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| ▲ | fidotron a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Like your sibling comment I saw this mainly with physics people doing data science: > Eventually you have to understand something. And part of that process is being wrong and annoying people. There is nothing more frustrating as a colleague than having a smart person walk in, insist you're all wrong, and then burn all the energy and goodwill in the organisation having to rebuild absolutely everything from the principles they currently understand because they refuse to listen to the experience that has built up already (in the entire field, let alone the organisation), only to produce something worse on every dimension than what already existed. | | |
| ▲ | chunky1994 a day ago | parent [-] | | But there is a difference between not listening to experience and examining whether the resulting implementation/decisions based on the experience are actually valid. I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it, that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence. At least in my experience (as a physics grad), me and all my fellow grads are much more likely to apply Chesterton's fence and then make decisions than not doing that and steamrolling existing decisions. | | |
| ▲ | fidotron a day ago | parent [-] | | > I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it You're actually doing the problem behavior right here: denying the validity of the experience of seeing exactly this happen, not as a one off, but repeatedly in completely separate situations and institutions. > that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence. I mean the problem is they're arrogant. The two aren't mutually exclusive, far from it. | | |
| ▲ | chunky1994 a day ago | parent [-] | | My point is that wanting things redone because you don’t understand it is dumb behaviour, not smart behaviour. There wasn’t even a denial of the validity of experience, I was just trying to examine the problem - if this behaviour is something you see often exhibited by “smart” people then: either you are unable to convince them of your side of the argument for different reasons, or you are not actually arguing with smart people. Do you see the distinction? > The two aren't mutually exclusive, far from it. Intelligence and arrogance are somewhat contra-indicative. While you can be intelligent and arrogant, you can’t really learn things without the humility to say you don’t know stuff. In my experience, most physics grads I know constantly say they don’t know stuff, way more than people from other disciplines. | | |
| ▲ | fidotron a day ago | parent [-] | | > My point is that wanting things redone because you don’t understand it is dumb behaviour, not smart behaviour. Smart people can do very non smart things when they feel their status as smartest-person-in-the-room is threatened, which is the entire point. > There wasn’t even a denial of the validity of experience, I was just trying to examine the problem - if this behaviour is something you see often exhibited by “smart” people then: either you are unable to convince them of your side of the argument for different reasons, or you are not actually arguing with smart people. Do you see the distinction? Now you're gaslighting, bluntly. > Intelligence and arrogance are somewhat contra-indicative. I've never seen any evidence of this, but a _lot_ that many physics (and pure mathematics) grads are enormously more arrogant than the general population, enough that the trend under discussion has actual basis. | | |
| ▲ | chunky1994 a day ago | parent [-] | | I was responding to you in the context of the GP. > The flip side of being confidently wrong sometimes is that we treat understanding new systems as something approachable. So, yeah, it's annoying that we don't stay in our lane, but, from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's going on instead of punting and saying it's someone else's turf I'm blocked until they get back to me. Eventually you have to understand something. And part of that process is being wrong and annoying people. GP here is suggesting that accepting established status quo at face value (i.e relying solely on other people's experience/letting them deal with problems you face in their domain without being able to examine why they arrived at the decisions they did) can lead to worse outcomes, and I agree. Your response was that it is frustrating to have someone walk in and question things (precisely what GP is suggesting), only to have the final product of whatever decisions these people make be worse than the status quo (not what GP is suggesting). I responded by saying - there is a difference between not listening to experience and examining whether the resulting implementation/decisions based on the experience are actually valid. You did not address that. Is there not a difference between these two things? GP is suggesting to do the latter, not the former. i.e question why things are the way they are, crucially not that people should make decisions based on things we don't understand about the status quo. You only responded to - * I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it, that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence.