What I've Learned About Smart People.

http://tmac721.tumblr.com/post/17500383225/what-ive-learned-about-smart-people

by tmacwilliam • 14 years ago

552 171 14 years ago

tmac721.tumblr.com

tnicola7• 14 years ago

Asking questions is not only a trait of smart people, but it is quite possibly the simplest most effective tool that can set you appart in many things.

Think about the last time you bought something where you had a great sales experience. How many questions did the sales person ask? Think about last time you were on a great date? Did the person ask questions about you.

Asking questions is a sign of validated learning and active listening and those two concepts are the way we better ourselves and our surroundings.

uuilly• 14 years ago

Agreed. I think asking questions is more a trait of successful people. Most of the very high IQ people I've worked with have been much more likely to make bad decisions by not asking questions than lower IQ people. When I interview people I don't look for intelligence as much as I look for awareness of the the limits of a person's intelligence. Intelligence will not cure hubris. And from what I've experienced, intelligence and hubris are highly correlated. I'm glad to hear that the author of this article has had a different experience. There is nothing more delightful than working with a person with a high horsepower brain who is good at steering it.

ryanwhitney• 14 years ago

Reminded my of this, from Gladwell's Outliers:

"The way you were raised, namely with wealthy or less fortunate parents, also plays a role. Gladwell explains that when wealthy parents drive their children to the doctor, they tell their children things like, “Johnny, now if you have any questions, be sure to ask the doctor. This is your opportunity to talk to him about any health problems you’re having….” And so on.

In contrast, the children of poor parents may feel less entitled to this same questioning. Instead, they accept what the doctor tells them straight out, without surfacing concerns or criticisms. Gladwell then uses Chris Langan, a genius with a 195 IQ who wasn’t able to succeed in college, as an example. Langan failed to get a PhD (his goal) not because he lacked intelligence, but because he had a mentality to passively accept the conditions and limitations others imposed on him. Langan ended up dropping out of college because he couldn’t convince his teachers to accommodate a simple change in his schedule (a change he needed because his truck broke and he could no longer get to campus early in the morning)."

Lambent_Cactus• 14 years ago

Which is to say, asking questions isn't so much a marker of intelligence so much as of privilege. More than any particular subject matter, that's what Harvard is instructing its students in.

Drbble• 14 years ago

Gladwell's story is completely made up though. Rich kids are more obedient due to their high class structured environment, whereas as poor kids live in a dog eat dog world where they learn fast to fight for survival.

Sociology is fun, any just-so story becomes social science. even.

disgruntledphd22• 14 years ago

Please don't confuse Gladwell with a social scientist. Its somewhat like confusing Bob the Java book writer with James Gosling. I agree that a lot of social science is garbage, but there are many smart people studying it, and its a much harder area to keep your everyday opinions from affecting.

groby_b3• 14 years ago

> Gladwell's story is completely made up though

That seems to be a tautology these days ;)

dkarl• 14 years ago

I have a friend who is a doctor and works two weekends a month at a clinic in a poor area. (I think it's so poor that the clinic is closed on the weekends when he's not there.) Part of his job is having the right demeanor that people will trust him and actually follow his advice. That means projecting authority, the old-fashioned confidence and slightly superior air that people probably expected from a doctor in the 19th century. He interacts differently with educated patients; they ask him all kinds of things, and he doesn't pretend to be any more wise or knowledgeable than his training makes him. The less educated ones are likely to say nothing, nod respectfully, and then possibly not follow his advice at all if he didn't sufficiently impress them. (For example, they might drive ten minutes across the border into Mexico, buy three days' worth of antibiotics, and not interact with a doctor again until their condition gets much worse.)

I can only imagine the awkwardness when he mistakes one kind of patient for the other.

achompas• 14 years ago

Disappointed that, in a thread about asking questions, no one has asked whether this Gladwell anecdote generalizes (especially since Gladwell is king of "anecdote == universal fact.")

Can anyone comment on this quote?

rhizome• 14 years ago

I wouldn't put Gladwell down that much, he's simply a contemporary writer of fairy tales to me. Aesoplike, they have lessons and histories that we can potentially relate to, while not attempting to be the last word. Does Gladwell's writing need to be any more than a nudge in whatever direction the reader is already inclined?

That said, I never liked that passage. There are passive and active parents in all walks of life, but I don't think the economics are the point of the quote as much as an admonishment to take a bit more control.

redschell2• 14 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but I'm curious to hear more of what HN thinks about Gladwell. Some writers and scientists I respect, perhaps most notably Steven Pinker, have been vocally opposed to the "shoddy scholarship" of Gladwell's work, while others, including many bloggers I've encountered here, have quoted him with great enthusiasm (I believe Peter Norvig references his "10,000 hours to expertise" figure from Outliers in his famous essay on becoming a programmer in 10 years).

celoyd• 14 years ago

I don’t think of myself as the HN mainstream, but probably few do.

I synthesize these positions on Gladwell.

#1, he’s not a scientist and not a science journalist. He doesn’t apply any rigor to speak of: at best, he’s telling suggestive and insightful stories, not proving or really getting to the bottom of anything. He leaves out huge amounts of important information, especially when it would get in the way of making a catchy point. This is extremely irritating when it’s implied – usually by his readers, not by him – that he’s doing something more.

But #2, he’s good at what he does. If you approach it as engaging stories that highlight quirky research, it’s entertaining and thought-provoking. I’ve learned very little from Gladwell per se, but I’ve learned a lot from following up on the actual science that he refers to. That’s valuable.

So I think it’s fair to say that Gladwell’s scholarship is shoddy, and his writing is shallow and over-popularized and mostly anecdotal. But if you take him as a good storyteller rather than a bad scientist, it can still be worth reading.

If you want to like Gladwell but don’t, you might prefer John McPhee. He’s a little more on the hard journalism side of the science popularizer spectrum.

ezy• 14 years ago

He's a pop science writer who does a bit of synthesis. He has interesting ideas -- but they aren't super well substantiated. I've always viewed his works as launching points for further work or ideas to consider, but not really definitive. Most writers who write "accessible" science prose are like this, unless they have written some inaccessible work in papers first and are just trying to explain things to the layman. You take it all with a grain of salt.

