[kevinalexbrown]

What the article doesn't mention is that the smartest of people perpetually ask themselves questions regarding what they believe they understand. It is remarkably easy to convince yourself you understand something - a mathematical proof, the Halting Problem, advantages of some programming framework/style/language, when you're really just going through the motions and remembering what others have said, kind of memorizing the proof rather than reproducing it. "Of course I understand how genetics work, there are genes and codons and RNA, and DNA helicase, etc" - I can say that, without any ounce of extra understanding. Often I see this in mathematically oriented people who know how to perform X data mining trick, but have no idea how it works. That's perfectly fine - you don't always need to understand everything to use it - but sometimes it breeds an arrogance. When people have a lot of success without knowing the inner workings, they'll sometimes view questions about them as pedantic at best.

But the article does hit dead on that smart people don't just ask questions about things they don't understand themselves. They ask questions that challenge what the world believes to be settled, 'obvious' and extremely clear.

My favorite How-To-Be-A-Smart-Person-By-Asking-Questions story, about Wittgenstein, from Bertrand Russell:

When I was still doubtful as to his ability, I asked G. E. Moore for his opinion. Moore replied, ‘I think very well of him indeed.’ When I enquired the reason for his opinion, he said that it was because Wittgenstein was the only man who looked puzzled at his lectures. [1]

Incidentally, on the same page, I found perhaps my favorite genius quotation:

The genius is always puzzled by answers, it is the fool who is satisfied by them.

[1] http://readingmarksonreading.tumblr.com/post/2565799967/pg-4...

[GuiA]

Richard Feynman said something to the effect of your first paragraph which stuck with me:

"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."

[thewisedude]

Why is it that knowing what bird does is the only thing that counts? Maybe sometimes knowing the name of the bird in a different language could help - say if you go to a different country and have to communicate in the local language.

I also think its important to question the statements made by smart people. Times changes, what was applicable when the statement was made might not be valid anymore!

[csallen]

  > What the article doesn't mention is that the smartest of people perpetually
    ask themselves questions regarding what they believe they understand. It is
    remarkably easy to convince yourself you understand something... when you're
    really just going through the motions

This reminds reminds me of a good quote from Charlie Munger:

"Above all, never fool yourself, and remember that you are the easiest person to fool."

[redschell]

Hey, did he take that from Richard Feynman, or was Feynman first with the quote: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

[mhartl]

It's a quote from "Cargo Cult Science" (p. 313 of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!):

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. —Richard Feynman

[rokhayakebe]

Curious. Did you remember the page of the top or did you look it up?

[mhartl]

I have every page of Surely You're Joking memorized.

Bazinga.

[rokhayakebe]

I am adding you to my list of heroes.

[csallen]

It's very possible (likely) that it originally came from Feynman. Munger quotes him often.

[gwern]

Given the relative timelines, and my own citation in my quote collection to Feynman, I'm happy assigning a very high probability to it being Feynman.

[mark_h]

I think this is also why "the best way to learn something is to have to teach it", or at least that's what I've found. When you start imagining what questions you might get asked, you begin uncovering all sorts of holes in your understanding, even if it's something you thought you understood but suddenly realise you couldn't explain.

[agumonkey]

Keen to 'you dont know something til you have to program it'

[robertskmiles]

Two halves of the same coin. Programming something is 'teaching' a computer to do it. Except a computer is in many ways the dumbest student possible; you have to spell everything out for it.

[lurker17]

In other ways it's also the smartest student possible: It never forgets or misunderstands what you tell it (unless you instruct it to forget something, or you don't say what you actually mean.)

[Natsu]

Taking something apart can also work for this. But it might require that you're the sort of person who is able to put it back together again afterwards.

[instakill]

Asking questions of yourself is a good way, in my opinion, to counter the Dunning-Kruger effect, should you unknowingly suffer from it.

[Natsu]

> The genius is always puzzled by answers, it is the fool who is satisfied by them.

That's so true.

He must have noticed that confusion implies learning. After all, it shows that they've encountered unexpected input and are trying to integrate with all the other things they know. If they're not confused, they expected or ignored the answers.

[gbog]

Confucius was as a good asker of questions too, but even better is he knew when to not ask questions. Maybe that's the supreme sagesse. For instance questions about afterlife our special beings are better avoided, as are questions about programming language choice in a Ruby or Python shop.

[numeromancer]

Why?