The Courage To Say ‘I Don’t Know’

http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2012/10/16/the-courage-to-say-i-dont-know-leah-hager-cohen

by jordanmueller • 14 years ago

141 86 14 years ago

cognoscenti.wbur.org

mercurial• 14 years ago

This was actually pretty good. Quite relevant to software engineering. Being able to admit both ignorance and failure can be very difficult.

joell• 14 years ago

People don't understand that admitting that you do not know does not mean you are dumb. It actually makes you dumb by not admitting it since you're wasting everyone's time by bullshitting and beating around the bush.

LeBleu• 14 years ago

Actually, whether admitting it is dumb or not depends a lot on whether you're dealing with an objective or subjective situation, and the odds * costs of being caught at wrong answers.

For an example of a subjective situation, in a poker game it can be useful to pretend to know you will win in cases where it is unknown, or even in cases where you know you have a weak hand. The other player's subjective impression of what you know is more important than its actual accuracy.

On the other hand, computer programmers and engineers usually are dealing with objective circumstances where not admitting you don't know results in things breaking and delays finding out the objectively true answer.

A common failing is to not recognize which of the two types of situations you are in, and just assume you should treat it like the one you are most used to. Hence engineering types may be ignored because they don't sound confident in their answers, and political types forget that that rules or legislation cannot override the laws of physics.

chawco• 14 years ago

Not only does it encourage faking, but it defeats the purpose of any learning institution. The first step to learning something is admitting that you don't know something, both to yourself and to others.

Frankly, someone saying they don't know something lends credibility to the things they claim to know, as well.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

This is a hugely important point, I really enjoyed the story about approaching this question from the perspective of a shared fear as well. I find when I'm at an event and someone asks whether I knew someone at Sun or Google or in Las Vegas (I used to get that a lot because people seemed to think everyone in Las Vegas was on a first name basis) its weirdly tempting to say 'oh sure' or something to move the conversation along because you just know its not going to be some critical fact. I have to practice pushing back on that desire and say "nope never heard of them" and see how the conversation evolves. I had not associated it with 'fear' before but that works as well as anything.

cafard• 14 years ago

Well and good, but she might have written it with fewer $5 words. (Pardon me, "formulated it with a less sesquipedilian vocabulary.")

"it fancifies a simple ideal (be honest), but because in so doing, it’s emblematic of the very culture that fosters fraudulence in the first place: the too-often obfuscating, gate-keeping, stratifying milieu of higher education."

"I’ve seen young writers contort their prose into incomprehensibly pretentious muddles, all in a disastrous bid to sound more erudite than they are."

I bet she has. I hope she put her advice to them more plainly.

thecosas3• 14 years ago

You just used my favorite word (sesquipedalian) haha

That said, it sounds like she struggles with it too (and clearly did with the article):

  “The first time I ever witnessed Mary do that,”
  I continue, “I swore to myself I’d follow her 
  example, I’d be that brave. Guess how I’ve done?”

  They raise their eyebrows, half-hopeful, half-leery.

  “Not that great,” I confess. “It’s ridiculous! I 
  still do it sometimes! Less often, but yes – from 
  time to time, I still catch myself faking it!”

I think for most people it's something you work at. Still, an article as an example of something it's railing against = funny.

crntaylor2• 14 years ago

I think that her words are just on the right side of the line. It would be tough to make it more florid without sounding pretentious, but it seems fine at the moment.

Here's an example of the kind of uncontrollable logorrhoea that she's talking about:

"Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

That's from the George Orwell essay "Politics and the English Language" (I'm sure you're familiar with it - snarf) and it's a rewording of the following Bible verse

"I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

alan-crowe• 14 years ago

I've never been happy with that Bible verse. To my mind, winning the race defines swiftness and winning the battle defines strength. The verse starts with two paradoxical examples, then shifts gears into three whines about unrecognised merit (which don't strike me as matters of chance). What is it actually trying to say? I write the point about swiftness and strength thus

The race is to the swift and the battle to the strong but the odds are never so short as the bookmaker offers and when the sea take the unsinkable ship with no lifeboats everybody drowns.

jerf• 14 years ago

There are two types of people who use "big words": Those who are trying to sound smarter than they are, and those who are so intimately familiar with the English language that they understand the subtle shadings of each word and can't help but use them fluently.