With that in mind, I take two concrete appraoches to Gladwell's work. Unless I feel like reading a story, I skip the anecdotes -- this shortens most of his books to about a chapter's worth. :-)

And if I do hit upon an important point I might want to incorporate into my thinking, I look up the references to see how substantiated it really is.

justincormack• 14 years ago

I don't believe 10000 hours is original to Gladwell, although he did popularize it.

iskander2• 14 years ago

I hold his writing to a non-academic standard and generally enjoy it. I did, however, get very angry watching him give a lecture. He seemed so enamored with weaving a vague but sexy story that I don't think even he believed his own thesis. His style just didn't seem honest!

75c84fb82• 14 years ago

So do they ask questions because they're smart, or are they smart because they ask questions?

epscylonb• 14 years ago

I don't think the author implied anything other than correlation, but interesting question none the less.

codeonfire2• 14 years ago

The author is also implying that all 'smart' people ask questions, people who don't ask questions are not smart, and that dumb people don't ask questions. And without any controls, claims that 'smartness' fully explains why questions are asked. He even refers to some anonymous "research and findings" which he forgot to cite.

ImprovedSilence2• 14 years ago

I would guess smart because they ask questions. I think there are lots of people out there who just nod to be agreeable. The ones who brave it and ask questions are the ones to gain an understanding. (perhaps this is why nerds are uncool their younger years, they questions things and search for truth, as opposed to just going along with the flow of their peers, thoughts?)

75c84fb82• 14 years ago

Interesting. And maybe not even just in the younger years. Having worked in a big corporation, where politics flowed thick, there can be a social perception that one who sticks his head up will likely have it cut off. Asking pointed questions is one way to do that.

However I've also noticed—among engineers where solid understanding is perhaps more critical—the culture can be different. There's still a general reluctance to admit you have no clue what a speaker is talking about, but when 'that guy' finally breaks the silence with the questions that were on everyone's mind, you can almost hear the sense of relief spreading through the group.

Natsu7• 14 years ago

I suspect there's a feedback loop between the two, rather than one causing the other.

jczhang4• 14 years ago

So what do you do if you're in an environment that discourages asking dumb questions you might have?

ImprovedSilence2• 14 years ago

Get out of that environment asap? Or ask anyway, maybe you can influence change on your environments attitudes.

tnicola7• 14 years ago

If there truly is an enviromnment that discourages asking questions because they deem them as 'dumb', then you need to work to improve such environment.

In my experience, the only time questions were discouraged (and almost always in the interest of time) was because it was otherwise possible to get an answer to your questions.

Can you give an example of the environment you would be talking about?

mattmanser• 14 years ago

Any politicized working environment. People will twist your questions to trying to make you look stupid. You can counter it by actually asking other people in the room to explain it and lo-and-behold no-one understands but that's pretty much a downhill slope as then you're potentially making other people look stupid.

But to echo the other reply, get out, life's too short to bother with that.

judgardner• 14 years ago

I see this problem among less experienced developers who have a lot of talent. These devs exude 'know it all' and can back it up on some narrow set of knowledge/skills. Part of maintaining this impossible image requires not asking questions that might show cracks. Pretending to know everything is a sure path to not knowing much of anything given enough time and I've seen developers go down this path.

neilparikh2• 14 years ago

One big one is high school. (I'm in high school right now) If I ask one or two questions, it's fine, but if I ask more questions, all of which are serious questions that I truly want to know the answer for, the teacher usually gets annoyed. It probably is due to the fact that there isn't much time in the class to cover all the material and answer questions, but it irritates me nonetheless.

the_cat_kittles• 14 years ago

That is a toxic environment rife with intellectual insecurity, most likely. Either ask questions and not give a shit about "looking dumb", or leave. If someone thinks you are dumb because you asked some questions, I wouldn't give their opinion much weight.

rcfox• 14 years ago

I will always remember grade 4 because that was the year when I was forbidden from asking questions. I don't recall if they were dumb questions, but there sure were a lot of them.

It's okay though, because I didn't learn anything from that experience. ;D In my second year of engineering, I took a cognitive science class, and asked a ton of questions. At the end of the course, the professor recommended me for a fourth-year research course in a cogsci lab!

lucisferre• 14 years ago

I'm curious what you feel makes the environment one that discourages asking dumb questions. I ask partly, because I think everyone is somewhat insecure when faced with potentially appearing ignorant, particularly around people we feel are smart. So I think it's always valuable to question, is it really the environment that is creating this insecurity or are we simply choosing to feel insecure.

jczhang4• 14 years ago

The working environment in general is less conducive to it I feel. But especially when there are many people in a meeting and its in a consulting environment where you have to manage the client relationship at the same time. I don't think anyone chooses to feel insecure, but I think after having been in that kind of environment, you become conditioned to asking fewer questions.

troels• 14 years ago

Is that a contrived scenario or are you thinking about something concrete? Curious as to what that might be.

jczhang4• 14 years ago

I spoke to it in my response to lucasferre. The problem is that if you don't ask the "dumb" assumptions early on, it becomes too late to ask afterwards and you can get stuck in that situation.

WiseWeasel• 14 years ago

Ask good questions instead of dumb ones.

In an academic environment, for example, there can be prerequisite knowledge for particular courses, and within a course, you are expected to form a foundation of knowledge upon which later material is based. Questions that betray lack of prerequisite or foundational knowledge rather than topical are often considered unhelpful.

More generally, there is the matter of social context, and the relevance of your question to the people who will be listening to its answer. People value their time, and dislike spending it in a Q&A they consider to be without any value, either informative, personal or entertaining. If you can be pretty sure a question is only relevant to you, it's more appropriate to ask in private than in front of a large audience.

Beyond that, I wouldn't worry about it.

UK-Al05• 14 years ago

I think this mostly comes with age. Older people tend to sceptical and challenge everything anyway. Probably because they have been screwed over a few times in their life and ask questions.

daviddaviddavid• 14 years ago

It's worthy asking "Why do smart people ask questions?"

I think the answer is that when they don't fully understand something there is some sort of mental itch that just has to get scratched. Things just don't feel right until all of their questions are answered.

Also, I can't help but note how much these endlessly inquisitive smart people sound like the old gadfly Socrates. If philosophy has anything going for it, it is that it teaches one to ask questions about matters that are typically taken for granted.

larrys5• 14 years ago

"It's worthy asking "Why do smart people ask questions?""

Smart people also are secure in what they know and what they don't know and aren't afraid to show it.

If you asked PG, Fred Wilson or Steve Blank about a company - if they had heard of it - they wouldn't feel self conscious if they hadn't. They would probably assume it just wasn't well known at that point.

