[btrask]

This article does not undermine its own point. In fact, very, very few articles ever undermine their own point. In order to undermine your own point it means you've failed to construct a logical chain of thought. But that is what people do all the time in their daily lives. Maybe children would undermine their own points, or someone posting their first ill-thought comment on Facebook. But I think most people will learn how to construct an argument by their second time publishing one.

In this case, the article is not about 'the joys of being too dumb to breathe'. It's about how 1. looking stupid is not the same as being stupid, and 2. looking stupid can be beneficial in the long run. The author does not need to actually be stupid once in order to support this idea.

And I have to worry if you think he's "bragging" about merely looking stupid, as if that weren't bad enough. Maybe if you identify as stupid I could understand the offense.

To the author, Dan Luu: I like your article and I think you're on the right track!

[wokwokwok]

You can construct an argument that we never landed on the moon if you cherry pick your data carefully.

That’s the point being made here: not that his examples are wrong, that they are cherry picked to support his views.

It may be superficially thought provoking, but it is not compelling as a logical argument.

There are tangible downsides to ignoring expert advice; you are not a god. You cannot be an expert at everything.

It is not possible to be an expert at everything.

Therefore, yes, asking questions to understand a topic is good, but no, ignoring the advice of an expert is not good.

The examples given only show examples where the result of ignoring the expert, or third party advice was positive; it can’t possibly be true that this can be the case in all circumstances, except by sheer good luck.

I whole heartedly agree that asking questions is more important than looking smart… but:

> Overall, I view the upsides of being willing to look stupid as much larger than the downsides. When it comes to things that aren't socially judged, like winning a game, understanding something, or being able to build things due to having a good understanding, it's all upside.

You don’t have to look stupid to be able to do all those things, you just have to be humble and work hard.

[pdonis]

> ignoring the advice of an expert is not good.

If the person actually is an expert, yes. But actual experts, at least outside hard science domains where we can run controlled experiments to nail down theoretical models to the point where the actually do have high predictive accuracy, are much rarer than most people suppose.

For example, the author says he ignored his doctor's advice; but that only counts as ignoring the advice of an expert if his doctor actually was an expert. Most doctors aren't--in fact, one could argue that no doctors are, since nobody has a really good predictive model for medicine. Many doctors know more than at least a fair number of their patients do, but that's a much lower bar to clear than "actual expert". And given the current state of medicine and the availability of information online, it's pretty easy for a reasonably intelligent person to know more than any of their doctors do about their own particular condition--since they both are more interested in accurate information, and have more time to devote to finding it out.

[danielmarkbruce]

> You can construct an argument that we never landed on the moon if you cherry pick your data carefully.

This is a really nice, concise way to make the point you are making. Doesn't it seem like this is the central problem with politics today? Everyone has their own data and everyone is logical. You can't have a functional discussion under such scenario. People don't see any problem with their own logic because there isn't any. People can't definitively show a problem with the other's logic because there isn't any.

[tux3]

The article is interesting, but it fails for me to make a convincing case that looking stupid is necessary, most of the time.

Particularly in interviews, what I'd like to read is a reflection not on how to avoid thinking in the way that results in saying or asking things that sound stupid, but how to keep the same internal process without communicating the results in a way that confuses quite so much.

An analogy: a mathematician proves a non-obvious theorem. In their proof, they skip so many steps that it looks like they say intuitively wrong things.

It is NOT that they should stop thinking of these proofs in the same way, it's merely a failure of communication.