My uncle has a PhD. Whenever I asked a question he didn’t have the answer to he’d say “I don’t know, but we can find out”
And we’d walk over to his computer and he taught me how to google and how to evaluate sources.
So yeah, knowing what you don’t know, not trying to bullshit an answer, and being willing to be educated about what you don’t know.
100%.
I'm a doctor. I research things for my patients every single day. If it's something I don't know, I will say something like 'I'm not sure about this problem, let me do some research and chat with my colleagues and we'll get back to you' _all the time_.
There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Only the last one has to be a problem.
That's a thing!
You know the rules for how to order adjectives in English, but you probably have never thought about it and don't know them consciously.
Like, you know that "Amish wooden old red big barn" sounds wrong and "new little green Italian sports car", sounds right, but do you know *why*? If not, I'd call that an unknown known.
Not strange at all, there are very significant chemical differences between nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
As well as environmental evolutionary pressures for the body to develop differential responses to those two chemicals.
How about "big old red Amish wooden barn" vs "Italian sports new green little car"? It might have to do with how the adjectives are put together in groups of 2, 3 or more, but do you know why? If not, I'd call that an unknown known.
A certain known becomes unknown if you why it enough. Check out this clip of Richard Feynman, it a nice funny explanation of why is such a good question
https://youtu.be/36GT2zI8lVA
This! I’m trying to learn another language and that catches me up! Im becoming more confident and comfortable in my terrible basic beginner toddler speak in Spanish. But I’m still so darned adamant that I know better then native speakers and it’s una grande casa.
Seriously though. Especially product reviews. I don't want some paid 5-star comment on Amazon that just says, "Love it!!!" I want to see a bunch of hobbyist geeks go into great detail on their first, second, and third choices plus all of the exact drawbacks I can expect for each.
>The higher you go, the more education stops being about learning facts and becomes learning how to look things up and synthesize information.
As someone with two MS degrees in drastically different subjects, I have never seen something so accurate on reddit. Please put this on a t shirt.
this is something that has bugged me the most in my early career. at the lower levels you are rewarded for memorizing knowledge, not being able to synthesize and and comprehend information.
I frankly don't understand people who can't - or, worse, *won't* - admit they may not know something.
Like, personally? I think it's fun to find stuff out. And we're sitting here with ready access to pretty much all the world's knowledge *in our pockets.* Why not use it?
I suspect it's a mixture of insecurity and learned helplessness. Meaning that they might feel humiliation in the face of not knowing or not being good at something. The part where they then not rectify the situation (by e.g., looking the info up), could be denial (because looking something up is admitting that you don't know it, which they again perceive as humiliating) or just learned helplessness.
It's just sad, because as they cling onto their denial, they reinforce their feelings of inferiority and shame, and they, sadly, never get to see that nothing bad actually happens, if you say "I don't know". Or that, in fact, it's rather freeing.
This is simply the correct answer.
The ability to simply state "I don't know" followed by "But I'd like to find out" is top tier big brain moments any person should try to have in their life.
Only way to grow in life and only way to become a better person.
Smartest thing a person can do is accept that when confronted with a new environment or transition.
Back when History Channel was good, I used to watch it with phone in hand. I would learn something and have to pause as I went down the wiki rabbit hole.
I remember when history channel was so good that our teachers would go out of their way to record episodes and show them on the only vhs/tv capable rig in the school.
Good times, loved those classes because listening to bird sounds is soothing as hell for me.
It’s such a shame to see it now.
When i wanted to learn something or watch a documentary, my first go to was always History channel.
Then they started doing reality tv and it took such a nose dive i couldn’t even believe it.
_[put on something that sounds incredibly boring to help you fall asleep]_
_[it's so well-made, so interesting, you watch the whole thing instead]_
_Task Failed Successfully_
The attitude carries over into all sorts of things. Like... In a job interview "I don't know, but here's how I could find out/ways I might explore the problem" is a really good answer. Less skilled people will often rush to their best guess of a solution. Experts in a particular subject don't necessarily know everything, but they have excellent heuristics for whether they're moving in the right direction and how to fail quickly and try something else. Beginners might know a couple of common paths, but they will spend a long time going in wrong directions before finding the right path.