If you asked the same question to a "newbie" on HN I'm not sure they would be so secure to admit the same because they wouldn't know how ubiquitous the company was. And they would be afraid of showing how clueless they were.

I mean if you are in a meeting and are an expert on the subject matter you feel pretty secure that if you have a question it's not a dumb question. Nobody likes to ask the dumb question.

I've notice with customers that call us that an overwhelming number of (at least smart sounding) people start the conversation with "this might be a dumb question". It's like laying down with your belly exposed to acknowledge what you don't know.

tnicola7• 14 years ago

> If you asked the same question to a "newbie" on HN I'm not sure they would be so secure to admit the same because they wouldn't know how ubiquitous the company was. And they would be afraid of showing how clueless they were.

This would only hold true if they were conditioned to fear the reaction of them not knowing. If someone had never heard of Google and they admitted that, if someone simply said 'it's a commonly used search engine' without much negative connotation, they will not be afraid to admit not knowing something similar in the future.

However, if you laugh, point, call them a 'newbie' and make them leave the room with their heads hung in shame, then yes, they may be more careful next time.

It boils down to respect. If you respect people, even if they don't know the obvious, then they will have an opportunity to learn and thrive.

If PG acted immaturely every time someone admitted they did not know something that was obvious to him, he quite possibly would not be able to do what he does.

aDemoUzer• 14 years ago

The article made a good point and I agree with it. In most of my classes, I was usually one of the or the only person who would either ask questions or attempt to give an answer. Equally important trait of a smart person is the willingness to answer a question - even when you are not fully sure. It is a great mean to understand new concepts.

1. If I am right, it validates my understanding of the concept.

2. If I am wrong, it bring misinformation to surface and gives me a reason to go over previously discussed material. If I never had experience where I was wrong, it puts me in the cycle of "I know everything, so I don't need to study."

3. It keeps me awake in class because asking and answering questions requires paying attention in class.

Confusion• 14 years ago

  Smart people challenge everything.

I don't understand why that is offered as the take-away, because the article does not support it. It supports the take-away that smart people ask questions. The examples do not mention questions that challenge what has been said, but rather questions that result in a better understanding of what has been said.

Challenging people is not always the optimal way of exchanging information. When you think someone is wrong, asking questions to understand why they think something will work or is correct is sometimes much more constructive. This is in cases when it leads you to discover a different underlying assumption, a different main goal, a piece of information you missed, ...

cj• 14 years ago

I disagree. Asking questions is most often a way of challenging something.

For example, in the lecture hall example the students thought they understood the guest lecture and the only person to ask a genuine question was the tenured professor. The way I interpreted it was that the students accepted their understanding of the subject as "good enough" while the professor wanted to be 100% certain he understood the subject correctly. The professor challenged his own understanding.

j456• 14 years ago

Truly smart people have always come across to me as not needing to prove how smart they are

Smart people don't care to convert me to their way of seeing the world. Be it using Ruby, Apple, or not, they are able to see a bigger, wider picture where everything is possible with the right amount of understanding and well placed effort.

Smart people see the patterns and similarities in everything that unite, instead of the differences and exceptions that divide.

Smart people aren't righteous. They don't seek external validation / conversion to fuel their own beliefs.

Smart people don't add to a situation if they're merely replacing one set of confusing concepts with another (theirs). They are driven by clarity.

Smart people are genuinely, insatiably curious about everything.

Smart people know how to take the good from everything, and deeply understand little knowledge is new, or truly unique.

Smart people I've met live in a mindset of possibility, not doubt or skepticism. One fuels creativity, and the other douses.

pestaa• 14 years ago

Bookmarked, thank you. May I ask the source?

j456• 14 years ago

Um, I wrote it. Flattered, though, thanks. :)

VMG• 14 years ago

> Smart people see the patterns and similarities in everything that unite, instead of the differences and exceptions that divide.

Smart people know that their brain recognizes patterns where there aren't any. They know that they should not fool themselves.

> Smart people I've met live in a mindset of possibility, not doubt or skepticism. One fuels creativity, and the other douses.

Then they are the opposite of what the article is describing. Smart people I know constantly question their own beliefs.

j456• 14 years ago

Agreed all around.

I didn't say I agreed with the article, haha. ;)

Constantly questioning your beliefs can lead to constantly doubting everything. Over time there is risk of only believing in doubts.

Developing a healthy curiosity that tests, clarifies and strengthens your current understanding is that.

If there's one thing I would have added to the post above, it would be that Smart people know that developing a correct mindset for the journey of learning is far more important than the destination of feeling that they have "arrived" with their level of understanding.

Too many people, think they're done once they arrive at their conclusions, or hang onto them so dearly and fanatically based on all the work they've done. Smart people, for me, are ready to piss everything they've believed into the wind every day because of possibility.

espeed• 14 years ago

Humility is the key to understanding, but hubris often prevents people from growing because they believe their understanding is right from the beginning.

For a while I have understood that people see the world in fundamentally different ways, but about two years ago I had an epiphany that really crystallized it for me. Now I see people existing in either one of two camps:

  1. Those who believe the world is the way they see it.
  2. Those who realize how limited their perspective is.

Alan Kay (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful...) has a developed a similar view. He often quotes the Talmud saying, "We see things not as they are, but as we are.” And he often says, "We can't learn to see until we admit we are blind".

When Jim Collins was doing his research for "How the Mighty Fall", he identified hubris as being the first stage of decline for great enterprises (http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10565). This is the concept of "pride goes before the fall," and I believe one of the reasons for this is because we stop asking questions and begin to "lean on our own understanding."

We become complacent with our picture of the world and continue on whatever trajectory we were on when we stopped recalibrating. Unless we were right from the start (which almost never happens in a dynamically changing world), we'll veer farther off course.

A better way to go is to constantly be asking questions -- continually adding to your perspective, refining it, and recalibrating your path based on what you learn. As the saying goes, "you don't know what you don't know".

This seems so simple, but admitting you don't know everything and continually asking questions requires humility.

itmag4• 14 years ago

Some things that hammered home this understanding for me (in order of reputability): LessWrong.com, Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, PUA.

These days, I mostly understand that there are always many perspectives and try to see wisdom as the art of picking between perspectives. But sometimes I get stuck in my old ways and search in vain for the "right" opinion/perspective/paradigm/whatever. This no-one-true-perspective meta-perspective means that life experience and hard-earned wisdom become much more important factors for the good life.

vectorpush• 14 years ago

But sometimes I get stuck in my old ways and search in vain for the "right" opinion/perspective/paradigm/whatever.

