Are You Intellectually Humble?

I’ve noticed in myself and anecdotally in others that a lot of stubbornness in conversation simply comes from the desire for validation. Having someone acknowledge what I’m saying is generally enough to get a conversation moving forward, where ignoring or not responding to my input can cause me to fixate until I recognize what I’m doing and break myself out of it.<p>But if I feel mild validation, even if it is concluded with a “no”, I’m far more likely to consider myself having reacted “humbly” and more openly during the introspection I am forced to have at 3:45am the following morning.<p>Maybe this was all a tangential comment, but that’s the thought that was sparked by this post.

&quot;The outcome of too much humility is that you end up listening to the counsel of some mediocre individual.&quot;<p>Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)

A bit unrelated, but one pet peeve of mine these days is the explosion of humble brag.<p>It used to be a little annoying, but it&#x27;s now everywhere. Name dropping, inserting casually possessions, social status or achievements, using &quot;I&#x27;m humbled by&quot; all the time...<p>Doing your best to not sound pretentious is great. I wish I worked on that way sooner.<p>But faking humility, often badly, is such a mood killer for me.<p>I also think it comes with 2 trends that are rampant in social media, and runs especially deep in the US culture:<p>- adding virtue signaling to every interaction.<p>- using superlative for the most mondain things.<p>It&#x27;s an instant credibility killer for me. But the problem is... for a lot of people, it seems to work.

As a principle I agree with this but some environments make it possible. If your intellectual humility is almost guaranteed to be used against you as weakness and liability then such hostile environments mean you must at least fake arrogance.<p>But in my experience, the rare time it was encouraged to say &quot;i don&#x27;t know&quot; and &quot;I was wrong&quot; were also the times when I was around the most competent and talented people.

&quot;I, too, am extraordinarily humble.&quot;

EDIT - formatting poetry for Hacker News is tough...<p>- Humility -<p>Humility is not letting someone win<p>or pretending not to care when you lose.<p>It is not feigned ignorance or polite dishonesty.<p>Humility is not a trick to gain approval,<p>nor is it an abdication of your pride.<p>---<p>Humility is a stand taken to the end<p>with passion; an opinion that you choose<p>and live by with conviction and integrity,<p>but if shown to be in error in part or full,<p>and that the truth not be on your side...<p>---<p>you change your mind.<p>---<p>And furthermore you admit it publicly<p>and you learn from it internally.<p>Never let passion to stand up for truth fade.<p>Don&#x27;t let desire for becoming right be outweighed<p>by undeserved pride.<p>---<p>Sincere pride,<p>real humility,<p>true integrity;<p>they are one and the same.<p>---<p>The true integrity is tough and admits its errors<p>Value your sincerity enough to live your values<p>Only then is real pride obtained<p>or the admiration of anyone,<p>whose opinion is worth a damn,<p>gained.

I like to think so, but I sure detest the fake humble people, who deny that they know <i>anything</i>. This whole &quot;I know nothing, like, not even that 1+1=2&quot; kind of attitude or this borderline &quot;the universe is holy and I must be in awe of it because it makes me sound deep and that I am humble, when really this is all a show to make others think that I&#x27;m intellectually humbler than they are.&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t know if that makes sense to anyone else, but I just think there&#x27;s a lot of overweening fake humbleness going on. &quot;Oh, the universe is so big, how can we be so arrogant that we think we know everything, the universe is a wonderous place and we are so small and limited, and blah, blah, blah.&quot; Yeah, I get it already. Heard it the first million times how wonderous you think the universe is and how loudly and strenuously you proclaim to know nothing because you <i>heard</i> it is cool to say that you don&#x27;t know nothing about nothing.<p>It&#x27;s like humble bragging, but humble humbling.<p>I mean, we know that the entire universe&#x27;s matter is made up of the periodic table through spectroscopy (not counting dark matter, just &quot;regular&quot; matter). It&#x27;s not like there&#x27;s going to be whisky atoms or pizza atoms so that there&#x27;s just a lake of whisky somewhere. You are not going to be able to have animals made of Xenon or Argon or Neon or any of the other noble inert gases.<p>I think there is a lot of shit to learn and it is fun and interesting and I love it. But there&#x27;s no reason to act with such fake reverence and like it is a holy universe. It&#x27;s just flucking stuff that we need to learn about. It&#x27;s not a god to pray to.<p>Do you all hate me now that I&#x27;m ruining all your universe reverence?<p>I don&#x27;t know, man, it just bugs me to no end the whole &quot;we know nothing&quot; bow your head in fake humility thing so you can fit into the &quot;I don&#x27;t know crowd&quot; and be a popular cool kid, too.

&quot;Knowing you are a dumbass is the path to doing a bunch clever shit&quot; - Sun Tzu, 1999

Intellectually humble people is a rarity these days, In contrast you have an abundance of [1]Intellectual bullies which are very popular toxic crowd in places like twitter&#x2F;reddit and sadly even on HN.<p>[1]<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paul-m-jones.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;2008&#x2F;11&#x2F;07&#x2F;patterns-of-intellectual-bullies&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paul-m-jones.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;2008&#x2F;11&#x2F;07&#x2F;patterns-of-intellec...</a>

I&#x27;ve found that too much humility gets you bullied, or people try to take advantage of you, instead of playing nice.<p>I&#x27;m talking about in the workplace, but it&#x27;s been consistent at every place I&#x27;ve worked. I have to act slightly like an asshole otherwise people come at me like wolves.