English is often cited as an unusual language for the word count it has. What English has done is load a lot of connotations that in other languages might show in phrases or idioms into the words themselves. In the thesaurus, "conflagration" and "fire" are synonyms, but in fact they don't mean quite the same thing. One is a thing you might cook marshmallows over and the other certainly is not.

Those in the second category can identify those in the first with a glance. Sometimes you can even see them flinch if you're looking at them at the right time, when someone claims to have roasted their marshmallows over a conflagration.

The author is a professional writer and a professor, presumably of English or Writing. She comes by it honestly. If any of the vocabulary in that piece struck me on first reading (before I read your comment), I actually thought she was talking down to her students when she told the story about Mary.

(I am sure Muphry's Law is in full effect for this post.)

adam-a• 14 years ago

There are also two types of writing. Writing to convey a point and writing poetically. This is supposed to be advice so it would suit it more to be understandable rather than beautiful.

Having said that I assumed she was making a joke in the first paragraph, she seems to calm down a lot after that. Surely the irony of

> I’ve seen young writers contort their prose into incomprehensibly pretentious muddles, all in a disastrous bid to sound more erudite than they are.

is apparent to the author.

scott_s2• 14 years ago

The game reviews over at gametrailers.com suffer from this. I cringe every time they use a vocab-word in place of its pedestrian synonym. While it's a synonym, it's not quite what the word implies.

biscarch3• 14 years ago

Thank you for this comment.

I started talking like that when I was younger as, I believe, a direct result of reading 6-7 books a week. The language would just surface as I was in the middle of a sentence. That language was quickly derided by my peers and those "above" me.

I found that conversing in a more general manner ("fire" vs "conflagration") is conducive to moving conversations forward, even if it results in a muddled understanding.

I now make efforts to speak in a less exact fashion in most circumstances and I've lost a good bit of my vocabulary as a result.

On occasion I write (privately) in such language so that I retain the ability to speak in a more exacting fashion, but it's rare these days and I often feel like I'm not presenting my arguments as well as I could be.

zwischenzug• 14 years ago

It read to me as over-written, much as the ideas within the article were over-stated.

fusiongyro2• 14 years ago

I think the first sentence is clumsy. "Fancify," really? The second sentence looks fine to me though. "Erudite" is a bit pretentious, but I could chalk it up to irony there.

chris_wot5• 14 years ago

I cannot believe you think "erudite" sounds pretentious. It sounds normal.

dlitz• 14 years ago

Did you actually have any problem understanding it? I suspect that you didn't.

thecosas3• 14 years ago

This speaks not only to students, but also to professionals of any industry.

How often have you "pretended" or "bent the truth" and then found yourself in a tough spot? It usually leads to stress, either by rushing to learn so you appear to know, or a loss of trust when called on it.

I have much better conversations with people who I know are bright and are humble about what they know.

nsxwolf• 14 years ago

I'm a big proponent of "I don't know" in the work place. People universally use "I'm not sure" in its place. It's mostly harmless until you have a conversation like this:

Question: "Is it A or B?"

Answer: "I'm not sure, but I think it's A. But I'm not sure. It could be B. But I think it's A."

It's annoying when that answer is seen as better than a simple "I don't know".

mcguire2• 14 years ago

Be careful, though. Replying "I don't know," or "What's that?" can have the effect of calling someone's bluff. If they are someone you do not want to offend, the situation can get awkward quickly.

thecosas3• 14 years ago

Usually if it's something I have only very basic knowledge of, that's what I'll say. It's not always saying "I don't know" if you really mean "I'm not certain".

It's more about being honest about your level of knowledge. Sometimes that means grey are or saying "I don't know, but I will find out." OR "I don't know, but let's get a hold of someone that does."