Then again, those who are convinced their way is the "right" way are often the ones who have the biggest impact on the world (for better or worse).

JesseAldridge• 14 years ago

I remember having a similar realization.

When most people say that something is true, they don't mean, "I think that's an accurate reflection of reality." -- what they really mean is, "It is in my interest to accept that as true."

A lot of things made sense after that.

yariang• 14 years ago

I couldn't help but notice a resemblance between what you are describing and a lot of machine learning algorithms.

It seems like the most successful ML algorithms are self-correcting ones, rather than ones that attempt to calculate the exact correct answer in one go.

Coincidence?

vacri3• 14 years ago

The humility thing is a bigger one for laypeople than a lot of people realise. That it's okay to admit you don't know, and it's okay to admit you need to ask questions. And that it's okay that there is no readily available answer, as long as you make a genuine attempt to understand.

One of the problems that atheism faces as a movement is that it considers answers to some traditional questions as 'there is no answer to that (and that's okay)', which doesn't sit well with a lot of people. The 'god of the gaps' argument exploits these areas.

radagaisus• 14 years ago

Hubris actually works great for me. It makes me say yes to projects way beyond my league and I have to learn and work much harder.

jamesrcole• 14 years ago

1. Those who believe the world is the way they see it.

2. Those who realize how limited their perspective is.

That's a good point. I suspect that the first one isn't so much a lack of humility, though.

Naively, it seems that you're just perceiving how the world is, as if your eyes are just windows into the world, and that your judgments (e.g. such and such is being a jerk) are simply reflecting the objective nature of how things are.

It takes time, learning and effort to really become aware of your perception of things as something in itself, that it is a process which takes in limited information and makes judgments on the basis of various assumptions, and that it is something which can be turned in on itself in a critical fashion.

soonisnow• 14 years ago

Humility about oneself and the path and process to being better, at anything, I think, is core to the constant asking of questions. As the @tmac721 touches on: ask to challenge one oneself (and others), ask to listen (truly listen!), and ask because being better always matters more than being good.

juiceandjuice• 14 years ago

Smart people ask questions because they are smart enough to know what they don't know.

You can't know until you don't know.

kevinalexbrown2• 14 years ago

What the article doesn't mention is that the smartest of people perpetually ask themselves questions regarding what they believe they understand. It is remarkably easy to convince yourself you understand something - a mathematical proof, the Halting Problem, advantages of some programming framework/style/language, when you're really just going through the motions and remembering what others have said, kind of memorizing the proof rather than reproducing it. "Of course I understand how genetics work, there are genes and codons and RNA, and DNA helicase, etc" - I can say that, without any ounce of extra understanding. Often I see this in mathematically oriented people who know how to perform X data mining trick, but have no idea how it works. That's perfectly fine - you don't always need to understand everything to use it - but sometimes it breeds an arrogance. When people have a lot of success without knowing the inner workings, they'll sometimes view questions about them as pedantic at best.

But the article does hit dead on that smart people don't just ask questions about things they don't understand themselves. They ask questions that challenge what the world believes to be settled, 'obvious' and extremely clear.

My favorite How-To-Be-A-Smart-Person-By-Asking-Questions story, about Wittgenstein, from Bertrand Russell:

When I was still doubtful as to his ability, I asked G. E. Moore for his opinion. Moore replied, ‘I think very well of him indeed.’ When I enquired the reason for his opinion, he said that it was because Wittgenstein was the only man who looked puzzled at his lectures. [1]

Incidentally, on the same page, I found perhaps my favorite genius quotation:

The genius is always puzzled by answers, it is the fool who is satisfied by them.

[1] http://readingmarksonreading.tumblr.com/post/2565799967/pg-4...

csallen2• 14 years ago

  > What the article doesn't mention is that the smartest of people perpetually
    ask themselves questions regarding what they believe they understand. It is
    remarkably easy to convince yourself you understand something... when you're
    really just going through the motions

This reminds reminds me of a good quote from Charlie Munger:

"Above all, never fool yourself, and remember that you are the easiest person to fool."

redschell2• 14 years ago

Hey, did he take that from Richard Feynman, or was Feynman first with the quote: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

GuiA• 14 years ago

Richard Feynman said something to the effect of your first paragraph which stuck with me:

"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."

thewisedude2• 14 years ago

Why is it that knowing what bird does is the only thing that counts? Maybe sometimes knowing the name of the bird in a different language could help - say if you go to a different country and have to communicate in the local language.

I also think its important to question the statements made by smart people. Times changes, what was applicable when the statement was made might not be valid anymore!

instakill• 14 years ago

Asking questions of yourself is a good way, in my opinion, to counter the Dunning-Kruger effect, should you unknowingly suffer from it.

mark_h• 14 years ago

I think this is also why "the best way to learn something is to have to teach it", or at least that's what I've found. When you start imagining what questions you might get asked, you begin uncovering all sorts of holes in your understanding, even if it's something you thought you understood but suddenly realise you couldn't explain.

agumonkey• 14 years ago

Keen to 'you dont know something til you have to program it'

gbog• 14 years ago

Confucius was as a good asker of questions too, but even better is he knew when to not ask questions. Maybe that's the supreme sagesse. For instance questions about afterlife our special beings are better avoided, as are questions about programming language choice in a Ruby or Python shop.

numeromancer• 14 years ago

Why?

Natsu7• 14 years ago

> The genius is always puzzled by answers, it is the fool who is satisfied by them.

That's so true.

He must have noticed that confusion implies learning. After all, it shows that they've encountered unexpected input and are trying to integrate with all the other things they know. If they're not confused, they expected or ignored the answers.

kenjackson2• 14 years ago

A lot also has to do with comfort. If I'm the smartest person in the class I feel a lot more comfortable asking questions. I know that if I have a question then a good percentage of other people do too.

But if I'm not the smartest in the class (or simply not familiar with the material) I may be more inclined to look on Google or follow-up afterwards with the presenter. I don't know if the question I have is worth the time of the 20 or 200 other people in the room. I just don't have the context to know.

So to me it's unclear if smart people ask questions because they're comfortable or because that's what they naturally do. A good experiment -- take these same Turning Award winners to a basketball court and have them run through some plays. See if they start asking questions like, "OK, I go left here, but what if someone is setting a pick, should I switch?" or do they nod their head...

phillmv• 14 years ago

Whenever I find myself thinking that I'm the smartest person in the room I like to take a deep breath and look around me more carefully.

