on humility

When it comes down to it, when has humanity ever known what it was doing?

The second was a point from David Foster Wallace’s iconic This Is Water speech: Whatever you worship will eventually eat you alive. “If you worship money and things…then you will never feel you have enough,” he writes. “Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will di

People who are intellectually humble know that their beliefs, opinions, and viewpoints are fallible because they realize that the evidence on which their beliefs are based could be limited or flawed or that they may not have the expertise or ability to understand and evaluate the evidence. Intellectual humility involves understanding that we can’t

Because they realize that their beliefs might be wrong, intellectually humble people pay more attention to the quality of the evidence on which their beliefs are based.

people higher in intellectual humility were more interested in understanding the reasons that people disagree with them.

Intellectual humility is also associated with the desire to learn new information. People who are high in intellectual humility score higher in epistemic curiosity, which is the motivation to pursue new knowledge and ideas. Their higher curiosity seems to be motivated both by the fact they enjoy learning new information and by the distress they fee

Even after only 30 minutes of interaction, people rate those who are high in intellectual humility more positively than those who are low. Ironically, know-it-alls often don’t seem to know that other people don’t like know-it-alls.

intellectually humble leaders who are open to alternative views may motivate others to contribute more ideas to discussions.