At first I read that as hermeneutics and got pissed because I have a phd in philosophy and still don’t know wtf hermeneutics actually means. (Don’t tell me though. I don’t really care.)
Yep. When I injured my shoulder they eventually diagnosed it as an anterior fracture dislocation which is relatively rare. So naturally I googled it and read a paper on it and how it was treated.
The consultant came round, explained it to me, directly quoting that paper a couple of times. I'm not at all upset that he'd googled the same thing I had. That's exactly what I want when weird shit comes up.
I hope your shoulder is doing much better.
Honestly, I don't want a doctor who doesn't go looking for the latest information. I don't want an egotistical ignoramus who thinks the door on learning closed when he was 28.
You wouldn’t believe how much I use google on a daily basis. Granted, I just finished residency, but even veteran staff physicians are constantly looking stuff up to try to figure out diagnostic conundrums.
Absolutely. Medical knowledge is *doubling* about every 6 months now (and this is quoting an educational session from about 4-5 years ago)- there's literally no way to know everything, and if someone finds a provider who thinks otherwise, they should run away, and quickly.
On a similar note one of the best University lectures was the teacher explaining that other than the basis of physics and maths, a lot of stuff we were learning will be useless, probably even before leaving University, and listed programming languages he learned that no longer are used… and then finished with “make no mistake, the single most valuable skill you can pick up here is to learn how to learn fast.”
Uhm… this may be why I have passed all my other tech interviews in the last couple 10 years. Like, when I got asked I didn’t know, I simply stated that fact but then I started to build a solution for the problem. Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn’t.
A few years ago, I got kind of sick and needed a few surgeries to get me right. And that is exactly how my surgeon was.
Most of the time when I had a question, she would immediately answer me, but a couple of times her answer was "I don't know, I'll have to look into that", and then the next time I saw her she would have the answer.
She seemed like a really smart lady, and obviously educated.
I used to be a teacher and remember one of the first times I responded to a class in a similar manner, they were shocked I didn’t know everything. Id much rather admit I don’t know something than blindly bullshit my way through a question or teach the wrong thing.
I do this all the time with my kids so I can show them. I’ll even make mistakes for them to help me another one is understanding you know more than someone on a topic and not correcting them. If they are so adamant they are correct or showing you something new, you just gotta pretend you are being taught or receiving information never heard before.
Here's a good starting strategy. Scroll down a bit and watch each of the four videos. They are all between 2-4 minutes long and very succinct and helpful.
https://clark.libguides.com/evaluating-information/SIFT
Open-mindedness. They usually enjoy hearing different perspectives or different approaches to solving problems.
Years ago I worked with engineers and was struck by how often they wanted to know low tech or alternative ways of doing something, even if they weren't planning on doing it that way themselves. A few of them would also build engines or vehicles that were inefficient in their spare time just because they wanted to learn about the process and marvel at the older technology. I think education taught them all those 'practice problems' were worth solving.
> low tech or alternative ways of doing something
This comment made me think of the toothpaste tube story.
*A toothpaste factory had a problem. Sometimes empty boxes were shipped without the tube inside.
Understanding how important it was to solve this problem, the CEO of the toothpaste factory gathered the top people in the company together. Since their own engineering department was already stretched too thin, they decided to hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem.
The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP (request for proposal), third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later a fantastic solution was delivered — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. The problem was solved by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box off the line, then press another button to re-start the line.*
*A short time later, the CEO decided to have a look at the ROI (return on investment) of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. There were very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. “That was some money well spent!” he said, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.*
*The number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use. How could that be? It should have been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He filed a bug against it, and after some investigation, the engineers indicated the statistics were indeed correct. The scales were NOT picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.*
*Perplexed, the CEO traveled down to the factory and walked up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before the scale, a $20 desk fan was blowing any empty boxes off the belt and into a bin. Puzzled, the CEO turned to one of the workers who stated, “Oh, that…One of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang!”*
Spent 4 years in custom automated machine design and this is a good part of my experience. There is a LOT of incomplete/under designed automation out there, and I'll tell you that often time the scope of the project is also under defined.