Always a poor assumption to make, in my experience.

kenjackson2• 14 years ago

I was using the term "smart"/"smartest" largely following the use in the post. You can replace it with the term "relatively competent in the domain being discussed".

samirahmed• 14 years ago

what you say is very true. Asking questions in an environment of peers tends to depend on confidence.

Questioning everything and asking questions are often different things in a classroom environment.

A key premise of the Khan Academy is that students learning in the intimacy of their own space enables slower students to learn and excel

ZeroGravitas• 14 years ago

In Sal Khan's TED talk he displays a graph and claims they repeatedly saw "slower" students catch up and excel. He then asked himself whether he (and the audience) had benefited not by being better than their classmates but more by luck that they didn't misunderstand (or simply miss) some early lesson and then get left behind as the class moved on before they had a chance to grasp it.

larrys5• 14 years ago

"same Turning Award winners to a basketball court and have them run through some plays. See if they start asking questions like, "OK, I go left here, but what if someone is setting a pick, should I switch?" or do they nod their head..."

My experience has been that people are centered around feeling special in a few areas. Something outside that area they don't have an issue with appearing to be stupid. In fact they seem to almost embrace that. I'm sure you've run into plenty of "smart" people (say your Doctor) that say "I'm really bad with computers."

So my theory would be that the further away from their area of expertise a person would be more likely to admit they know nothing and ask a question.

I would even say that the asking of questions follows a bell curve.

If you are an expert, no fear.

If you know nothing no fear.

makronized• 14 years ago

Not asking questions may also mean that we're losing our contact with teachers (in this case specifically), not meant as those trying to teach you how to do something, but as people who can teach something that's not written inside a book.

mmaunder• 14 years ago

Asking questions and knowing what you don't know and being honest about it is super important. But so is moving forward, getting things done and leadership and sometimes constantly questioning your world with fresh eyes every morning can mess with these things. It's also exhausting.

I find folks who have been surrounded by extremely smart hands-on analytical types most of their lives are slow moving and not great leaders because they question absolutely everything. It's a reflex that develops because if you're working with 20 other engineers building a rocket you don't want to be the guy who said "lets just assume" or "screw it, lets just get it out the door".

Sometimes though, it's useful to have an arrogant ass around that makes a few assumptions and keeps kicking the can down the road. Steve Jobs comes to mind.

lightcatcher• 14 years ago

I completely agree with this sentiment. I think this blog post mostly described the characteristics of a skeptic, and many "smart" people are skeptics. However, I don't necessarily correlate skeptics with getting lots of things done, like Steve Jobs did.

Ideally, there is some balance between making assumptions and asking questions that leads to great leadership and innovation. I think this balance occurs when one questions everything within a certain domain they wish to control (for instance, Apple and how people interact with computers), but then just accepts the common views for topics outside of their domain.

itmag4• 14 years ago

The people who get things done in this world are often, but not always, cocksure bastards who never second-guess themselves. They may live their entire lives in epistemological error but they don't give a rat's ass since they succeed at laying wenches, closing sales, advancing up the corpolitical greasepole, etc. Hell, they don't even actively not-care about the truth. The thought that they may be wrong doesn't even enter their minds in the first place. They are at philosophical unconscious incompetence. They just don't care.

We can learn from this. Smart people should be winning! at life, after all. Maybe a combo of strategical luminosity and tactical cocksurity can be found? :)

As a matter of fact, this struggle to avoid the extremes of reckless delusion on one hand and self-sabotage on the other, is one of my major life motifs.

edw519• 14 years ago

Going to Harvard means I have the very unique opportunity to be around a lot of smart people.

Good for you. Even better for you is the fact that you recognize your opportunity. How sad that so many people in your situation never do until it's too late.

Now, when I say “smart people,” I don’t mean that guy who always wins trivia night. I mean, blazingly intelligent individuals who are regarded as the pre-eminent scholars in their field.

There are many vectors of smartness in both magnitude and direction. Some of the smartest people I've ever known never went to college. You don't have to be a "pre-eminent scholar" to be smart and there's nothing wrong with winning trivia night.

It’s pretty amazing to pass by Turing Award winners and leading political science scholars grabbing a sandwich.

The smarter you get the less amazing that will feel.

Before I go anywhere, let me make one thing clear: I am not one of these smart people.

Hmmm, not sure I like the sound of that. Where are you going with this?

This is perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned after 3 years here.

Then it's a good thing you have one more year. Hopefully you'll learn a bigger lesson. (Read on...)

There is an absolutely incredible number of smart people in the world, and I can name a whole bunch of students and professors alike who I know for a fact I will never ever ever be as smart as, no matter how hard I try.

How sad to hear you say that...

The purpose of college is not to become a greater repository of data.

The purpose of college is not to become a better accumulator of data.

The purpose of college is not to become better than anyone or anything else.

The purpose of college is to see the possibilities and put yourself in position to go after them.

You may not believe me now, but you are probably a whole lot smarter than many people, including the smart ones you cite, at something, perhaps many things. And once you put yourself on the shoulders of giants, including your own, you can geometrically catapult yourself into much higher spheres of measure, including "smartness". But even then, so what?

It's now how smart you are, you rich you are, or even you good you are, it's what you can imagine doing with all those "assets" and how you can positively affect the lives of others. If you learn nothing else in college, I sincerely hope that you come away with this mindset.

...but I have noticed one overarching theme among smart people: they ask questions.

Wow. It sounds like you learned something in college that I didn't learn until years later. And I thought I was so smart.

After all, I don’t want this person to think I’m a moron.

Smart people don't care about that.

The intonation of the question and the intensity with which the professor listened to the response definitively suggested that the professor’s question was genuine, and that the answer was of great importance.

What a great lesson. Which reminds me that two of the smartest things you can ever do is keep learning and keep teaching. Thank you.

Smart people challenge the very limit of human understanding, and push the envelope of what’s possible farther than many people would argue it’s meant to be pushed. Smart people don’t take claims at face value, and smart people don’t rest until they find an explanation they’re comfortable accepting and understanding.

Therefore, you become smarter simply by claiming that you're smarter, right? (Notice this is the opposite of "I know for a fact I will never ever ever be as smart as, no matter how hard I try.".)

Smart people challenge everything.

Hmmm, I wonder if "challenge everything" = "see the possibilities". I think I've learned something.

(You know who taught me that? A smart person.)

