Confidence is not "I know what I'm doing."
Confidence is "I know how to find that out" and "I know how to learn new things" and most importantly "I know when I don't know what I'm doing, so I stop and find someone who does"
Obnoxious blowhards rely on people not understanding this distinction. And they amplify it by framing actual confidence as weakness.
This may be a useful thing to talk about with certain people in your life who are being fooled by fascists.
@TechConnectify I strongly agree. it's the difference between pretending you don't need help to do anything and realizing the value in getting help doing virtually anything - that's called society and we made it for a reason.
having an answer isn't what makes you smart. it's how you got it.
@tyzbit @TechConnectify It’s “experiments using the scientific method” that I find most funny; but social media doesn’t really allow the nuance that a discussion of philosophy of science and “method” requires so I will simply recommend “For and Against Method” in case you haven’t read it and say that I agree far more with Feyerabend than Lakotas.
more direct note: going to the moon was mostly an engineering exercise and didn’t really involve much science relatively.
@nblr @tyzbit @TechConnectify We were talking about the moon landing which was nearly 60 years ago and NASA, before Apollo was cancelled, was very different than it has been since; as I experienced firsthand.
Another thing that social media doesn’t allow enough nuance to discuss is the extent to which engineering does or doesn’t stem from science (pun intended.)
One area to explore that is the history of ceramics and how the shuttle tiles were developed.
@TechConnectify
Related:
Warning that a proposed approach has downsides or talking about pitfalls of a similar experience should not be waved away as "negativity" or "being a blocker".
Wanting something to work well without doing everything twice is not "being obstructive about agile".
Saying that there is not enough time to test the proposed solution in a development environment before going to production is not "you're the reason we will miss the deadline that the new manager promised".
That's what good scientists and good Librarians do.
Good people in other works too, but those are the ones I've personally experienced.
And willing to learn from your own mistakes.
There are many that can not do that, so they double down and blame others. It is never their fault.
I'd add: admitting openly the limits of one's knowledge.
There's a German politician (Habeck), who's always trying to lay his cards on the table, explaining the trade-offs, risks and assumptions behind his decisions - and he's getting ridiculed for that.
It's bonkers.
You can disagree with him, make different trade-offs, perfectly fine, but ridiculing openness is just morally wrong.
Lately I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this while looking at my resume and a whole lot of solicitations for workers.
Even though I'm only mid-career, I look back at the stuff I've done and realize that a lot of it was stuff that I didn't know how to do when I started the job, and a lot of it was stuff that my employers didn't know they needed when I started the job. We figured out a lot of stuff together, and both benefited for it.
Also, in recent years I've seen companies advertise for workers by saying things like "we need someone who has done A, B, C, and D" and unwilling to consider candidates who can clearly figure out how to do them. (The companies also use "application tracking systems" that don't seem smart enough to recognize that "C, A, B, and D" also fit the requirements.)
@TechConnectify I know this post is super old, but I just stumbled on a screenshot that I saved of it.
I really needed to read this today so I'm glad I found it again. Not being fooled by fascists, but by the self-doubt I tell myself when I don't immediately know what I'm doing.
So thanks for posting this.
(I also agree with your point about the obnoxious blowhard fascists)
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