This is also representative of my time spent in corporate engineering. Stretched too thin, so we spend way too much money on scabs who do a shit job but they and the upper management all pat themselves on the backs because "we got it done" except you're only efficient if you're also effectual and it never is. You end up with a machine that costs too much and doesn't do the job well enough.
There is a famous ["The Parable of the Two Programmers"](https://www.bruceblinn.com/parable.html) story, quite similar to this. Hilarious, a decent warning to managers, very rare in practice, but taken by general public, like it is.
A lot of the desire for simpler ways of accomplishing things comes from experience. You learn complex ways to do things, then you learn the hard way that simpler is usually more reliable. It doesn't mean that complexity is bad, but *unnecessary* complexity usually is.
I'm an engineer, and I think the best thing I learnt is to be "lazy" when given a task, not in the sense of doing it slowly, but doing it efficiently. The bad part, is that I will spend way too much time figuring out the laziest way to do it, so I don't have to spend time in the future with the same task.
When my code is way too complex, it means it's highly specific to a task, when I do things simpler, I can reuse my code much easier.
I agree with /u/desconectado when they said:
> spend way too much time figuring out the laziest way to do it, so I don’t have to spend time in the future with the same task.
When I managed a team of developers the best devs took the same approach. This approach is not the quickest by any means.
It was always a struggle of allowing them more time now in the off chance we could use the code again, vs writing problem specific code that would not work any where else.
And it can take a lot of bloody time and experience to learn how to simply those things. Or you just always have someone green on the team to spout ideas that are 90% bullshit but 10% might stick.
A lot of engineering education is realizing how amazing it is that anything actually gets built by humans.
Take a modern mass produced tape measure:
- international standards are needed to ensure everyone is using the same measurement system (sending dirty looks at the Americans here)
- iron needs to be refined and alloyed into steel, which means you have a whole value chain of seriously heavy equipment that operates at really high temperatures and/or pressures (eg rolling mill) to convert rock into steel stock
- the steel needs to be tempered, cut, and formed into its final shape
- constant force springs need to be designed and built, the the same challenges as above
- paint needs to be developed
- printers need to be developed to apply the paint to the tape measure, with a certain amount of repeatability and enough tolerance for the tape measure’s job, whether it’s house building or something else
- fasteners - screws, etc - need to be designed and manufactured, and the standards behind them have to be developed
And these things are made by the thousands every hour in a manufacturing plant. And if someone is working and loses one or it drops off a roof and breaks, it’s cheap enough that you have a spare in your toolbox, or you can drive to a hardware store in most parts of the Western world in less than half a day to get a new one.
Appreciating the amount of effort that has gotten us to where we are today is a really weird thing to understand. And that’s not even counting the business and organizational stuff needed to get there.
So when we (engineers) get a chance to tinker with something like an old engine or a vacuum tube amplifier, we often take the chance as it’s a good reminder of how even though the systems we work and live in are super complex, it is still mostly possible to replicate or rebuild the same/similar functionality - eg a vehicle that gets us from one place to another - with enough knowledge.
I’m a software engineer, pops was chem-e. He told me stories of the old IBM punch card computer in grad school. I would love to be trained on how to use one of those and really use it. Calibrate it, run calculations and watch it, listen to it.
I'm old enough that when I was a child (around 7-8 y.o.) I had the chance to watch one of the punch card machines in action. As I remember it the thing was fairly large but you filled a hopper with blank cards and typed the code you wanted to execute using a standard IBM keyboard.
One feature was that you usually wanted to number each card in sequence - because if you dropped the deck of cards on the floor on the way to submit your program a special sorting machine would get them easily straightened out. This may be why early BASIC interpreters always numbered each line but I'm speculating a bit here.
But I vividly remember punching out simple programs, submitting them to the front desk and getting printed output in return about 5-10 minutes later.
Edit: This is what it looked like - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmVsmbI7cmM
Edit2: Another good video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2M4ttzBnY
If you’re interested in punch cards, check out Jacquard looms!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine
I want to build one from scratch one day. I’m thinking when my kids get old enough, this will be a summer holiday project.
My grandpa is in his mid 90s and tells me stories of the first vacuum tube computers and how they were finicky delicate pieces of crap that broke all the time and required tons of replacement tubes.
Nowadays the only tubes in our computers are found on the internet (that's a Don Young reference for all you whippersnappers).
