Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

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Some of the most intelligent, knowledgeable, respected-in-their-field distant family members of mine are like that. I've spent decade trying to figure it out, because selfishly it's terrifying and I don't want it happening to me.

One thing that seems to be common and is my working hypothesis, is that they're so smart and so respected in their field (or, in subset of cases, arrogant), that they simply trust themselves more than anybody else. There is nobody in their family and friends who can truly "slap some sense into them"; provide perspective, course-correct, nudge into objective reality or mainstream story, whatever we call it. I've actually asked a couple of them point blank - and they admitted, nope, there's nobody that they trust more than themselves. Couple of them even said - if you don't have trust and faith in yourself, you're weak.

So I'm hoping I'm somewhat inoculated against going off the deep end by having at least 3 people in my life (wife, sister, and one good friend) who can, and have, slapped some sense into me when I was going off the rails.

I was reading a book on cognitive biases recently and the part that really stuck for me was: The smarter you are, the more likely you are to fall prey to the Narrative Bias/Fallacy.

Super smart people are so good at constructing plausible narratives that they can convince themselves of almost anything. You have to actively look for ways to disprove your own narratives. This is hard because they sound so plausible.

What book was that? I'd be interested in giving it a read.

Looking at my Audible history it was either Think Again by Adam Grant or Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg. Can't remember exactly.

Much obliged.

Perfect; that sounds like exactly what I've observed - in others as well as myself - but I did not have a name, so now I can google better, thx :)

(any recommendations on that specific book?)

So smart people don't know when they're wrong because they're smart enough to convince themselves that they're right, and dumb people don't know when they're wrong, because they're too dumb to see how dumb they're being. We can't win.

Yes, I think the lesson to take away is that you want not only to be smart, but also wise and humble. Wise enough to realize you need to poke holes in your ideas, humble enough to fix your hypothesis when facts change.

>wise and humble...you need to poke holes in your ideas...

But where does critical thinking come in? Seens there should be a heuristic or generalized approach for deciding what to believe. Epistemology, I suppose.

And this should all preface the formation of our ideas in the first place.

protip: you can do this without being overwhelmingly smart, too. You need only be smart enough to convince yourself

> You have to actively look for ways to disprove your own narratives

Socratic Method is one way, I can recommend "The Socratic Method - A Practitioners Handbook" by Ward Farnsworth.

I'd argue that there is no nobody you should trust more than yourself. This does not mean disregarding expertise or imagining that you know, or can know, everything. But the moment that you grant final primacy over your own thoughts to somebody other than yourself is the moment that that person can make you believe, and consequently act, in nearly any way. And, at scale, that's quite a disconcerting thought.

When people trust themselves above all it means we'll never have a utopia because we all can't help but believing some pretty stupid stuff at times. But at the same time we'll never have an absolute dystopia, because the diversity of thought ensures we'll never all fall off the deep end, or be pushed off it, together.

You shouldn't need someone you trust more than yourself to slap sense into you. You should view someone whom you trust strongly (but less strongly than your own thoughts) arguing hard as an indicator, even if you disagree with them. You should be able to ask "Why do we disagree", and trace that back to (hopefully) some simple but core value difference, like "I like hotdogs and they like hamburgers".

Your trust in someone also doesn't need to apply equally on all topics. I'm much likelier to trust a virologist over myself about virology than about the best way to cook pasta.

Science, as a discipline, is all about not trusting yourself because you can fool yourself easily if you're not careful.

This is kinda a weird take to me, because I don't see "trust someone else more than yourself" as equivalent to "grant final primacy over your own thoughts to someone else".

I trust myself very little when it comes to many topics, because I have next to zero expertise in them, and I know that "common sense" often does not lead us to good decisions on topics where we have little understanding. That doesn't mean I'm going to outsource decision-making to others who are experts on those topics, but I am probably going to most often do what they say, after applying their information to my own situation and determining what seems reasonable and doable.

As an example, I will most likely get the Omicron-tuned COVID vaccine when it becomes available, assuming the relevant experts I trust say that it's a good idea. I have no idea if I really need it, but the non-zero threat of long COVID, coupled with the fact that we still know fairly little about the long-term effects of having contracted COVID, means I would rather face the very low risk of vaccine complications than increase my risk of getting COVID, with the attendant risk of it being something that causes lingering health problems for some significant part of my life. I won't be outsourcing my decision-making to a third party, but I recognize that I do not trust my expertise in this field (since I do not have any), and will allow those with expertise to heavily inform my decision.

It's not binary; it's not like I'm promoting being in a cult and surrendering your rights to thoughts and opinions :->

On a daily and regular basis, I trust myself, my thought process, experience, rationale, etc. I spent decades consciously honing my analytical and logical skills and I will spend lifetime continuing to do so. And it serves me well.

But, I believe, there needs to be a "safety valve". A "who watches the watchmen", somebody to provide a sanity check on your own rationale and story and narrative and thought process, which left alone can take you from first principle to lala-land, one seemingly logical step at the time, over years if needed. There needs to be an external influence/person who can, if situation calls for it, help you see things from an external yet trustworthy perspective, when your internal narrative, the "personal story of your life", starts strongly diverging from objective consensus reality.

(on a deeply personal note, I'll freely admit my sister did that for me ~15 years ago - after for a year or so I spun an increasingly personal internal narrative about something in my life, with a short but incisive comment, she momentarily enabled me to see myself through her eyes, and not love what I saw, and get that instant split-vision of my narrative and external narrative of what and why and how and whence I am where and how I am. Anybody else, I would've discarded or been defensive or otherwise ignored it. And I see many people around who desperately need a "grounding" or "reality check" or "slapping sense into" or "righting the boat" or whatever we choose to call it, but don't have anybody that can reach them. )

A key element should be the willingness to accept that one could be wrong when the evidence supports that conclusion.

And I'd take this a step further -- the ability to unlearn/reprogram is a mark of intelligence, but ego definitely factors in as well.

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