That would happen in more of a professional environment than a conversational one :o)

re_todd2• 14 years ago

Great point. The times I've pretended usually come back to bite me and are eventually more embarrassing than just saying "I don't know". Now, when I'm tempted to pretend, I think about the embarrassment that will probably result, which gives me the courage to say "I don't know." On a related note, I was once in a meeting with a couple brilliant NASA scientists, and was surprised how often they admitted they did not know something. There were a couple of the smartest guys I've ever met, and the had no qualms about admitting things they didn't know. That helped me to start saying "I don't know" more often as well.

scott_s2• 14 years ago

It's a great point, but I don't buy the connection to actual cheating. There's dishonestly pretending to know something that you don't, which is what she's addressing. That's done to save embarrassment. But she connects that dishonesty to cheating, which is done to avoid failure.

Yes, we can categorize embarrassment as a kind of failure, but I think they are clearly separable in their effect on us. As she demonstrated, if you just say "I don't know" in conversation, you don't actually look stupid. But if you fail to write an essay, your grade will suffer.

But, back to her original point, I have noticed that the smartest people and best researchers I know are not afraid to say "I don't know" when asked a question. I've warned people who give interview talks here that their audience will be filled with very smart people who aren't scared of looking stupid. Which implies that they'll ask questions without fear of asking a "too obvious" question, which in turns implies they are more likely to ask fundamental, difficult to answer questions.

incision• 14 years ago

>But, back to her original point, I have noticed that the smartest people and best researchers I know are not afraid to say "I don't know" when asked a question.

So true.

That is exactly what really hammered it home for me years ago.

I found myself working with a particularly capable and impressive guy who didn't have the slightest hesitation about saying "I don't know." when asked a question or "What's that?" when listening.

I've had some frustrating encounters with people who seem to live by hard and fast rules about what negative things "I don't know" supposedly demonstrates about a person [1], but overall it has been incredibly liberating. It's amazing how fast you can come to know someone and learn from them when you both come in open and unguarded.

1: A few of the more memorable responses I've seen to "I don't know".

* "Never, ever say that again. You should always try to relate the situation to something you do know. Saying I don't know just means you're lazy."

* "You were just feigning ignorance about that to get me to try to explain it so you could attack my explanation!"

derleth• 14 years ago

> Never, ever say that again. You should always try to relate the situation to something you do know.

This is the best possible way to get thoroughly idiotic ideas in your head. If you ever want to completely and utterly misunderstand a subject, I could not think of any better way to do that than to follow this advice.

> You were just feigning ignorance about that to get me to try to explain it so you could attack my explanation!

And this is a psychotic level of insecurity manifesting itself as delusions of persecution.

pushingbits• 14 years ago

> "Never, ever say that again. You should always try to relate the situation to something you do know. Saying I don't know just means you're lazy."

Series of tubes...

richardjordan• 14 years ago

I agree with you here. I don't buy a connection between the inability to say I don't know and cheating. If anything I'd think it were an inverse relationship, based on my own humble experience. I used to be too insecure to say I don't know and would often ramble to cover my deep embarrassment of not knowing. That being said the same acute sensitivity to embarrassment also ensured I never cheated on anything in my life - the terror of the embarrassment of being caught cheating far outweighed any potential gains.

MattGrommes• 14 years ago

I've seen plenty of business people try to hand-wave away or cover up their ignorance with bullshit instead of saying they don't know something. Is that cheating, in a business setting? I think it might be a stretch that not saying "I don't know" leads to cheating directly as she suggests but the urge to cover up ignorance could lead to both.

chris_wot5• 14 years ago

Not so much cheating, as potentially exposing their ignorance to colleagues and customers. Not a good look.

wildgift3• 14 years ago

I think it needs to be repeated that pretending to know something isn't the same as cheating on a test.

People cheat on tests because it increases the final score. That score contributes to the final grade. That grade determines ones rank at graduation time. Attaining the degree has numerous benefits.

When I was younger, I was the kind of person who would not admit to not knowing. I faked it. I wanted to be cool.

But I never cheated. I didn't care enough about the scores, grades, or even doing well. I figured I'd get the grade I got. I didn't care about the system.

