Hacker News Reader

I really don't see how being that assertive is compatible with intellectual humility, short of actively lying. There will come a time where people expect you to state something firmly, and you will have to either say "the evidence isn't definitive" or be dishonest.

Edit: of course you can often be assertive about some things while being intellectually humble. But what I mean to say is that the level of assurance that is expected of a CEO is not compatible with that humility.

Think of a room full of assertive people. They hold their beliefs strongly but they /argue/. In a productive way. That way everything comes out on the table, so a decision can be made with everyone being heard, and even though your view may not be the final decision you get a better outcome.

An assertive person could easily say, firmly and with confidence, that "I don't have an opinion on this topic, because the evidence isn't definitive." If you can't do that, then there is something in your scenario that's incompatible with intellectual honesty, but it's not assertiveness -- more likely, it's a feeling of needing to satisfy the expectations of others that you will have an opinion. That feeling is like antimatter for intellectual honesty, but it's totally different from assertiveness.

They can do that, but my observation is that they will loose to some who says: "I know this is better choice and the other choice is shitty". The latter is more likely to be promoted and will be assumed to be more competent - means his opinions will be taken more seriously and will get more interesting tasks.

You can be intellectually humble, assertive AND have a opinion. They are not at all mutually exclusive.

I was talking about situation when available evidence is not conclusive. Confidently stating opinion and then insisting on it makes people look more skilled then those who assertively state that we need to research more. Having and pushing opinion in that situation is opposite of being "intellectually humble", but still good for your career.

Intellectually humble people have disadvantage in competition, although they may make better technical decisions.

That is not the definition that I perceived from the article. Maybe you are thinking of "Intellectually honest"? What I read was basically that Intellectually humble people are non-dogmatic; they will change their opinions and evaluation if and when new facts show their opinion as being incorrect; but they aren't restricted from forming an opinion in the absence of concrete facts, as you seem to be assuming.

> [is being assertive] compatible with intellectual humility short of actively lying

I think so. There are a few humble people at the top. Take Lincoln. He wasn't ethically perfect but set the bar pretty damn high for both success and humility.

In your example the only choices are be definitive or lie, but are many choices in between.

Check out Merkel's statement about Trump right after the election. She's supposed to congratulate and welcome the new leader of a close western ally. Truth is she's disgusted, is she forced to lie? I think she did a great job not damaging the relationship with her statement, while still signaling her concerns.

"Being outwardly assertive and confident wins elections and grants, but is not at odds with ability to internally re-evaluate one's beliefs"

Incorrect. They are absolutely at odds. You have never noticed that at the times you are most sure of yourself it's easier to appear externally confident and assertive? Compared to times that you have self doubt?

Maybe it's fair to say it doesn't necessarily impact how you project confidence, but sure doesn't mean they not at odds, and sure can mean it requires expending a lot more energy.

Secondly you are misreading the leadership quote. You say it's ok for a leader to dismiss an idea already evaluated, which is true. However the quote refers to leaders who do not listen to suggestions, which very different and certainly poor leadership when given no other context to justify not listening.

> Incorrect. They are absolutely at odds. You have never noticed that at the times you are most sure of yourself it's easier to appear externally confident and assertive? Compared to times that you have self doubt?

I disagree. You can harbor uncertainties and doubts about the outcome yet still be confident of the course of action you must take.

My aunt recently had a brain injury and I was the only family available to attend to her. I had to choose between letting her die or opting for a controversial surgery that also carried a risk of mortality, little chance of improving her condition, and the possibility of incurring a lot of debt.

I was uncertain, scared, yet also confident that some attempt to save her should be made.

I believe you misread, I did not say it wasn't possible, in fact I explicitly allowed that is possible.

The claim is that in general they are forces at odds and in most of those situations in takes more energy to project confidence or assertiveness.

However I am glad you were able to be strong for your aunt.

You can be 100% confident of your position given the information available, but still be willing to re-evaluate your position when new information arrives. This second quality is intellectual humility.

I understand the leadership quote, but I find it interesting that the author did not go into the nuances of why leaders might not listen to suggestions, instead sending the reader down the garden path of "all suggestions are worth hearing", which I believe to be false.

You can have P(your position | information available) = 1 all you want but in practice that's a useless proposition, nearing a tautology. In practice you (should) know that you don't know everything and must take that into account. As Rumsfeld famously stated, you should even know there are things you don't know you don't know.

>I understand the leadership quote

Not quite, there is a subtle but meaningful distinction. You are inferring the author to mean "all suggestions are worth hearing" or that good leaders should not be able to "dismiss" suggestions. Neither of these is stated or has context to be implied.

The quote should simply be taken at face value to mean generally speaking leaders should "listen to other people's suggestions", and take a variety of perspectives into account.

Appearing confident externally while remaining open-minded internally is a learned skill, and you absolutely can make it second-nature.

Learning it is intimately tied in with learning self-awareness & emotional intelligence, and I suspect that different people all use different mental tricks to get there, depending on how they're wired up there and what their value systems are. But for me, the key breakthrough was understanding that everything is inherently uncertain; you'll never be 100% sure of any mental model in your head, because they are, ultimately, just models of the world. But my raison d'etre is to find out which of my mental models of the world is correct, and which of them should be discarded. Your opinions are taken more seriously when they're expressed confidently; they have more of a chance to impact the world around you, and only through impacting the world will you get feedback about whether they're correct. Therefore, if I want to prove my models wrong, the best way to act is to assume that they're right. Once they are proven wrong it's not worth holding on to them any more, but as long as they exist in the grey area of maybe-wrong-maybe-right, just assume that they're right and see what happens.

