I seem to have some kind of epistemic immune response going on that encounters a thought like, “Maybe I should increase my confidence independently of my best guess about my competence,” and responds by shouting “WHAT NO ARE YOU CRAZY STOP”.
Yeah, If “confident” means “I think I’m good at something”, it’s weird to say “I’m good at X, but I think I’m not good at X”.
Perhaps it’s a bit of a system-1 vs system-2 distinction? I.e. you can consider yourself competent, but still viscerally anxious.
Imposter Syndrome is pretty common in a lot of fields, where an outsider observer can see that someone is quite competent at a skill (and the person can see that in objective metrics), but from the inside view there is a lot of self-doubt and they have low confidence. I know that it’s common in software engineering, especially in people who come from an unusual background for the field (eg. women and people of color).
Yeah, If “confident” means “I think I’m good at something”, it’s weird to say “I’m good at X, but I think I’m not good at X”.
Perhaps it’s a bit of a system-1 vs system-2 distinction? I.e. you can consider yourself competent, but still viscerally anxious.
Imposter Syndrome is pretty common in a lot of fields, where an outsider observer can see that someone is quite competent at a skill (and the person can see that in objective metrics), but from the inside view there is a lot of self-doubt and they have low confidence. I know that it’s common in software engineering, especially in people who come from an unusual background for the field (eg. women and people of color).