Now, older and a little wiser, I don't fake knowing to be cool, and don't fake knowing to make it in the system. I just don't give a fuck.

davidcuddeback• 14 years ago

Admitting that you don't know something is such an important skill, because it enables one to learn and discuss unfamiliar topics. I've met a lot of people, including professional programmers, who can't admit when they don't know something. I've even noticed it affect my own engineering capabilities. There have been a number of times that, when presented with a new idea (TDD, functional programming, dependency injection, etc) I initially convinced myself that it's not that important. I've further noticed that this usually happens when I'm struggling to understand how to apply it in practice. I've also witnessed this thought process in other engineers. All this has led me to thinking about a theory lately. I think that there's a cognitive bias at play when people are presented with something that's unfamiliar to them [1]. I haven't validated this idea yet, so if anyone has any pointers to some research on this topic, I'd love to know about it.

I've witnessed these thought processes impede discussion and prevent improvement within engineering teams, which is why I push people during an interview to see of they'll say, "I don't know."

[1] Off topic, but I think this proposed cognitive bias enables the existence of most religions, because religion soothes people's uncertainty about metaphysics.

Futurebot• 14 years ago

The human tendency to attempt to avoid looking weak in just about any situation, coupled with a fear of certain cultural/personality types (the types that cause people to spend their time trying to sniff out weakness to use as leverage and fodder for humiliation and/or believe that human beings should be regarded as fungible little cogs who should be replaced if they aren't flawless) seem to be the biggest feeders of this tendency. Insofar as it serves as a defense mechanism, it seems perfectly rational (while also seeming sad that it's necessary) in many cases to not admit, especially when one believes that their livelihood may be on the line (whether immediately or somewhere down the line.)

hammock• 14 years ago

I don't think the tendency is innately human; it's socialized. Growing up, it took me a while to figure out that saying something besides "I don't know" to a question you don't have the answer for, was even an option worth considering. Was never a problem for me (for better or for worse)

It's usually obvious when someone gives an answer out of their ass. Alternatively, some people will stay silent, as if they didn't hear the question. Rare to find someone who will say "I don't know" and explore the topic with you.

3minus1• 14 years ago

I may be off base, but I see it as a sign of weakness when someone lies about something they don't know. Like, that person probably either has an inferiority complex or is a little too prideful. If you're smart and you know you're smart then you don't have to prove it, and you don't feel the need to bullshit about topics you don't know.

re_todd2• 14 years ago

I tend to say "I don't know" around these malevolent personality types more often. If people are looking for ammunition to use against you, the less words you use the better. These types of people will find plenty of things to mock you and challenge you in a long truthful explanation if they really want to. When around these people, I keep my responses to a minimum, and try to turn their questions back on them and keep them talking instead of me.

crntaylor2• 14 years ago

That reminded me of the tagline on Nassim Taleb's homepage:

My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: I don’t know...

hammerbrostime• 14 years ago

I tend to be very upfront about what I know or dont know in the corporate world, and I've seen it bite me too many times. There are reasons why people are guarded about what they know or don't know. In an academic setting however, I never felt any serious repercussions for being transparent.

5h• 14 years ago

First thing i drill into every new-starters head, it's the most important words that can be said. There is nothing more infuriating than knowing someone has wasted hours, and nothing more awkward than them winging an explanation!

debacle• 14 years ago

I love when I get a chance to say "I don't know" in an interview. It makes an important statement that I'm not proficient in everything, it helps me to know that I'm going to learn something at my next position, and it also gives me a chance to run through my learning process with the interviewer.

amr1001• 14 years ago

It is important to teach children how to say "I don't know"... as emphasized by Annaka Harris with her project on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/618768707/i-wonder

munin• 14 years ago

there's something awesome about saying "I don't know" -- you give your conversational partner the opportunity to explain! people love talking. the more chances you give them to talk, the more they will like you, or so says dale carnegie in "how to win friends and influence people" ...

undantag• 14 years ago

The first step to learning something new is admitting you don't know it yet?

bzudo• 14 years ago

I try to do this as much as possible in my current position, but I can't help but feel it does me a disservice when it comes time for a promotion.

It's viewed as a sign of weakness or incompetency.

