= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
adamzerner comments on Don't Be Afraid of Asking Personally Important Questions of Less Wrong - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (47)
I'm glad that this issue was brought up, because I've been reluctant to post at all until recently due to my history with smart people in other online communities being that any "stupid questions" I have would lead me being perceived as, well, stupid. However, people here seem to have a level of understanding that makes admitting ignorance on certain subjects less stressful.
My lurking days may be coming to an end.
What's wrong with being stupid? What's wrong with being perceived as stupid?
It seems that the "stupid" you're referring to is "not knowledgeable", or perhaps "poor aptitude". Those are both things that can (largely) be trained.
Personally, I judge people for lacking open-mindedness, and to a lesser extent curiosity, and to a lesser extent ambition. I sense that this is a rather common way that smart people judge others. But I don't think it's common to judge people for temporarily lacking knowledge.
Normatively there should be nothing wrong with being (perceived as) unknowledgable in a certain field as long as one tries to fix this.
However it is hardly news that people avoid situations in which they have to admit their lack of understanding, for which there may be many reasons, such as
People conflating lack of knowledge in a certain field with generally lower cognitive abilities, i.e. they may both believe themselves to lack lack cognitive abilities as well as believe that others will think they lack those abilities, which leads to
Perceived loss of status in one's social environment if others take one to be stupid (in a conflated sense)
Regret that they have not learned X when they think they should have learned X
etc..
Now none of these are very good reasons, but when did humans ever need good reasons to do something, when there are so many bad ones?
In what cases do you think "as long as one tries to fix this" applies?
I think that "as long as one does not vehemently refuse to integrate newfound knowledge into one's database and update one's beliefs" would be a better way to put it now and perhaps clearer too.
What I said before was probably too vague (or just wrong) because one can't really become knowledgable as to everything and I don't think that should be held as a point against them.
So it seems like you're talking about integrating knowledge, rather than seeking it. Is that true?
Yes, I mainly mean integrating knowledge. Which is not to say that I don't think people should not actively seek out new knowledge about all kinds of topics, but seeing how it's absolutely impossible to know even just a little about everything I don't think one can blame them for not seeking knowledge about a certain topic X. Unless of course X is something which by all means should be relevant to them.
Which is just to say it depends, I suppose.
I think that usually "stupid" means "bad at acquiring and processing information".
Knowledge can be learned but aptitude is more or less defined in terms of not being trainable. Of course, this might mean that it's simply defined out of existence, but my experience has definitely been that it's much easier to teach some people things than others. Indeed, I experience a significant conflict between helping students who're most at risk of failing, and thereby accomplishing very little actual instruction, because they're mostly so difficult to teach, and focusing on the students who could pass under their own initiative, who'll actually absorb and comprehend the instruction, but can get by without it.
There are issues of attitude as well as aptitude, and they're closely intertwined, but they're not the same thing, and when you deal with a lot of people who vary along both metrics, it's hard to avoid differentiating between them.