* Your response claimed that I am denying the validity of your experience, when I made no such statement. All I said was there is a difference between questioning things and forcing decisions based on things they dont understand - smart people don't do the latter, arrogant people do. Someone doing what you are suggesting, is not doing what GP is suggesting, they are different. The former is smart, and the latter is not smart. When I pointed this out here: I was just trying to examine the problem - if this behaviour is something you see often exhibited by “smart” people then: either you are unable to convince them of your side of the argument for different reasons, or you are not actually arguing with smart people. Do you see the distinction? You accuse me of gaslighting you. > Intelligence and arrogance are somewhat contra-indicative. There might be a trend of this in academia (which is where the xkcd joke stems from), but in my personal experience I dont see this much in industry, and you can disagree with that. I also don't see an xkcd joke being an actual basis of anything either. You are making declarative statements - but a _lot_ that many physics (and pure mathematics) grads are enormously more arrogant than the general population, enough that the trend under discussion has actual basis. - without any backing of this other than anecdata, and I was pointing out a different anecdotal experience. | | |
| ▲ | fidotron a day ago | parent [-] | | > You only responded to - * I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it, that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence.* > Your response claimed that I am denying the validity of your experience, when I made no such statement. But it is exactly what you are doing in the exact quote of yours you even put there. I am being nice, but it's quite clear you are a near perfect example of this stereotype (if actually a relatively polite one), right down to the wall-of-text when cornered. | | |
| ▲ | chunky1994 a day ago | parent [-] | | I'm being nice too and all I've been trying to do in this thread is point at a distinction between GP's point and yours which you seem unwilling to engage with. It is valuable to ask questions about why things are the way they are in order to understand the fundamentals of it vs we should change these things because I am 'smarter than you' and I don't understand why things are done this way (which I called dumb, and not smart). Perhaps the issue is that these two behaviours are easily confused. I had to write the long comment to illustrate this difference. I'm saying in mine and GP's definition doing what you are suggesting people usually do is not smart, its dumb, and that is not what GP or I are suggesting people do. | | |
| ▲ | fidotron a day ago | parent [-] | | > It is valuable to ask questions about why things are the way they are in order to understand the fundamentals of it vs we should change these things because I am 'smarter than you' and I don't understand why things are done this way (which I called dumb, and not smart). But you expressed doubt of stated (and frankly not even remotely subjective) experience, so if we dropped you in an organisation your immediate response to anything you don't understand is "That doesn't match my mental model, so I doubt it actually happened", followed by either everyone giving up or you insisting everyone persuade you of absolutely every last detail of everything. It's enormously tedious, and the reason it comes across as arrogant is the demands put on everyone else to explain everything to you because you clearly see everyone else as incapable of the same level of insights that you are, all the while you are telling people what they experience is them being mistaken. Just look at the way you questioned whether or not I could tell if someone is actually smart or not. It's just plain insulting. And it's not just me, it's everyone that has this same experience which forms the basis of the stereotype. | | |
| ▲ | chunky1994 a day ago | parent [-] | | You seem to be imputing a lot of intent into my comment and then extending that to value judgements about smartness etc. I don't know what any of this has to do with what GP was saying. Yeah, there's a balance between questioning everything and questioning nothing, but there are a lot of bureaucratic things that happen in organizations and its generally a good thing to question certain things that don't have clear explanations, isn't there? The doubt was simply about whether or not what GP is saying is smart behaviour to exhibit - Eventually you have to understand something. And part of that process is being wrong and annoying people. is the same behaviour that you are saying you've experienced ( i.e you are talking about different things). I'm not even questioning if you can tell if someone is smart or not - its just obvious that forcing decisions based off things that are not understood is not a smart thing to do - which..we all agree on -, and neither I nor GP were saying people should do this? Maybe I could've phrased it better but my whole point was GP says X, you are saying Y. I think there is a distinction between X and Y and I doubt that the people GP is talking about are the same people you are talking about (hence, smart as you put it vs smart as GP put it). | | |