I feel like those who never admit they don't know something are promoted up the chain. They don't trust you if you say "I don't know."

I do a lot video/motion graphics work. I'm often asked if I can accomplish something or finish by a certain deadline. Many times I can't give a definite answer, so I say I don't know. My bosses response was a sarcastic, "I like that confidence."

wildgift3• 14 years ago

I find this to be the case for me, too. I'm a network tech at a non-technical (very non-technical) workplace. We're constantly dealing with new situations, new tech, a fast-changing media environment, and new requirements.

I'm honest when I don't know something, mainly because I don't want "my mouth to write checks that my ass can't cash." Claims of competence are going to be tested.

This doesn't impress the bosses. It kind of pisses them off.

This is a side effect of two things. First is a hierarchical kiss-up, kiss-ass culture -- this is in labor unions, so the organizational hierarchy is extremely important. Second is that they don't deal much with creating new IT services, but deal with people selling IT services or products. So the perception is that IT is magic, and it'll fix everything, if you just buy it. (LOLz)

There's also another reason, and it's that to a great extent, being able to get ahead or get things done within hierarchical organizations is about being a good salesperson. It's to bullshit enough to convince someone else with more power that something great is possible. It's useful to be a good salesperson.

Organizations value this quality in different quantities. An engineering consultancy, for example, would value having one person like this, to help make sales, but if they had too many it would be harmful - all the engineers would quit from being abused by salespeople making impossible promises, and there'd be no business at all.

A political consultancy, in contrast, would require this of almost every employee, except for people doing research or analysis. It would be a critical skill, because being able to bullshit many powerful people at once, in a coordinated way to achieve a specific result, is extremely difficult.

FrojoS• 14 years ago

When you are in school, "I don't know" is the only answer that is guranteed to gain you no points. Any other answer has at least a chance to be perseived as correct or partly correct.

Given that most of us were raised in schools, there might be a correlation.

eru2• 14 years ago

Depends on how tests are graded.

The Kangaroo Maths contest (which admittedly isn't a graded test, but the first example I can think of) involves a multiple choice test, where you lose points for wrong answers, and just get zero points for a blank.

The number of negative points it calculated to give you 0 points on average for blind guessing. If you can eliminate a few possibility and guess between the rest, your average score goes up.

dalke• 14 years ago

The SAT is similar. Quoting from Wikipedia: "For each correct answer, one raw point is added. For each incorrect answer one-fourth of a point is deducted. ... This ensures that a student's mathematically expected gain from guessing is zero."

laughinghan• 14 years ago

This is true only in a test situation and untrue in every other situation in school. In lecture, in office hours, and when doing homework, if you don't understand something and just let it slip by, chances are you're just going to get more and more lost, whereas if you ask for an explanation, you're more likely to keep up, learn more, and do better on everything you're graded on going forwards.

I see this more as a criticism of test-driven undergraduate academia than as a counterpoint to the idea that people should be more forthcoming with admitting when they don't know something.

codegeek• 14 years ago

In corporate environment, I have learnt over the years that if you don't know something, it is ok to say so as long as you say it as "I don't know for sure but let me find that out for you".

mcguire2• 14 years ago

The topic of the title is lovely and all, but what does it have to do with academic integrity?

zeruch• 14 years ago

The link to academic dishonesty is tenuous, but the use of it as a way to enter a discussion about admitting you don't know as a first step towards knowing is a critical point to make.

bstpierre2• 14 years ago

> I’ve seen young writers contort their prose into incomprehensibly pretentious muddles, all in a disastrous bid to sound more erudite than they are.

This seems somewhat self-referential. I'm not afraid of big words, but it seems like the article (especially making the point she's making) could have been written in simpler language.