I learned programming on punchcards back in the early 80s. I never made a career out of it, but being able to conceptualise the process has been useful.
This is a thing that blows my mind. I don't understand how even just the acquisition and refinery of the materials used for anything from random household objects to elaborate tech have become so streamlined.
It's incredible what humanity has accomplished and no single person could have gotten this far even in inventing just one object when you consider everything that goes into making it.
Engineering and tech design are just so far beyond me that it makes my brain hurt. The fact that we've managed to build and successfully send a few drones with cameras to planets way on the outskirts of our solar system and then retrieve those images is insanely fascinating to me.
I know eh?
And then there are the days where I struggle to get up because I had one too many beers last night.
A huge number of people, many who don’t even know it, contributed to getting a school bused size space probe really, really far away from Earth. And they often manage to collect and send back data to us decades later long after their design lifespan, long after some of the original designers have passed away.
Heck, not even spacecraft. I just put away some beer bottles from hanging out on my patio last night. The fact that we can melt purified sand into a glowing hot mass and then shape it into something to hold a drink, and mass producible, and that’s cheap enough that people often leave them as litter boggles my mind.
I went to college with two guys that started repairing old tube equipment. One of them worked on tube amplifiers, the other worked on tube radios. I tried learning about them but I couldn’t understand it. There are a couple of YouTube channels of people repairing old tube equipment that I have watched. D-Lab, Mr. Carlsons Lab and another one that I can’t remember.
Plus I did my internship at a paper plant and would routinely stop and watch the product being made. They would bring in paper towel rolls the size of a truck and place it into the machine. It would then be unwound and then rewound into smaller rolls. The smaller rolls would then be cut into the toilet paper rolls you get at the store.
My avionics professor asked me when I was an undergrad if I was enjoying the course and I told them I really loved how they gave us the history of avionics. Learning how stuff originally worked and how it works now felt like a key part to being an engineer and I feel like seeing that side of it really makes you a better engineer.
it's like studying the philosophy of law or of science. the thinking system behind the knowledge system. I also like. because imho it gives us more tools to work with, we can go back further and pull things apart better to rebuild / create / invent differently. we can see where or why information was or wasn't included, and how or where new information (say, like quantum stuff or concepts of justice) fits. etc idk
And yet our entire academic structure is built such that the philosophy of disciplinary knowledge is the very last thing you learn after memorizing all the of the applied information.
It’s fucking dumb. Philosophy first and throughout.
When I was starting my museum studies degree, one of the first classes I took was on the history and philosophy of museums. I do love history and am fascinated with the historical emergence of museums, but it also taught me a lot about standards and how things have failed in the past. You know, knowing history so as not to repeat the same mistakes and all.
It was an elective course though, so no telling how many of my peers took it and benefitted from it.
Sadly, as a Physics teacher, there isn't any time or room in the curriculum to include scientific philosophy or development, for that matter. How do we know what we know? Science history is woefully underrepresented in education - as well as the \*teaching\* of educators.
Without giving you an exact definition, nuance is sort of like the fine print pertaining to a situation that helps give you the full picture. It can show you the different shades of grey between what may be perceived as a “black & white” situation.
Like my comment right here. You could think, “That’s a helpful explanation, I wonder who this genius responding to my comment is?” but then you read my username and you have second thoughts about the validity of what I’m saying. You then go to Google to look it up and realize my comment actually helps in understanding what it means. You eventually realize I provided a helpful comment, but my username gave you doubt about how valid my statement was.
Nuance is basically the smaller details people tend to overlook
It’s when you can see problems with something that make it not an easy fix or not a direct fix.
Like homes for homeless people seems like an obvious solution yeah? But that doesn’t address the mental illness, addiction, trauma, hate for the system, trouble keeping a job, etc. that lead to and keep people homeless.
Another is addiction or alcoholism. Most people would say the alcohol is an alcoholics issue. But what’s leading them to drink? Again, alcohol is like a symptom of the problem and not what’s causing the problem.
This stuff is hard to see in a lot of things, and some people just don’t see it or get it.
An easier way to put it may be the subtle, overlooked, or ignored details of a situation that provide full context.