| ▲ | fidotron a day ago | parent [-] | | I see you don't understand the point, and you're doing that thing of imposing on me trying to help you understand it, which seems highly unlikely to work. Going back, again, to your quote: > I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it And yet that is quite simply exactly what I have seen multiple times in multiple organisations on multiple continents, but for some reason you "doubt" this because it doesn't fit what you think of as "smart behaviour" when spelled out like that, and then spend ages arguing that now there's no intent to this comment? Or any of the others . . . I am going to do what I always end up doing in such situations, of just giving up and walking away, which every normal person does way earlier in proceedings. Ils sont fou ces physiciens. | | |
| ▲ | chunky1994 a day ago | parent [-] | | Its clear that you are taking great offence to that particular quote and determined to misunderstand my point due to your pre-existing bias, despite my many attempts to clarify it, so let me finish the quote for you. I doubt, that someone smart (as you put it) ..and not as GP put it..who..would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it..are..the same people that GP is talking about when they say there are advantages to being "like this". This is no longer fruitful, but I only hope that this thread might to be a reason to more charitable in your interpretation next time regarding such a discussion. |
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| ▲ | bunderbunder a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's possible to step out of your area of expertise in a way that's confident but also humble. Arrogance is not necessary. The person who signs everyone's paychecks might be making it mandatory, but that's not quite the same thing. | |
| ▲ | throwaway2037 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > we treat understanding new systems as something approachable
And, computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers don't? > from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's going on instead of punting and saying it's someone else's turf I'm blocked until they get back to me.
Humblebrag alert! This has little to do with being a physics grad student, and much more to do with your motivation. | | |
| ▲ | neutronicus a day ago | parent [-] | | I guess all I'm doing here is arguing that a little hubris can help a person avoid being timid, and far be it from me to say that computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers have not been imbued with any hubris by their educations. |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | saghm a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can get pretty much all the same benefits with additional upside and fewer downsides by just showing curiosity and eagerness to learn from others' expertise. Yes, on the internet you might get better answers by being confidently wrong rather than asking for help, but when talking to other humans directly you'll get a lot more people who will just try to end the conversation as quickly as they can if you're arrogant, whereas people tend to respond really well to respecting their intelligence and experience. I've personally found that doing the opposite of what you say and being willing to look like the dumbest person in the room by asking whatever questions I need to for my own understanding often ends up working out quite well; people are often wonderfully willing to share their knowledge with me even if I feel like I'm asking something very basic as long as I'm actually being friendly and humble, and there are plenty of times where there have been others who told me they have same question but didn't feel comfortable asking. In some ways, it's similar to when I played bass in two different bands in college. In one of them, I was probably the most talented musician in the group, and it was fairly boring for me to practice with them, but we needed it as a group, whereas the other was with a friend of mine who was an insanely talented guitarist possibly more talented in music than pretty much anyone else I ever met. I loved practicing in the second one because I'd learn so much from him just by exposure and getting to pick his brain, but I imagine it got boring for him sometimes as well having to wait for me to "catch up" to what was easy for him. Being the smartest one in the room feels like it would get old after a while, but having smarter people around to learn from is endlessly engaging. | |
| ▲ | tchalla a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It’s not about being in your lane. It’s about approaching things with an open mind plus the desire to solve the problem instead or proving yourself right. | | |
| ▲ | neutronicus a day ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, I guess my point is that IMO a lot of people have so little interest in solving the problem that they aren't even approaching it at all, open mind or no. It's not my experience that I'm constantly arguing with people, for what it's worth. I get positive feedback for being willing to work on areas of the codebase I'm not already familiar with, and develop an understanding of areas of the codebase no one is familiar with. |
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| ▲ | grey-area a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is quite possible to be wrong and not annoy people, and it's not even terribly difficult to learn. It does require a bit of humility and introspection though. You don't have to not stray into areas you don't understand, but be humble when doing so - if you think something is being done in a stupid way, you probably don't understand it yet. | | |
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