I did not say it wasn't possible, in fact I explicitly allowed that is possible.

The claim is that in general they are forces at odds and in most of those situations in takes more energy to project confidence or assertiveness.

I think I would otherwise mostly agree with your post, that it is a skill that can be improved with practice, and to different degrees in different people.

Hmm, I really like your method of forming mental models. I think there are a lot of non-rational reasons why people like to hold on to certain mental models, even if they may not be accurate. This seems like a very rational way of testing mental models.

One of the important realizations as an adult for me was that there was nothing inherent about these mental models. They are, after all, paradigms and they can most certainly be changed. Well, now that I use that word, I think that realization came from reading Covey's 7 habits book.

The article also states that they were unable to find any meaningful differences between poilitical ideologies and intellectual humility, yet they go on to state

> "They were also less likely to criticize that politician for “flip-flopping.” There was less variability among Democrats: Democrats, whether intellectually arrogant or humble, were generally less likely to criticize a politician for changing his mind."

Completely refuting that point only a few paragraphs later. I think that this study, like all social science research, must be taken with an extreme grain of salt.

I don't think it's contradicting itself at all. It's saying (1) there's no strong correlation between ideology and intellectual humility, by their measures, and (2) while intellectual humility generally correlated with not criticizing a politician for flip-flopping, Democrats across the board we're also less likely to criticize.

Saying that correlation 2 is not string (because humbleness is not a good predictor of not-criticizing asking Democrats) does not negate point 1.

> Intellectual humility was associated with a greater willingness to believe and vote for a candidate who changed his position on an issue. Being open to the possibility of changing their own beliefs, people higher in intellectual humility view such behaviors more positively when observed in others. Interestingly, however, the effect was obtained only for participants who identified themselves as Republicans even though intellectual humility scores did not differ among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.

(DOI: 10.1177/0146167217697695)

It's very badly written, but it says that correlation 2 is present only among Republicans. Which, as you said, doesn't negate point 1, but it's still a weird and interesting result.

I'd have thought adherence to ideology is the opposite of the humility described. I've met free market capitalists and revolutionary socialists that refuse to accept anything but their view on what's best for society by and large, which is the strict adherence to the tenets of their ideologies.

Is it possible to buy into only parts of an ideology or is it actually just pragmatic and a display of humility in accepting that some parts of an ideology may work in some situations?

>Is it possible to buy into only parts of an ideology

Yes. One example is Christianity.

>is it actually just pragmatic and a display of humility in accepting that some parts of an ideology may work in some situations?

Yes. In fact good science requires that practioners be willing to consider that new ideas that may possibly be contradictory and superior to their own. Not sure why for some of us this seems the obvious and only logical way to proceed while many will spend a lifetime not realizing it.

Thank you :) the point I was hoping to make is whether a choice can be considered ideological if it is compatible with an ideology but yet chosen purely for pragmatic reasons?

Very difficult to word. I often thought pragmatism is at odds with ideologism.

Oh I see, then forget the first reply. :)

My take would be no, it's definitely not ideological in that case. On a macro scale war comes to mind. In WWII would you agree countries had a lot of pragmatic motivations unrelated to Nazi ideology?

Individually what about something as simple as being a vegetarian? Motivation could be ideological like religion or choosing not to harm animals, but some just see it as a healthy life style.

It is not contradicting. Republicans are more likely to criticize politicians for changing their minds, but it is not because they would be less humble. That does not contradict finding that hubleness and dislike for flip flop are correlated, it just says that there are other factors in play.

> Being outwardly assertive and confident absolutely wins elections and grants, but this is not at odds with an ability to internally re-evaluate one's beliefs

Sure - except if one is outwardly confident about something that they're actually not completely sure about, it implies that they aren't concerned about the possibility of misleading people. This seems diametrically opposed to being humble.

Ok, here's a "Peter Thiel" secret: The display of confidence today is simply a tool that can be used to motivate, rally, and comfort your followers, for good or bad, in a more visceral and emotional way than intellectual argument alone. I believe that most very successful people who display confidence know this, and can correctly interpret other people's displays of confidence as a deliberate use of this tool.

This is not an evil thing per se, because this is simply how human motivation works -- if a leader is intellectually sound but always externalizing caveats and risks, verbally or non-verbally, he will be less effective than a leader who is equally intellectually sound but uses all the motivational tools at his disposal.

Your comment doesn't address what I said. I did not claim that being non-humble was "evil", and effectiveness is orthogonal.

Yes leaders who manipulate and say half truth are more successful. That does not make them more ethical - they are as unethical as I would be if I lied (for example about worked hours on timesheet or about status of the project).

We wouldn't get anywhere if everyone had to worry about every issue. Do you know about the concept called "clean code"? The idea is that our mental capacity is limited so we should try to reduce the amount of things you need to think about to solve a problem. High level interfaces like JavaScript might mislead people but they are still preferable to forcing everyone to bother with the gritty details of machine instructions.

Similarly when we teach things we start with simple concepts and hide the ugly truths. The simplified versions might be wrong, but they are easier to learn and true enough to be useful. There have been many attempts to stop teaching those half truths and just go to the meaty concepts directly, but all of them have proven to be worse than just teaching half truths first. Thus it seems like people are good at handling being misled and later update their understanding to fit new data.