Though, with a site name like "cognoscenti", I guess you have to maintain a certain proportion of multisyllabic vocabulary.

wildgift3• 14 years ago

I think the writer was being intentionally "smart" in that first paragraph to underscore her point. It's one long sentence with too many clauses; though it's not muddled, it's definitely more challenging to read than the paragraphs at the end of the article.

solsenNet• 14 years ago

Advice straight from the movie "Disclosure" (1994)

Xcelerate• 14 years ago

Funny, this comes after a meeting with my research advisor. He was asking if I was familiar with some materials science topics and I was like "nope". "Well what about such-and-such?" "Nope". "Did you at least learn blah blah?" "Yeah! Oh, wait, no... no I didn't." It gets awkward after a while.

namank• 14 years ago

Admitting IDK is only the first step. Because the growth is the natural progression of things, you need to move beyond the state in which you Don't Know.

This means that everytime you say 'I Don't Know', you must think about what comes next and consequently add 'Let me go learn'.

Adopting good values, like I Don't Know, is admirable but very dangerous when taken out of it's appropriate context, which is the philosophy it depends on.

yequalsx• 14 years ago

My experience working on a Ph.D. in mathematics was that the people who say, "I don't know." without any embarrassment are the smart people. They are the ones who know their stuff. My experiences since graduate have enforced this belief of mine.

Smart people are more aware of the things they don't know. They are not ashamed of saying so. There are exceptions of course but generally I've found this to be true.

jbert• 14 years ago

> Smart people are more aware of the things they don't know.

Possibly, but I think it's more about insecurity.

If you're less certain of your position, it's harder to "concede points".

So yes - the good people say "I don't know", but maybe that's just because they can get away with it more easily (lower cost for them).

thebear• 14 years ago

The article starts out with these words (copied and pasted, emphasis mine): "It’s now common practice for colleges to require instructors to discuss with their students, on the first day of class each semester, the fundamental PRINCIPAL of academic integrity". As a non-native speaker and naturalized American, I'll have to ask: do we really care that little about the integrity of our language?

jacalata• 14 years ago

What would happen, I wondered, if I could eliminate that perceived cost, at least within the small community of my own classroom?

And what did happen, I still wonder? Does she know how many people cheated in her class when she made the old announcement, and how many people cheat now? Was there any change? Why even write this and leave off the actual effects of the changes, if it's such an interesting question?

INTPenis• 14 years ago

Then there are those consultants who are simply overworked so they don't mind saying "I don't know" simply to avoid more work.

From my standpoint this has nothing to do with their pride, they can still be very proud and constantly 1-up each other in daily conversation. As long as a manager with potential new tasks isn't listening in. ;)

reledi• 14 years ago

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking

chris_wot5• 14 years ago

Here's an example of making a genuine mistake and asking an innocent question... and then getting slammed for it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4654361

I made the error of not knowing much about space shuttles and got my timeline most definitely wrong. For my error, I am currently sitting at -1. Not because I was nasty, but because I was wrong and asked a question. I even prefaced the question with "unless I'm much mistaken"!

vacri5• 14 years ago

Downmods on HN are supposed to be fine to be used as an indicator of disagreement. It's blindingly daft, but that's the official position.

alter8• 14 years ago

Even if the official position was against using downmods to show disagreement, it'd not be enforceable. As soon as a large enough group starts using the "disagree" button, almost everyone would follow the trend.

lotharbot• 14 years ago

You made a wrong factual assertion 2 posts above that one, and when someone corrected you by mentioning the Apollo missions, you didn't take the few minutes on Google/Wikipedia/whatever to learn about the subject, but instead repeated your mistake. It's appropriate for a comment of that sort to be at 0 or -1 karma; it's not like you got slammed to -17 and silently banned for egregious wrongitude. Think of the downvotes as encouraging different behavior: if someone gently corrects you, take the time to look up the information they mentioned.

(For the record, I did not downvote either of those posts, and I've upvoted some of your comments in the past.)

Tycho• 14 years ago

Closely related is the courage to tell people to do their job properly and explain fully what they're talking about.

Often I've found myself in situations where the person training me will ask 'Do you know about this?' and I think, well yes we briefly went over it yesterday, and then they forge ahead. But they should realise that it's worth slowing down and going over things at a conceptual level. You can't really build on a passing familiarity with the foundations. And the person being trained is not really in a position to judge how important it is to dwell on certain subjects.

The Courage To Say ‘I Don’t Know’

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