That's great, but please don't overlook all that you can learn from people that may not seem so smart.

Maybe someday, people will call me a smart person.

The smartest thing you can ever do is stop caring how smart others think you are.

For now, I’m going to keep asking them questions.

I take back what I said before. It sounds like you've already learned more in 3 years than many learn in a lifetime. But you probably already knew that, being as smart as you are.

Thanks for the great post and the chance for interesting discussion. I feel smarter already.

[EDIT: Any notion that I was making fun or teasing OP was most definitely unintended. This was a great post! (Sounds like I now need a <NoSarcasm> tag.)]

larrys5• 14 years ago

"please don't overlook all that you can learn from people that may not seem so smart."

I love that you said this. One of the things that smart people do is learn something from anyone they can about anything they can.

I met a bellhop once in Florida. He had moved his entire family to Orlando. I think he came from some less desirable place up north. But he had enough smarts to realize that if he was going to cart bags for a living it might as well be in a nice warm place instead of a cold city area.

I learned a few valuable theories that I've used for years of giving estimates from an electrician as a child. (I'm not suggesting that an electrician isn't smart only that they don't usually get picked as "pre-eminent scholars" that the OP is writing about.)

JamesNelson• 14 years ago

Could I ask what those valuable theories you learnt are?

rokhayakebe4• 14 years ago

Awesome.

gridspy• 14 years ago

Apologies. I downvoted you when I was attempting to upvote. I wish I could reverse this.

huherto• 14 years ago

Glad you mention this, it reminded me a time I went to the movie theater with a friend. I was in college around 22 and he was about 32 and was one of the smartest people I had known. He talked to the lady selling the tickets, I don't remember the subject. When we left, he said, "I always like to talk with people in these type of jobs, they have a lot of time to think".

kevinalexbrown2• 14 years ago

I agree that his post smacked of branding - his first sentence read "Going to Harvard means ..." - and he's clearly impressed by branding - "Based on the research and findings of so many of the students and professors here, it’s clear that this trend is no accident."

But your response seems kind of disproportionate. Even if it did take him a while to learn that asking questions at the risk of seeming dumb is a good thing, and even if it took him observing "pre-eminent scholars" doing it to think it was worthwhile, and yeah, his post is ironically devoid of question-asking, why make fun of someone for learning something?

EDIT: edw wasn't being sarcastic, misread that.

EricDeb• 14 years ago

Agreed, the branding was a bit much. Congrats buddy you go to Harvard and learned to ask questions!

j456• 14 years ago

It's not what your education/degree makes of you, but what you make of your education/degree.

This false belief turns out so many people who feel cheated later in life.

Perpetual self learning is the only required skill for the truly educated, or self-educating. IT especially, what we learn today is worthless in a short time.

olliesaunders3• 14 years ago

> IT especially, what we learn today is worthless in a short time.

If you learn the right stuff this is not the case. Knowledge in the areas of algorithms, data structures, code and language design seems to have a certain timelessness to it.

I’ve always considered it sub-optimal to become an expert in all the idiosyncrasies of one particular language or domain at the expense of thinking about and trying to understand the larger truths and principles of software development. Idiosyncrasies can be easily referenced; a good grasp of abstract principles takes practice.

groby_b3• 14 years ago

Really? And here I was just reading a paper from the '60s.

Being less snarky: It matters very much _what_ you learn. If you spend time being buzzword compliant (and to some extent, you have to), yes, that'll expire soon-ish. If you learn the underlying principles, it'll stay with you for a long time. (I'd say probably your entire career unless you're living on the cutting edge of research)

tatsuke95• 14 years ago

>"The smarter you get the less amazing that will feel"

This is something that I'm continually trying to come to terms with. The intelligence distribution is tighter on the high end than most people realize. By that I mean, the smartest people aren't really amazingly smart. This reply, from Clay Christensen (Business School Prof at Harvard, Rhodes Scholar...must be bright!) when asked how it felt to be the top of his field, in this case material sciences, has always stuck with me:

"You know, there's real disappointment. When I was younger, I looked up at the top of the mountain and thought, Wow, those guys are really smart! When you're near the top of the mountain looking down, you think, Boy, if nobody is smarter than I am, the world is really hurting!"

It's all perspective.

vacri3• 14 years ago

Niche experts often seem smarter. I've known a number of PhD students who are fascinating in their narrow chosen field, but weren't much good once you took the big fish out of the little pond. None of those folks were passionate generalists, though.

Retric• 14 years ago

I once had this really fascinating discussion with my father. He said, his IQ while not ridiculously high was in the ~1 in 30,000 range which suggests in theory something like 10,000 people in America are 'smarter' than that and more importantly around 200 his age. But, many of them don't even end up at such schools and 200 people can't fill the fill the 'top' schools anyway. Thus, these schools can't be anywhere near that exclusive.

At the same time, everyone bases their internal scale at their level so while he met a few people that where smarter and many where far more educated there was always this feeling like he was surrounded by people that where just a little slow.

PS: He also generally referred to IQ in terms of speed. Most people have interesting things to say as long as the conversation is slow enough for them to follow.

Natsu7• 14 years ago

I've long noticed something in the same vein: people who are uninterested or who don't think they're smart aren't just uncomfortable asking questions, they're uncomfortable seeing other people asking questions, too. It's probably related.

AdleyEskridge• 14 years ago

I've attended meetings where this behavior was the norm. It was a demoralizing sight: Large groups of people visibly wincing whenever someone asks the speaker a valid question — even a question whose answer no one but the speaker could possibly know!

"Don't make us look stupid! Stop! Just go along with it! Stop caring whether you understand everything!"

speleding• 14 years ago

"There are many vectors of smartness in both magnitude and direction. Some of the smartest people I've ever known never went to college."

This is true, however your comment makes it seem you ascribe to the romantic idea that everybody is good at something. The harsh reality is that the magnitude of the vectors in not independent: some people are smart in almost every way and some people are dumb in every way. I've had to good fortune of attending one of the top US schools and I can relate to the feeling of meeting people where you seriously wonder if there is anything you could outsmart them on. I very much agree with the gist of your post though, and the other points you make.

kahawe• 14 years ago

> That's great, but please don't overlook all that you can learn from people that may not seem so smart.

The really, really important part here is: SEEM not so smart, and accordingly, SEEM oh-so-smart

"Smart" is pretty difficult to quantify, let alone compare... just to play devil's advocate here: a lot of the oh-so-smart people might have "nothing" but a decade of experience more than you and an ability to be extrovert about what they do and they might be one of only a handful of people in that field, so might just be big fish in an actually small pond. And have you ever talked to PhD candidates about what is really going on in scientific publishing?

