I don’t have a full answer, but here’s what seems important to consider—in my experience, the baseline for the level of confidence in speech that is associated with competence and authority is a lot lower in intellectual circles like LessWrong, compared to the general public.
This is because exposure to rationality and science usually impresses into someone that making mistakes is “fine” and an unavoidable component of learning, and that while science has made very impressive progress there is still a lot to learn and understand about the world. On the other hand, the real world and social opinion usually very closely associate mistakes with failure and the ensuing moral penalties and lowered status.
Based on that, if you rely a lot on qualifiers while speaking to someone who’s not as exposed to or interested in intellectual thought, they may write you off as confused or unsure—they will expect “smarter” people to give them definite verdicts. So if you’re trying to socially maneuver someone into agreeing with your reasoning based on competence, forgoing qualifiers is probably a good idea.
Agreed. That makes me think back to the following story.
It was my first job as a programmer. The PM would ask me questions about whether X is doable for me or how long it would take me to do Y. I would give my honest response, which often would be that I can’t do it without help or that it would take me a while. Then one day the tech lead sat me down and said that it’s important for me to project confidence. It frustrated me a lot because in theory the best thing to do for the company would be for me to provide accurate information and then try to make the best decision based off of that accurate information. Now I realize that the tech lead probably wasn’t thinking about that and probably was just trying to look out for me, knowing that my lack of confidence would end up hurting me.
I’m curious, after your work experience since then, if you still think the tech lead’s comment was about the information you were conveying, or in your tone and specific wording choice. Like if instead of, “I can’t do it without help or that it would take me a while,” he knew you’d do better rephrasing it as something like, “In order to do that, I’ll need to allocate X days/weeks, as well ad [any other resources or people you expect to need, for how long, for what parts],” followed by (depending on the company’s practices) “Would you like me to write up a proposal for that?” or “How should I prioritize that relative to my other projects?”
In my experience, “Projecting confidence” can also often be achieved by speaking clearly and precisely, stating things in the affirmative more than the negative, and claiming enough status to be worth the investment necessary to do what’s asked of me, without compromising the informational content aside from emotional valence. It also makes it easier for my bosses to act on my answers without putting in planning work themselves.
I feel pretty confident that he was referring to the information I was conveying. Ie. that it should be “yes” instead of “no”. I think he was trying to protect me, because if I don’t tell people what they want to hear I’ll develop a bad reputation.
Thanks for explaining how you would rephrase it/go about it. That makes a lot of sense and I feel like something clicked for me after reading it.
I don’t have a full answer, but here’s what seems important to consider—in my experience, the baseline for the level of confidence in speech that is associated with competence and authority is a lot lower in intellectual circles like LessWrong, compared to the general public.
This is because exposure to rationality and science usually impresses into someone that making mistakes is “fine” and an unavoidable component of learning, and that while science has made very impressive progress there is still a lot to learn and understand about the world. On the other hand, the real world and social opinion usually very closely associate mistakes with failure and the ensuing moral penalties and lowered status.
Based on that, if you rely a lot on qualifiers while speaking to someone who’s not as exposed to or interested in intellectual thought, they may write you off as confused or unsure—they will expect “smarter” people to give them definite verdicts. So if you’re trying to socially maneuver someone into agreeing with your reasoning based on competence, forgoing qualifiers is probably a good idea.
Agreed. That makes me think back to the following story.
It was my first job as a programmer. The PM would ask me questions about whether X is doable for me or how long it would take me to do Y. I would give my honest response, which often would be that I can’t do it without help or that it would take me a while. Then one day the tech lead sat me down and said that it’s important for me to project confidence. It frustrated me a lot because in theory the best thing to do for the company would be for me to provide accurate information and then try to make the best decision based off of that accurate information. Now I realize that the tech lead probably wasn’t thinking about that and probably was just trying to look out for me, knowing that my lack of confidence would end up hurting me.
I’m curious, after your work experience since then, if you still think the tech lead’s comment was about the information you were conveying, or in your tone and specific wording choice. Like if instead of, “I can’t do it without help or that it would take me a while,” he knew you’d do better rephrasing it as something like, “In order to do that, I’ll need to allocate X days/weeks, as well ad [any other resources or people you expect to need, for how long, for what parts],” followed by (depending on the company’s practices) “Would you like me to write up a proposal for that?” or “How should I prioritize that relative to my other projects?”
In my experience, “Projecting confidence” can also often be achieved by speaking clearly and precisely, stating things in the affirmative more than the negative, and claiming enough status to be worth the investment necessary to do what’s asked of me, without compromising the informational content aside from emotional valence. It also makes it easier for my bosses to act on my answers without putting in planning work themselves.
I feel pretty confident that he was referring to the information I was conveying. Ie. that it should be “yes” instead of “no”. I think he was trying to protect me, because if I don’t tell people what they want to hear I’ll develop a bad reputation.
Thanks for explaining how you would rephrase it/go about it. That makes a lot of sense and I feel like something clicked for me after reading it.