiterate — incapable of logic or rudimentary problem solving. I've been in situations where I was much less at home than these people were, but because I was willing to use my brain I was not as helpless.

shalmanese2• 16 years ago

http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/the-5-guerrilla-user-test/

bena• 16 years ago

The interesting thing about this article is that it's assumed that the problem is on the other end.

    Are they afraid of the conclusion?  
    Are environmental stresses degrading their judgment?  
    Are they intimidated by you?  
    consider these potential cognitive and psychological problems  
    They may have good judgment but poor communication skills.  
    They may have raw intelligence, but poor thinking habits—patterns of absorbing, processing, and filing information.  
    They may have general insecurities that make them afraid of looking stupid or give them a psychological need to win arguments.  
    They may have a problem with you personally.

What if it's not them, but you, with the problem? What if (gasp) you're wrong?

This article isn't about how to work with "stupid" people, it's about how to pander like an asshole.

jacobolus2• 16 years ago

Trying to overcome communication barriers and understand where other people are coming from is not “[pandering] like an asshole.”

mistermann4• 16 years ago

Yes, but what if they are actually wrong, then what?

ramidarigaz• 16 years ago

I think it's partially the environment. When I'm in an environment with people who are interested in the things that I am, I am constantly amazed at how bright people can be.

E.g. at university programming classes, some of the students are... crazy smart...

However, when I'm around people who don't share my interests, it can get tedious trying to explain things.

chaostheory2• 16 years ago

stupidity isn't very common... but laziness and indifference are a different story.

kscaldef2• 16 years ago

I don't know why you wouldn't assume that stupidity is roughly as common as intelligence. By definition, 50% of the population is below the median.

eru6• 16 years ago

That says nothing about the distribution, or the absolute levels.

Most people are pretty competent in breathing, they don't suffocate. Still half of them are below median in their breathing abilities.

chaostheory2• 16 years ago

I'm assuming you're going by academic measures of intelligence. I was referring something more general like EQ.

tobtoh• 16 years ago

Good article. I wish more of those smug arrogant idiots who think everyone else is an idiot would read this :P

hassenben• 16 years ago

"stupid refers to lack of ability while ignorant refers to lack of knowledge" -- Therasus

You can educate ignorance, you can't rewire stupidity.

shalmanese2• 16 years ago

I've often found that people who "don't have the patience for stupid people" are really masking a deep seated insecurity. They figure out the one or two areas they regard as their strengths and arbitrarily define that as "intelligence" (and, sometimes, they really aren't even great at those cf: Dunning-Kreuger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dun...). That way, they can look at the world and see that the majority of people are "stupider" than them.

In reality, we all have areas of strengths and areas of weakness. Some people are great conceptual thinkers, some are great communicators, some are brilliant at being detail oriented etc. When I meet somebody for the first time, I really try and find where they are strong & I am weak so that I can learn something from them. Over so many dimensions of human endeavor, there's usually at least one or two major areas in which I feel like I gained something from that encounter.

Once in a while, you genuinely will meet someone who has nothing to teach you and nothing you want to associate with them. In those cases, I just put up a wall, be pleasant and engineer to be away from that person as soon as possible.

But I pretty much approach everybody with an open mind and a humble heart and it's worked wonders for me.

yason• 16 years ago

Isn't there a saying that all people are logical and rational, but everybody just starts from unique assumptions.

You are Probably Mis-Diagnosing People as Stupid

Related Stories