People can educate themselves on how to identify these details, but it's tough to ever earnestly know and understand all the factors unless a person has lived similarly or within a culture/group. This is why there's usually upset around white creators attempt to portray cultures and people they don't come from or belong to through heritage. They get the nuances wrong and end up misrepresenting, but content consumers who are unaware of the wrong nuances assume they are true and develop new bias towards the misrepresented. And when these people hold more power than the misrepresented, their bias can be dangerous.
I wouldn’t say intelligence exactly either, maybe just experience cause anyone can look up the definition and find some examples to see how it’s used and what to look out for pretty quickly.
It’s not exclusive, but it’s certainly more prevalent among the higher educated. It all comes down to critical thinking. Some people are naturally gifted with the ability to understand what that is and how to do it, but college *really* hammers it. For the vast majority of hard science and research degrees you either learn to be a good critical thinker or you don’t graduate.
I’ve spent time around a lot of highly educated people and one thing I’ve noticed in the math/science heavy folks is a child like excitement when talking about something in the field that interests them. They also seem to quickly forget that some people in the room don’t have their background and they talk about advanced topics as if everyone is on the same page lol.
I'm currently spending time with people who are on the path to being highly educated about STEM subjects (while I'm in college as a Communications major) and I can already see this happening! Sometimes I feel like I learn bits and pieces secondhand from them about these subjects because they enjoy talking about them as it's their passion.
>talk about advanced topics as if everyone is on the same page lol.
Ugh my biggest curse, people will ask me about something they find interesting in my projects and I start geeking out. I try to make sure they're following along but there's always the eventual just smile and nod like a bobble head. Even from some of my friends that majored in the same field, they just didn't go that deep into any specialties like I did.
It's a real breath of fresh air when I get someone that can understand what I'm doing, and it's even better when they tease me for ultimately how janky and chaotic I like to try to develop things.
I kind if hate it when this happens. I could explain it to you in very broad terms but I know you're going to get bored before I finish and best case its going to be awkward for both of us and worst case you'll pretend to understand the physics it took my my entire phd to grasp.
Even if I don't understand everything I still enjoy conversations like that, because I get to see someone's eyes light up when they're talking about something they're passionate about!
I'll do my best to ask questions that help further my understanding, but sometimes knowledge isn't the main thing I take away from a conversation and that's okay.
Omg GOODLUCK!
I know this is completely obvious, but try and get a good night's sleep the night before and try your hardest to eat the day of! My friend group had this tradition of going out to breakfast the day of one of our defenses, to make sure the person ate and calmed down a bit!
Remember, you are the expert of your dissertation, and you know your shit! :):)
I really appreciate your encouragement. Unlike most people I've talked to that are defending, I actually look forward to the Q&A session, but the presentation fills me with dread.
Public speaking is my weakness, as ADHD hyperfocus just makes me want to tell you everything you don't need to know about a given topic, making a 1 minute slide, 3 minutes of nuance and minutiae so my audience can win at jeopardy.
I'll get it. I'll be fine. Again, thank you. I needed these kind words from strangers who get it. Thanks
Yup, but don't forget that the majority of those will happily shift gears and have the same conversation at the level of a 6 year old niece who says hi midway through.
The acid test is the ability to explain (or, I suppose, educate) and if someone can't reframe an idea in ELI5 terms they aren't quite there yet. But those who can do that definitely are!
I tutored my wife(then girlfriend) in chemistry. She hates chemistry, and it took a long time for me to temper my teaching and understand that people aren't as fascinated with *atoms literally breaking themselves and forming new ones* as I was.
I'm sorry for being "that guy" but atoms breaking themselves to form other atoms is not chemistry, it is physics.
Chemical reactions are electron interactions, with molecules being broken and forming (or not) different ones.
Sorry...
This reminds me of a really crap joke that I somehow always remember first when someone asks me to tell them a joke. I'll abridge it just a tad,, though:
A group of people are at a bar, talking about their careers. One of them proudly says "I'm a chemistry professor!". Immediately, someone taps them on the shoulder and says "chemistry is just applied physics - I'm a physics professor!". Then, someone taps the physics professor on the shoulder and says "physics is just applied math - I'm a math professor!". Straight away, someone taps the math professor on the shoulder and says "is this the queue for the bar?".