So, question and look at how these oh-so-smart people do things, see their up- but also, especially, their downsides as good and fair as possible. That way you will learn something about people and about yourself.

zinnaglism• 14 years ago

I agree and I've written about this in 2012: http://lukas.zinnagl.com/2010/12/asking-questions/

vacri3• 14 years ago

Smart people also:

- don't use low-contrast text, which obfuscates their message

- have a comments section for feedback, rather than a 'reblogged' section for desperate popularity

Joss451• 14 years ago

I've noticed the pseudo-smart are quite annoyed by questions. RTFM, they reply. That's pseudo-smart for "I don't know".

westicle• 14 years ago

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish for himself and he'll have fish for the rest of his life.

There is a time and a place for asking questions, and if you regularly need to ask questions to which you can easily find an accurate/complete answer to without help you'll probably learn more from "learning to fish".

groby_b3• 14 years ago

RTFM usually means: I answered that question substantially, and at length, several times already. If you had bothered to do the tiniest bit of research, you would have found those or similar answers on your own.

Now, please, go away and only come back when you've at least done the homework.

csomar• 14 years ago

Is there a difference (or some way to differentiate) a smart person from a very skilled professional?

I'm asking this question to see if a Smart Person is the byproduct of getting skilled in a different set of areas, and getting very professional and focused in one or two.

I'm certainly not as smart as some fellow HNers here. But, few minutes ago, I have been reading blog posts and emails I wrote 6 years ago. "What a retard I was!"

rokhayakebe4• 14 years ago

>I'm certainly not as smart as some fellow HNers here.

I tell the following to my roommate weekly: "These guys (referring to HN) are 'wicked smart'". HN certainly makes me humble about what I think of myself.

>What a retard I was

No, you've grown a lot. I got back to my writings of even 1 year ago and I can see the difference.

calinet6• 14 years ago

> I have been reading blog posts and emails I wrote 6 years ago. "What a retard I was!"

I think you should consider your life in many ways successful if you say that every year.

jcdietrich• 14 years ago

What did you learn about smart people?

jroseattle• 14 years ago

In thinking about "smart" in the abstract sense or in relation to others, I draw on the logic of Forrest Gump: smart is as smart does. (Forrest said "stupid is as stupid does", but same corollary applies.)

kmfrk• 14 years ago

Don't get caught writing "very unique" at Harvard. Being unique is binary. :)

I don't like words like "smart" - and "stupid" - but I can recognize some of the qualities associated with them. One of the biggest is to know what you don't know, to not be complacent and arrogant. The people I respect the most are humble people, and I think it comes down to this.

I don't know what the definition of "smart" is, but I think you sound like a smart person for knowing that you don't have it all figured out - and want to fill in the gaps, even though it means telling other people.

itmag4• 14 years ago

Yeah, it's better to write "remarkable", which is an analog property.

gallamine• 14 years ago

> Being unique is binary

What is the probability of being unique?

mturmon• 14 years ago

You can layer a probability on almost any property, and that has nothing to do with whether it is a yes-or-no proposition.

A coin being heads-up is a binary property, yet it could be associated with a probability.

codeonfire2• 14 years ago

I think you have to be careful about making blanket statements and whether you are saying that smart people ask questions or are trying to imply that people that ask questions are smart.

It is in the interest of the speaker to claim that audience members who ask questions are in some way smarter. Being asked a question implies that the speaker has knowledge that the audience doesn't. So of course the speaker is going to claim those people are smart.

It is also not a good thing to presume that audience members are not asking questions simply to draw attention to themselves and to impress other audience members. People with awards are more probably than not to be smart, but they needed a lot of visibility to get those awards.

An important question would be to ask, "which non famous person is asking lots of questions, and is that person smart?" Since the author seems to define smart as having won awards and being well known in a field, this question fails immediately.

Personally, unless it is unpublished research, I can get most of my questions answered immediately by surfing along while listening and without disrupting the talk. It's also funny when I pull up wikipedia and it either turns out to have the same content as the talk, or directly contradicts the talk.

iskander2• 14 years ago

I would like to ban the word smart from common discourse. It looks like it describes something, but actually masks the reality of the how someone can look 'smart' in a situation.

davidf18• 14 years ago

IMHO much of asking questions is largely cultural. For instance, at the Passover Seder the youngest child asks (with prior coaching from their parents) the "four questions."

My father is a prof at a "top university" and in my family we were always encourage to ask questions and discuss issues. My friends grew up in similar households. But I don't think these were typical households. My perception is that in some Asian cultures the children are less likely to be encouraged to question than the environment that I grew up in. Also, many women are more shy than men and perhaps less likely to ask a question that was on their mind.

Regarding hiring decisions, the one thing I look for is whether people will argue with me or not. I look for the people that question and argue with passion.

saulrh• 14 years ago

So far I've been one of those smart people (though I'm finally finding people that are smarter than I am, and it's a great feeling), and I have my parents to thank for it. As far as I can tell, one of the big things they did was answer my questions. Without fail. Even through the entire "why?" stage, I cannot consciously remember a single instance in which my parents didn't at least provide at least a hook that I could use to keep looking on my own.

afterburner• 14 years ago

"After all, I don’t want this person to think I’m a moron."

Kudos for him recognizing that in himself. It is the single most problematic and annoying aspect of most middle and upper managers. Fear of looking dumb feeds on itself.

jarrett• 14 years ago

It's not so meaningful to compare the relative intelligence of people within the upper echelons of intelligence--which is where you appear to be, along with those award-winners you mention. Which is not to disagree with any of your points. Rather, I'm just saying you don't need to worry about being less smart than all those eminent Harvard professors, because you're already in a league where such comparisons don't work.

What defines this league, and how can people in it be compared?

I think its boundaries have something to do with a general ability and desire to learn, and a breadth and depth of knowledge about important things in the world at large. (The knowledge criterion has to take into account age. You know less now than you will at 50, but that's obviously not a mark against you.)

Amongst such people, the only meaningful comparisons are far more specific than "more smart" and "less smart" can capture. You can meaningfully talk about, say, one's ability to solve an electrical engineering dilemma, or to pleasingly arrange the samples in a hip-hop song. But not relative smartness, not in this league.

