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To be clear, I've also run into less intelligent people who commonly make bizarre mistakes, people so dumb they're actively destructive with their foolishness. And some of those people notice I'm kinda smart and try to play the know-it-all game with me, making up stuff that sounds vaguely plausible to sound like they know what they're talking about. My favorite was in a technology class where I wondered aloud why the Internet Protocol skipped from IPv4 to IPv6, and a guy I know is this type started telling me all about how big and important IPv5 was. I looked it up on my phone, and an IPv5 did exist, but it was a special-purpose experiment that was never in common use -- obviously not something this guy knew anything about. Instead of having curiosity with me, and going, "yeah, that sounds like a good question, we should find out!" he took it as an opportunity to fake insight.
When I first started meeting people like this, I found it very surprising, because it confused me why people would actively fake knowledge instead of being straightforward -- you know, "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." But once I met a few, the pattern became clear; once someone starts being like this, you'll notice them doing it all the time. I usually let people get away with a few of these moments simply because I'm interpersonally trusting, but once I realize someone's doing it I lose all respect for them as sources of advice and I tend to assume anything that comes out of their mouth is just noise.
Maybe this is just something people do to me, or maybe they think I'm bullshitting all the time and they're just mirroring it, but long story short, it's not always the case that people who did poorly in school understand, or act in accordance with, their limitations. Dumb people are just as capable of intellectual overconfidence as smart people, especially when they believe it will ingratiate them with someone smarter than them. But someone who says, "I don't know -- but I'd like to find out!" presents intellectual curiosity and actually increases my perception of their intelligence.
It fascinates me when academics, interviewed on some high-quality podcasts, reply with a point-blank "I don't know". And only after host adds more explicit hedging and reframes the question as the one aimed at best guess (instead of what they've probably been taught to perceive as "give me an up-to-date overview of the field on this question" query) they respond with an account, naturally transcending a median listener's knowledge on the topic by a large margin. Such public talks seem like a promising venue to instill (or at least popularize) the courage of admitting your ignorance.
I remember such a thing happening in a podcast (or maybe radio program? its been a while) where they had a group of physicists on a "popular science" format to speak about some new thing that was breaking in their field. The only one I remember was Lawrence Krauss (b/c he was actually a professor of mine in college). There was the back and forth like you describe, and eventually the host was able to get a fairly detailed answer to his question, after which he asked the guest if they could possibly simplify the explanation for "the folks listening at home". After a brief pause Dr. Krauss simply replied: "no".
Nice example. I think it's a decent stance. Compressing models/theories is always lossy and it takes a special skill to map them onto simpler models/metaphors, while keeping predictive power intact. If you are unsure how to do this, don't do this.
Sounds cool. What was the experience like?
I was a 100s level physics class for non-physics majors, mostly comp sci people with a scattering of others who took it for fun or it counted as a required elective. Apparently it was a special pet class of his that he'd been working on for a while. It was pretty low stress with the grade being mostly based on attendance and participation. He did miss a lot of the classes himself though. In fact, by his own attendance policy he would have failed the class by missing about 30% of them. I do remember he had a 80s era red Corvette that really stuck out in the staff lot and was a good indicator he was actually there that day.
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What podcasts like this do you recommend?
Disclaimer: although I consider them high-quality by various proxy measures, ultimately I don't have enough knowledge to assess most of their takes.
Off the top of my head:
There is more, of course. Speaking of literal examples (from CwT):
Claudia Goldin:
Joseph Henrich
Paul Graham:
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