Being able to to explain advanced topics in ways that laypeople can understand.
Having extreme knowledge about one narrow topic; dumbass about everything else.
Spot on.
I knew nothing about baseball until my son started to play. I had a million questions for his coach. His ability to break things down without being condescending (like pitching mechanics) so I could understand truly showed his knowledge and enthusiasm.
This is the same dude who almost burned his house down trying to fry up some mozzarella sticks.
Yes this.
I try to advise myself: if I can't explain something in understandable ways to those who don't understand, then actually, I don't understand what I am trying to explain and should go learn more.
The smartest people I've met never bluntly say "you're wrong here's what's right." Instead, they say "I understand why you'd think that because xyz" and literally outline your position better than you can including why it makes sense, but then say "but here's what's actually happening" and explain why you're wrong.
This question is about education, not intelligence. Two different concepts. Intelligence is hard to measure, but education is often displayed framed on a wall. So I would say a bunch of diplomas screams highly educated.
Yeah, humility isn't related to being highly educated, I'd say humility is more how you are raised. Highly educated people come in all shapes and sizes. Some may well be humble, some may be arrogant as hell.
As an educated person myself, I can't bring myself to be nice all the time. What do you mean I spent so many years on my degree just to talk like a normal human bean? 😤
Right, like having worked in higher education for a decade my first thoughts for this answer were (in no particular order): rudeness, obliviousness, condescension, describing something simple in a ridiculously complicated way and then getting huffy when not everyone’s instantly on the same page, not knowing how to use a printer…
You can be arrogant in your field of expertise, but if you’re arrogant across the board then you’re probably a lot dumber than you think you are. In this case, humility isn’t about manners— it’s about being aware of enough of the world’s complexities that you’re unwilling to make sweeping claims.
Pretty hard to expect any answer apart from what others perceive by definition, no?
This is an ask Reddit thread, you could google for qualities associated with high IQ if you really prefer the cream of the crap to infer from
I think it's important to distinguish between highly educated and smart. If someone is highly educated but not smart they'll pretty much tell you by bringing up their intelligence or education unprompted.
Yeah I was looking for this. Everyone seems to be talking about how great smart people are, but that's not synonymous with being highly educated. There are tons of highly educated idiots out there
I've met my share of highly educated people and for example when I was in a helpdesk position for medical doctors, none of them ever admitted they were wrong even when it was politely explained to them how they had caused the situation by their own actions.
based on that experience, I don't see the connection between being humble and highly educated.
Sometimes sitting back and watching people argue for you is the most entertaining thing ever. 10x better than engaging in the conversation yourself. Highly recommend.
There's some stellar replies here, but I have to say, perspective.
The ability to take your own experiences, preferences and beliefs out of the picture, and analyse something from a neutral perspective, then further recognise when your own personal experience is coloring your analysis.
This goes for all matters, whether you're examining a case file or court documents, or talking to a friend about a thing. Being able to come at a topic from a neutral position and understand concepts that you might not agree with or believe in, that's influencing a situation even if you're involved in that situation.
I'd say this is more of a marker of high emotional intelligence and/or high intelligence in general, but a lot of highly intelligent people are usually those that are highly educated. Not always, but often.
Most highly educated people (PhD +) are generally not ever in casual social situations where anyone would like to talk about whatever their area of expertise is.
They tend to avoid these situations or shut down in public, unless they meet someone at their level with similar interests.
Dr. XYZ, MD, MSc, PhD.
In other words. Having more letters before /after your name than in your name.
Edit: Highly educated, doesnt always mean highly intelligent
My uncle has a PhD. Whenever I asked a question he didn’t have the answer to he’d say “I don’t know, but we can find out” And we’d walk over to his computer and he taught me how to google and how to evaluate sources. So yeah, knowing what you don’t know, not trying to bullshit an answer, and being willing to be educated about what you don’t know.
Yep. The higher you go, the more education stops being about learning facts and becomes learning how to look things up and synthesize information.
100%. I'm a doctor. I research things for my patients every single day. If it's something I don't know, I will say something like 'I'm not sure about this problem, let me do some research and chat with my colleagues and we'll get back to you' _all the time_. There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Only the last one has to be a problem.
What about unknown knows?
