I quite often find myself wishing others had the opposite and in my opinion more valuable skill of being able to give me their best guess rather than retreat into “I don’t know” or some other similar statement—I actually spent a good chunk of last Sunday trying to coax someone into making guesses and there are few things more infuriating then someone who won’t give you a number because “they don’t know” when you know damn well they have a lot more information than you do, and they’re often doing it (as Eliezer said) for political reasons—they don’t want to be wrong.
That’s not to say that knowing when to say “I don’t know” isn’t useful, it is, and if you never use it when you do in fact know quite a bit more than the person you’re speaking to my guess is that either you’re managing to keep far more rational company than I can or you’re getting in a lot more trouble than it’s worth getting into.
I quite often find myself wishing others had the opposite and in my opinion more valuable skill of being able to give me their best guess rather than retreat into “I don’t know” or some other similar statement—I actually spent a good chunk of last Sunday trying to coax someone into making guesses and there are few things more infuriating then someone who won’t give you a number because “they don’t know” when you know damn well they have a lot more information than you do, and they’re often doing it (as Eliezer said) for political reasons—they don’t want to be wrong.
That’s not to say that knowing when to say “I don’t know” isn’t useful, it is, and if you never use it when you do in fact know quite a bit more than the person you’re speaking to my guess is that either you’re managing to keep far more rational company than I can or you’re getting in a lot more trouble than it’s worth getting into.