I routinely tell my mentees, “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer
“I dont know” may be perfectly acceptable, but the mark of great people is “let me go find out, and get back to you”
It’s OK to have an opinion. We all have them. Just remember to STFU when you’re uninformed. Or whenever you want to.
any number of people way smarter then I
It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves. - Franz Kafka
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell
the older I get i realise the less I know, which is the wisdom age should bring
You forgot Josh Billings, “It ain’t what you don’t know that’s the problem. It’s what you know that isn’t so.”
You’re also going to want to keep some version of “and I don’t trust that your explanation will be unbiased” in your back pocket.
And don’t waste your time on people that refuse to take that as an answer
The people who won’t take that as an answer are usually people who want to benefit from you having the opinion they want you to have. Even if it’s not an opinion that they, themselves, espouse.
I’m of the opinion that we’ve been specifically trained to be proud of our uninformed opinions, since that makes us easier to fool and exploit, but I don’t know enough to verify it.
As a society, we tend to punish people for being intellectually honest, while rewarding those who can feign confidence.
I’ve been calling it BS my whole life and people heckle me for it.
I witnessed an example of this today while driving my daughter and her friend.
My daughter pointed at a horse and said “look the horse is in gallop!”
Her friend who wants to be the self proclaimed all-knowing horse expert immediately responded: “That’s because…” and then didn’t know how to continue the sentence. Eventuelly she ended it with “the horse is training there.”
She never wanted to make a point. She just wanted to take charge of the sentence about the topic that she wanted to be the authority on.
Ever listen to CEOs talk? We’ve rewarded those that say incorrect things with so much confidence. People who are shameless about being probably wrong seem to get ahead and face almost no consequences.
I know a bit of political and social History and your theory does appear to hold up to scrutiny but I’m no scholar dedicated to it
Yeah culturally we would need people to accept the answer in the post, but in practice you quickly see someone pivot to then explaining why their opinion is what you should hold because the following bias information they use.
That will happen by those who are greedy, but also those who want to help people.
When someone honestly believes that switching to EVs would have somehow caused chaos, then telling someone not to buy an EV wasn’t necessarily them trying to hurt things, they believe they are doing the right thing.
Lol, yes, but you are capable, you see the dualistic systems want us to stay in tribal right/wrong thinking, and not advance farther up Perry’s Scheme. Some get to stage 3-4 both sides have some merit, but fall back to dualism to feel safe. Real convictions and the truth is harder, takes real integrity, but the truth stands up to scrutiny, unlike the unfalsifiable, flimsy lies and propaganda so many stuck in dualism cling to. They fit in the conditional group that way, and critical thinking is hard and are told not to question, so they don’t.
also “this is my opinion, but I really don’t know much about the matter”
We need to vote in elected representatives who are willing to admit this.
To paraphrase Paul Krugman, politicians are often more easily swayed by well-dressed lobbyists than nerdy economists.
George W. Bush was infamous for this. He believed he was smart about everything, but then was swayed by particularly emphatic advisors. And soon he was surrounded by emphatic lobbyists.
Today we’re watching as Dunning–Kruger effect takes hold, since Trump believes he’s the smartest man in the room, and is remarkably easy to manipulate by foreign assets. In fact, it’s such an issue it should be regarded as a national security crisis.
I guess this all to say, don’t be like Bush or Trump.
General problem. The same thing in science, negative results (tried this, didn’t work) are extremely valuable but not publishable in general, relegated to lab lore. So people constantly re-invent the wheel. Sucks.
“I don’t know enough to have an opinion… so I’m just not going to vote”
And you wonder how we ended up with Trump in 24. I’m sorry, but that phrase works for a lot of things except politics where it’s your civic duty to educate yourself.
Theres plenty of things going on in the world for 11 months a year that im not up to date on to have a political opinion on. That doesnt mean that i dont vote.
These two things are not mutually inclusive
I mean if the trump voters could admit that we’d be ok
How about “… so I’ll read up on it and let you know what I find out.”
Phrase works fine if it’s a starting point, not if it’s an end state.
People will still say that isn’t enough and that you need to have a strong stance regardless of your knowledge
People can have an opinion, but recognise the edges of their knowledge limiting that opinion.
I noticed the “I need to have an opinion on every single thing” mentality more when I lived in the US, I wonder if anyone else had a similar experience
I do say this. Maybe not exact words, but it’s wild that it isn’t common?
My main problem is that I use this when my bar of knowing enough is so high. I forget that people be just saying things with only knowing some of the words in the premise and my kindergartner knows more about the subject. And she isn’t too solid on what units of time mean or irregular verb tenses
We should still do it. Lead the brainlets by example
I searched through my comment history, and I’ve done it enough times on here that there are a number of examples
Ironically, I also argued in favor of sharing uninformed opinions once 😄 In my defense, it was about responding to questions when asked, rather than going out of your way to share an opinion