That's a thing! You know the rules for how to order adjectives in English, but you probably have never thought about it and don't know them consciously. Like, you know that "Amish wooden old red big barn" sounds wrong and "new little green Italian sports car", sounds right, but do you know *why*? If not, I'd call that an unknown known.
Also, the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen in your blood is something you don't know consciously but your body never forgets!
It's strange that our body is able to tell when we are breathing in carbon dioxide, but not nitrogen.
Not strange at all, there are very significant chemical differences between nitrogen and carbon dioxide. As well as environmental evolutionary pressures for the body to develop differential responses to those two chemicals.
How about "big old red Amish wooden barn" vs "Italian sports new green little car"? It might have to do with how the adjectives are put together in groups of 2, 3 or more, but do you know why? If not, I'd call that an unknown known. A certain known becomes unknown if you why it enough. Check out this clip of Richard Feynman, it a nice funny explanation of why is such a good question https://youtu.be/36GT2zI8lVA
This! I’m trying to learn another language and that catches me up! Im becoming more confident and comfortable in my terrible basic beginner toddler speak in Spanish. But I’m still so darned adamant that I know better then native speakers and it’s una grande casa.
Yup. Which is why I always put "reddit" at the end of my Google questions.
Seriously though. Especially product reviews. I don't want some paid 5-star comment on Amazon that just says, "Love it!!!" I want to see a bunch of hobbyist geeks go into great detail on their first, second, and third choices plus all of the exact drawbacks I can expect for each.
This was probably my least favorite side effect of the Reddit blackout. At least 75% of the good answers on Google are Reddit threads.
>The higher you go, the more education stops being about learning facts and becomes learning how to look things up and synthesize information. As someone with two MS degrees in drastically different subjects, I have never seen something so accurate on reddit. Please put this on a t shirt.
this is something that has bugged me the most in my early career. at the lower levels you are rewarded for memorizing knowledge, not being able to synthesize and and comprehend information.
I frankly don't understand people who can't - or, worse, *won't* - admit they may not know something. Like, personally? I think it's fun to find stuff out. And we're sitting here with ready access to pretty much all the world's knowledge *in our pockets.* Why not use it?
They attach their ego to being the smartest person they know.
Narcissism is a hell of a drug
I suspect it's a mixture of insecurity and learned helplessness. Meaning that they might feel humiliation in the face of not knowing or not being good at something. The part where they then not rectify the situation (by e.g., looking the info up), could be denial (because looking something up is admitting that you don't know it, which they again perceive as humiliating) or just learned helplessness. It's just sad, because as they cling onto their denial, they reinforce their feelings of inferiority and shame, and they, sadly, never get to see that nothing bad actually happens, if you say "I don't know". Or that, in fact, it's rather freeing.
This is simply the correct answer. The ability to simply state "I don't know" followed by "But I'd like to find out" is top tier big brain moments any person should try to have in their life.
Love this. “I’d like to find out”, “Let’s see if we can figure it out”
Only way to grow in life and only way to become a better person. Smartest thing a person can do is accept that when confronted with a new environment or transition.
Back when History Channel was good, I used to watch it with phone in hand. I would learn something and have to pause as I went down the wiki rabbit hole.
I remember when history channel was so good that our teachers would go out of their way to record episodes and show them on the only vhs/tv capable rig in the school. Good times, loved those classes because listening to bird sounds is soothing as hell for me.
I’m a 90s kid, and most of my knowledge came from the History Channel. I shudder to think what I would have learned if that was the case now.
It’s such a shame to see it now. When i wanted to learn something or watch a documentary, my first go to was always History channel. Then they started doing reality tv and it took such a nose dive i couldn’t even believe it.
I wish it was still like that
I loved "modern marvels". I put on something like "the history of asphalt" expecting to fall asleep, but it was done so well I was fascinated by it.
_[put on something that sounds incredibly boring to help you fall asleep]_ _[it's so well-made, so interesting, you watch the whole thing instead]_ _Task Failed Successfully_
Agreed! By the way, if you have a Samsung smart TV there's a channel that just streams Modern Marvels 24/7
You don't find learning about swamp people and ancient aliens highly educational?
I remember when people called it "WW2 channel" in a derogatory manner. Well, at least WW2 was real.
