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Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

Then I'm confused: how can you a) hastily dismiss all self-doubt as Impostor Syndrome and b) believe "no one knows what they're doing either" while remaining able to accurately, honestly self-assess your skill, quality of work, and prospects for success?

Edit: If you have a good answer, then I would suggest we start posting that as the advice ("here's how you know if you're good enough") rather than immediately tell everyone they have they have Impostor Syndrome (as seems to be common practice).

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To me, "zero self-doubt" and "nobody knows what they're doing" are predictive hypotheses that can be falsified by future experience, when you get beat. I guess if you're talking about a psychopathic condition where your self-doubt bit is hard-wired to 0, then yeah you're not going to be able to assess your progress.

Those folks exist, but I meet plenty of basically honest people who are arrogant before experience and humbled after. Far more than the raging narcissists who will do what Holmes is accused of, though those get attention.

As a recent dad, I think a lot about sending my guys into a world with 10B people in it, moving incredibly fast publicizing accomplishments (real and otherwise) in ways that make it seem like every niche is filled up. It's clear to me that irreverence for status quo and honesty with themselves are going to be equally important in them finding a niche for themselves.

What's the original referent of your impostor syndrome comment? As I see the term used, it generally means "I'm an impostor among this crowd of other people who do actually know what they're doing," not "I am unable to do this thing that nobody has ever done."

That is, if you believe that you can't learn kernel hacking, that's (potentially) impostor syndrome. Lots of people have in fact learned kernel hacking, you can learn it too. Your self-doubt about it is based on (falsely) thinking that you are individually incapable of doing a thing plenty of others have done. But if you believe you can't build a perpetual motion machine, that's just thermodynamics. Nobody has built a perpetual motion machine, and doubt about your ability to do so (which isn't really self-doubt) will be quickly confirmed by a survey of the literature.

>That is, if you believe that you can't learn kernel hacking, that's (potentially) impostor syndrome. Lots of people have in fact learned kernel hacking, you can learn it too.

No, the fact that others have learned it is not (strong) evidence that you can learn it too; you would need to know how similar you are to those people, and whether those dimensions are relevant.

IOW, exactly the diagnostic criteria I suggest we search for rather than immediately skip to "so what, other people thought that too".

>Your self-doubt about it is based on (falsely) thinking that you are individually incapable of doing a thing plenty of others have done.

That's generally not what is happening in practice. People don't de novo say "I can't ever do this". Rather, they attempt (or otherwise survey) it, find difficulties ("I can't consistently understand how the stack is doing that"), see others that have no similar difficulties ("what? It would have taken me a day to work through that and it comes naturally to you"), and on that basis conclude that they're unlikely to succeed as well.

"You have Impostor Syndrome" doesn't make any headway on the core problem.

> Then I'm confused: how can you a) hastily dismiss all self-doubt as Impostor Syndrome and b) believe "no one knows what they're doing either" while remaining able to accurately, honestly self-assess your skill, quality of work, and prospects for success?

IDK, I feel like that's a sweet spot most people hit at the end of a PhD. Enough confidence in yourself that you can expend lots of resources trying hard things.

Enough humility to recognize that you'll probably fail at most of those things.

And most importantly, the project management, risk management, and communication skills to hedge your big bets.

Enough experience working with top-tier people to know that all of these things are learnable skills that other successful folks are using (including fields medalists and including high-school dropouts).

Maybe there's a difference between the "informed arrogance" of a researcher working on an open problem in their field (or a serial entrepreneur trying to disrupt a huge industry) and the "uninformed arrogance" of a charlatan, hack, or (in this case) fraudster?

All the less imposter syndrome to jettison if you ask me. If everyone is an idiot than self doubt is normal.

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