alt Hacker NewsSomething I have always appreciated. I'm much less anxious working with very intelligent people, even if their intelligence eclipses mine. They don't have unusual ideas about what I should or should not be able to grasp. They can recognize which of my ideas are intelligent and which of my ideas are half-baked.
Working with unintelligent people, you need to spend more time building up a reputation. They cannot tell if you're intelligent based on what you say, or how you explain things -- only if you get results. This is nerve wracking for multiple reasons, but chiefly because intelligent people can be wrong, or unlucky, etc, and so only judging someone based on results is partially to judge based on luck.
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>> I'm much less anxious working with very intelligent people, even if their intelligence eclipses mine. They don't have unusual ideas about what I should or should not be able to grasp. They can recognize which of my ideas are intelligent and which of my ideas are half-baked.
Funny, because Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner for inventing PCR, one of the most important tools in the history of molecular biology, the technique that made modern genetics and COVID testing possible, could not recognize that his ideas about AIDS being a hoax were half baked. Or his belief in astrology. Nobel laureate. Astrology...
Linus Pauling with his two Nobel Prizes, could not recognize that his vitamin C cures cancer crusade was half baked. James Watson decoded DNA itself and could not recognize that his ideas about race were half-baked.
William Shockley another Nobel Prize...for inventing the transistor, probably the most consequential invention of the 20th century, could not recognize that touring college campuses promoting eugenics and forced sterilization was half-baked.
Bill Gates could not recognize that hanging out with a convicted sex trafficker after the conviction was half baked. Larry Summers could not recognize that speculating about womens brains at a public conference was half baked.
Intelligent people are great at recognizing which of your ideas are half-baked and they can also be catastrophically bad at recognizing which of their own are.The smarter they are, the more elaborate the justification, the more airtight the rationalization, and the more spectacular the eventual collapse. Peter Thiel being the prime example...
Watch out for smart people... they are the worst judges of their own stupidity...
Unintelligent people can also be right, or lucky, etc, and someone judging on those criteria can end up getting swept up in making some very bad decisions based on dubious advice.