Some of the comments here discuss humbleness in general, which is different from what this post is about. The article talks about being intellectually humble, and defines it as the ability to self reflect and accept the possibility that you are wrong.<p>It is different from the standard context of being humble, which is usually to avoid bragging about own&#x27;s success. Being able to accept own&#x27;s mistakes, even when you&#x27;re sure you&#x27;re right, is another, big, step forward.

I&#x27;m unquestionably so!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonion.com&#x2F;monk-gloats-over-yoga-championship-1819563855" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonion.com&#x2F;monk-gloats-over-yoga-championship-...</a>

I think of the difference between:<p>Tim Cook: &quot;We think you&#x27;ll love this.&quot;<p>vs.<p>Steve Jobs: &quot;It&#x27;s insanely great!&quot;<p>Given Apple&#x27;s massive success I think they can afford to be more Cook-like, but a bit of Jobs-style fire, egomania, overconfidence and iconoclasm might help out when you&#x27;re trying to transform an industry like PCs (Macintosh, iMac), audio players (iPod), or smartphones (iPhone). Though Jobs also had the seemingly (but not actually) humble &quot;one more thing...&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t see a lot of humility - intellectual or otherwise - in Elon Musk, for example. But Musk&#x27;s arrogance, like Jobs&#x27;, is also backed up by ability to actually do things. And the ability to change one&#x27;s mind, especially in the face of evidence, seems to be important.<p>I have also observed that effective self-promotion moves some people ahead of their humbler but more qualified peers.

Given that I have failed more in life than succeeded, I don&#x27;t really have much of a choice in the matter.

When I am great enough to be humble, you&#x27;ll know. I like the sentiment of the article, though I have become personally suspicious of much self effacement. Most of being smart is being open to becoming smarter, which means actively seeking out having your mind changed. Being wrong in public is one of the fastest ways to get elusive answers as well, though admittedly the openness can deprive people of the satisfaction of correcting you, and they can quickly stop offering solutions and become resentful. Sticking your neck out on being stupid often yields commensurate rewards in the correction. Counter to the effacing humility prescribed by the article, I&#x27;d propose being bold in your questions and initiative at trying things yourself and being so terrible at them that someone sees what you are trying to do and corrects it. YMMV, but while humility gets reliable results in small groups (and I do value and respect it), I&#x27;d defy anyone to give an example of something that scales faster than being stupid. I would ask whether it&#x27;s the confidence or obliviousness for acting and iterating in ignorance that yields experience.

Exodus 20:3 (KJV) &quot;thou shalt have no other gods before me&quot;. As a Christian I&#x27;m forbidden form holding any belief that isn&#x27;t directly in the bible and not a provable fact. It is amazing how many people claim to believe the bible, but then add a ton of beliefs on top of it that are not from the bible.

The only advantage I see at beeing humble is that it does not offend people with low self-esteem. One only needs to say to be good at something or to be proud of something to trigger some people. More so in Europe than in the States I think.

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”

Reminds me of James 1:19 &quot;... Everyone must be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger&quot;.<p>I&#x27;ve often found this useful to remember when talking to people with different views.

&quot;The most elementary and valuable statement in Science, the beginning of wisdom is: &quot;I do not know. I do not know what that is, Sir.&quot;<p>-Data<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8eDYVtPwWiM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8eDYVtPwWiM</a>

I feel and certainly hope so, but I also feel there have been no positive consequences for it.<p>I think the only positive feedback along these lines (not that it had any positive consequences) was way back when I was a course assistant and instructor during graduate school in mathematics, and it came in the form of student reviews.

But how can a humble person accomplish something extraordinary? At some point, you gotta have faith in what you&#x27;re doing, despite all the opposition.<p>Very rarely are accomplishments made traveling a road strewn with flowers.

Being in software development, I have no choice! Feel like every time I blink there is a new something to learn. After working in this field for 14 years I am still very much a newbie.

One of the most difficult things is to know when it&#x27;s really good to be humble and when it&#x27;s really good to assert yourself. None of them work the whole time.

The only thing greater than my intellect is my humility.

Depends. Vigorous debate and experimenting does not come from humility. It comes from conviction. Humility is an end game, you can only reach for it when you accept that you are wrong (at the end of the argument) and likewise, when you win and don’t parade it and acknowledge the merits of the other side.<p>But during the process, no, there can be no humility. You have to fight.

I didn’t set out to be, but experience has tended to push me in that direction.

I mean, no. I think I&#x27;m humble enough to realize that I&#x27;m not.

I was expecting a quiz :(

No, I&#x27;m just stupid

Does Betteridge&#x27;s law of headlines apply here?<p>&gt; Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

The world is full of leaders who are everything but humble.

no

Good teachers equip you with tools used to dispute their own conclusions. Worldviews should be malleable and subject to change. The ability to see things from different perspectives goes a long way in being able to question rigid thoughts.

I&#x27;m the most humble. Humbler than all y&#x27;all.