Willingness to look stupid

looking stupid takes courage, and sometimes it’s easier to just let things slide. It is striking how many situations I am in where I start asking basic questions, feel guilty for slowing the group down, and it turns out that nobody understood what was going on to begin with

Stupidity is the cost of intelligence operating in a complex environment.
I defined stupidity as overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information.

Two domains engineer stupidity:
One is benign: magic. The magician misdirects your attention. The whole goal of the magician is to make you stupid, to not notice something you should have. The o... See more

“So many advantages come from being willing to look like an idiot in the short term.

You stay silent in an important meeting, afraid to voice critical thoughts and watch the project fail. You don’t write the novel because you’re afraid people might not read it. You don’t admit you were wrong and repeatedly make the same mistake. You don’t ask the pe... See more