This is one case where the truth is actually more comfortable than the myths we tell ourselves.

gbhn• 14 years ago

Another thing I've learned about smart people is that they're basically always willing to tell you what they know. This is super-encouraging to me as someone who is nowhere near as smart as them.

Another way to think about this: the smart people are happy to tell me what I need to know to succeed, so I don't have to be disadvantaged by not being as smart. I do, however, have to be humble enough to be a good listener, and have some discernment to know who to listen to.

c0riander• 14 years ago

Smart people ask questions because they have enough confidence that they are smart to expose their ignorance.

Acting like you know everything doesn't come from a place of intelligence - it comes from a place of fear, that the other person knows more than you, that they will judge you, that a "smart person" would know what you don't know. I've forced myself to ask questions many times in meetings when I thought the answer was probably obvious to everyone else - only to discover that others had been wondering the same thing.

zeynalov• 14 years ago

I think it's a paradox. What does smart mean? Smart = knowing as much information as possible (or knowing how and where to get information when it's needed) + gifted with normal logic. So if smart knows best, why does he/she need to ask? If he's smart enough, doesn't it mean that he/she must be least asking one?!

Edit: I remembered something. There was a man called Said Nursi in Ottoman Empire in 20th century. He is recognized as one of smartest people ever. When he was in his 20s, after graduating 4 universities he opened a bureau in Istanbul and wrote on it's door "Here will be all questions answered and no questions asked" After answering most paradoxal questions ever he was already famous in Europe. In first days of Turkish republic people invited him to parliament, and then to be the president of Turkey. He rejected and started to write his famous books. Nowadays there are 300 millions of his students calling themselves "Nurcular" in turkish.

sagantio• 14 years ago

How are intelligence and knowledge related? I perceive that for many people intelligence depends on how much do you know about something.

stretchwithme2• 14 years ago

Another reason to answer every question your child asks and reward them with useful information no matter how probing the question might be.

And also take care that schools reward this to, to the extent possible.

stretchwithme2• 14 years ago

Knowledge is built from the ground up. The more knowledge (and experience) you integrate into your brain, the smarter it is.

There is an innate ability to do this integration and some people do it more easily.

But those who use their abilities most often and without fear build their brains faster.

FredBrach• 14 years ago

"The important thing is to not stop questionning" - Albert Einstein

MrJagil• 14 years ago

The one quote that has led me on to _greater smartness_ is that of (i believe) Socrates:

"The only thing I know, is that I don't know anything."

Remind yourself of that whenever you feel smart, and you will soon feel your mind expanding.

omerta• 14 years ago

I think the author of the article is pretty inaccurate in his analysis of students at Harvard. I think the article reflects poorly on Harvard, to be honest. The author is about as smart as my shoe.

Usually, the ones who continually ask questions and run their mouths in class are the ones who are extremely interested in their respective field of study. Interest creates curiosity and excitement, and both are required for someone to continually want to ask questions and learn more about whatever subject.

The other students who do not continually ask questions are either shy or are just going through the motions at college, so they do not really care.

If you are a student at Harvard, you probably have above-average fluid-intelligence, regardless of what you accomplish with it. The more you ask questions and the more interest you have in a subject, the more knowledge you will gain in that said subject (crystallized intelligence). But it doesn't mean people who do not continually ask questions have any less fluid intelligence.

hnmember• 14 years ago

smart people may or may not ask questions, that depends on the situation. professors, however, usually do ask questions; most of the time just to announce their presence and attract attention.

yason• 14 years ago

I don't necessarily want to be around smart people but around wise people. However, there's no specific place to go. They're both all around but also in very small quantities.

mangoman• 14 years ago

I ask questions...

if only correlation implied causation...

wisty• 14 years ago

I think it's a hasty generalization to say "smart people ask questions". It's more general to say "smart people get to the bottom of things, unless it's obviously an intellectual tarpit (hello postmodernists)."

That's why they ask questions. Even if they hate doing it, they have to find out, at just about any cost.

drstrangevibes• 14 years ago

if correlation does not imply causation, then asking questions will not necessarily make you any smarter, no?

Mordor• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, this also means 'stupid' people accept everything they're given :-(

Craiggybear• 14 years ago

Sigh. Define "smart people".

A lot of people I've seen described as smart are either a) actually good at making money (not necessarily legally) or b) good at manipulating people to get what they want. I describe this as cunning, rather than smart. Although they may be smart, too -- but that's quite rare in my experience.

But, yes, smart people tend not take anything at face value or believe everything they are told by the media.

Going to institutions like Harvard is not in itself a measure of smart, necessarily. All it usually represents is a disposable income.

Gustomaximus• 14 years ago

People also confuse "smart" with ability to memorise. I've had this when I read some history book and the topic comes up and you suddenly have loads of information on an obscure topic. People will say how smart you are. But IMO this has nothing to do with smart. My definition of smart is more a brains ability to ad insight to facts with thought, not just recall them by rote.

ramses• 14 years ago

One point the author may be missing, is that smart people do not learn to ask question. Instead, asking questions is a side-effect of being extremely curious, which is a core characteristic of smart people.

Similarly, how can someone learn to ask questions without being sufficiently curious, or at least sufficiently motivated to learn about a particular subject? I guess the answer is: with a lot of work.

lurker173• 14 years ago

> Going to Harvard means I have the very unique opportunity to be around a lot of smart people.

My high school English teacher mocked Harvard students who used term "very unique". "uniqueness" is a binary (not continuous/leveled) attribute (and "very" is a near-meaningless word).

thewisedude2• 14 years ago

Somebody told me once, if you ask a question - you may appear to be a fool for a minute. If you dont ask the question, you are a fool for the rest of your life. Of course, this saying cant be taken too literally, but I think the idea is: to learn something new, keep your ego aside, ask questions and improve your understanding!

arvind_bhat1• 14 years ago

There was a similar post posted on Friday I think which spoke of the concept of 'Flow'(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)) and how to achieve. It also referenced Gladwell's 10000 hours theory.

Does anyone remember what the link was? Please post it here if you do. Thanks :)

analyst74• 14 years ago

While I agree to the notion that asking question is important to get smarter knowledge-wise, I think we programmers tend to over-estimate the importance of intelligence in real life.

For example, when you need to convince others (need high confidence in whatever you believe in), to gain trust(depends on your audience), to increase social ranking (asking lot of question is sign of being a good protege), to hide weakness (sometimes you don't want the other party to know how much you know/don't know), etc etc

What I've Learned About Smart People.

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