[HN Gopher] Encouraging Self-Doubt
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Encouraging Self-Doubt
Author : zdw
Score : 31 points
Date : 2022-04-11 15:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (michaeldehaan.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (michaeldehaan.substack.com)
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| I don't know, I just don't think encouraging self-doubt in
| general is a great idea for the industry as a whole (right now).
| If anything, people lack confidence given the omnipresence of
| imposter syndrome.
|
| >Excessive confidence seems to work to impress some people early
| on, but total belief in your own abilities and eventual world
| domination is going to make you think you can do anything, and
| that gets in the way of making good decisions.
|
| Really, how many people truly reach that stage? The far majority
| of professional tech people I meet are so humble they barely even
| question management on technical decisions. Maybe that's just my
| experience with primarily passive people, but it certainly
| doesn't reflect what I tend to see here, on Twitter and on
| Reddit.
| keynesyoudigit wrote:
| IME, "Excessive confidence" is usually a shield for insecurity
| anyway.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| "What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an
| absence of self-criticism." ~ G. K. Chesterton
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Extremely self critical people can be extremely hateful. Its
| hard to keep self criticism contained to the self. And if
| you're already self critical, its hard to handle others
| criticism of you.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Broadly, I don't notice a surfeit of self-criticism in
| today's world.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| +5. I wanted to +1 but I really liked what you said.
|
| Someone said to me the other day they were afraid to tell me
| how they speak to themself and much they hate themself.
|
| I'm getting much better at recognizing when someone says
| something to me about my life and it pisses me off, it's
| often because I've been saying that same thing to myself 10x.
| "You should just get a stable job" when someone else says
| that, I get angry at them saying it, only to (hopefully
| sooner rather than later) realize "ah it's because I've
| already heard that message 10 times today in my own head."
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Self-hatred and self-criticism are separate things: the
| former an emotion the latter a rational process.
|
| We live in an emotional age and thus it is easy to conflate
| the two. But they are different.
| _moof wrote:
| There are two kinds of criticism: the kind that seeks to tear
| down, and the kind that seeks to build up. When people talk
| about being "self-critical" it's usually the tear-down kind,
| or what therapists call negative self-talk. I think in this
| case though it's being used as an antonym for arrogance.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| don't always believe yourself. but always believe in yourself.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| "Encouraging Self-Doubt" in someone who is over-confident?
|
| I can encourage self-doubt when I begin to harbour some doubts
| but when I'm already over-confident - per definition - I am not
| able to do that. Actually psychologically it is way more nuanced.
|
| Overly confident people by suppressing any doubts can get caught
| in a trap - a negative feedback loop - where even trivial
| questions "How was your day?" can cast suspicion. [in the
| (extreme) edge case of stimulant (mis-)use full-blown paranoia is
| common].
|
| For someone with a lack of confidence being on the opposite side
| of that spectrum encouraging self-doubt defeats the purpose
| [interestingly the edge case can also lead to paranoia].
|
| Normally, most people find themselves neither on the one nor the
| other extreme (it is simply not sustainable). When someone has a
| tendency to be overconfident, yeah a cue like "encouraging self
| doubt" might help but a more sustainable approach would be to
| take a step back and ask yourself: Where does my tendency to be
| at times overconfident come from?
|
| Our "traits" are a complex result of adaptations to our
| environment (limited of course by our genetic contingencies) but
| by the time we become adults some of those get misaligned (in our
| "artificial" and fast-changing environment). So asking the
| question in which way did my overconfidence now served me as a
| good strategy before it morphed into "over"-confidence is a more
| constructive way forward because it takes into account both where
| "I" come from and where I "now" want to successfully go. That's
| what our prefrontal cortex simplistically speaking is all about.
| Not easy, it takes patience and long planning in advance but
| worth the effort to build up the resources. It gets way harder
| once you are older. This is something I mostly "encourage" young
| people (<25 yr: before the brain/prefrontal cortex is fully
| developed) to take into account.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| In terms of people thinking startup founders being over-confident
| to the point of being caricatures -- There's a huge amount of
| survivorship bias. For any one successful startup, let alone
| momentarily "successful" ones like WeWork and Fast, there are
| probably thousands of startups that don't go anywhere (mine
| included).
|
| Maybe founders of startups that don't go anywhere fall within the
| self-doubter camp? They don't survive, so the world never hears
| about them. Only the successful, over-confident ones.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Encouraging Self-doubt? Cognitive dissonance.
|
| I don't think questioning a thing is the same as doubting it. In
| fact questioning it can make me a more ardent believer.
| ohwellhere wrote:
| I think the author is right in his points, but his choice of
| phrasing may not be as accurate as possible.
|
| Rather than "encouraging self-doubt", I think he is suggesting
| a culture of introspection, self-awareness, process-oriented
| thinking, and especially humility.
|
| Rather than discouraging "confidence", I think he is
| discouraging hubris, pride, arrogance, and results-oriented
| thinking.
| eternityforest wrote:
| "we should encourage self doubt" not "Self doubt that is
| encouraging". I don't see the dissonance.
|
| It's just a less controversial way to say "Let's discourage
| confidence " which is what I probably would have said, because
| I'm not a fan of confidence culture.
| andai wrote:
| This seems like trying to harness Dunning-Kruger (high ability
| leads to self-doubt) backwards: self-doubt leading to higher
| ability? As others have clarified below, this may work in the
| sense that reflecting on experiences increases your wisdom. The
| amount of reflection done seems to be largely a function of
| personality, but maybe it can also be a function of culture. I'm
| not sure what that would look like though, can reflection be
| institutionalized or just encouraged on a personal level?
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