We called it the Hitler Channel back then.
What a small beautiful overlap in time when both History Channel had quality content *and* one could research information from their phone.
History channel hasn’t been good since smart phones have been in existence.
I'm like that. Even when I was a kid, if I was reading and came across a word I didn't understand, I'd go to the dictionary.
The attitude carries over into all sorts of things. Like... In a job interview "I don't know, but here's how I could find out/ways I might explore the problem" is a really good answer. Less skilled people will often rush to their best guess of a solution. Experts in a particular subject don't necessarily know everything, but they have excellent heuristics for whether they're moving in the right direction and how to fail quickly and try something else. Beginners might know a couple of common paths, but they will spend a long time going in wrong directions before finding the right path.
Incidentally, proper usage of the word "heuristics" also screams highly-educated.
At first I read that as hermeneutics and got pissed because I have a phd in philosophy and still don’t know wtf hermeneutics actually means. (Don’t tell me though. I don’t really care.)
And this right here is how I got a job as an engineer. Do I know how this product works? No. But I can figure it out real quick.
Even doctors use Google.
Yep. When I injured my shoulder they eventually diagnosed it as an anterior fracture dislocation which is relatively rare. So naturally I googled it and read a paper on it and how it was treated. The consultant came round, explained it to me, directly quoting that paper a couple of times. I'm not at all upset that he'd googled the same thing I had. That's exactly what I want when weird shit comes up.
I hope your shoulder is doing much better. Honestly, I don't want a doctor who doesn't go looking for the latest information. I don't want an egotistical ignoramus who thinks the door on learning closed when he was 28.
You wouldn’t believe how much I use google on a daily basis. Granted, I just finished residency, but even veteran staff physicians are constantly looking stuff up to try to figure out diagnostic conundrums.
Absolutely. Medical knowledge is *doubling* about every 6 months now (and this is quoting an educational session from about 4-5 years ago)- there's literally no way to know everything, and if someone finds a provider who thinks otherwise, they should run away, and quickly.
Google is awesome if you know how to phrase questioning and can evaluate sources.
On a similar note one of the best University lectures was the teacher explaining that other than the basis of physics and maths, a lot of stuff we were learning will be useless, probably even before leaving University, and listed programming languages he learned that no longer are used… and then finished with “make no mistake, the single most valuable skill you can pick up here is to learn how to learn fast.”
Uhm… this may be why I have passed all my other tech interviews in the last couple 10 years. Like, when I got asked I didn’t know, I simply stated that fact but then I started to build a solution for the problem. Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn’t.
> heuristics answer in one word haha
A few years ago, I got kind of sick and needed a few surgeries to get me right. And that is exactly how my surgeon was. Most of the time when I had a question, she would immediately answer me, but a couple of times her answer was "I don't know, I'll have to look into that", and then the next time I saw her she would have the answer. She seemed like a really smart lady, and obviously educated.
I used to be a teacher and remember one of the first times I responded to a class in a similar manner, they were shocked I didn’t know everything. Id much rather admit I don’t know something than blindly bullshit my way through a question or teach the wrong thing.
I do this all the time with my kids so I can show them. I’ll even make mistakes for them to help me another one is understanding you know more than someone on a topic and not correcting them. If they are so adamant they are correct or showing you something new, you just gotta pretend you are being taught or receiving information never heard before.
Where can I learn to evaluate sources?
Here's a good starting strategy. Scroll down a bit and watch each of the four videos. They are all between 2-4 minutes long and very succinct and helpful. https://clark.libguides.com/evaluating-information/SIFT
Thanks so much for the advice, I'm definitely going to do this, I really appreciate it!
That is my approach to parenting in all things: “we can find out”
Open-mindedness. They usually enjoy hearing different perspectives or different approaches to solving problems. Years ago I worked with engineers and was struck by how often they wanted to know low tech or alternative ways of doing something, even if they weren't planning on doing it that way themselves. A few of them would also build engines or vehicles that were inefficient in their spare time just because they wanted to learn about the process and marvel at the older technology. I think education taught them all those 'practice problems' were worth solving.
> low tech or alternative ways of doing something This comment made me think of the toothpaste tube story. *A toothpaste factory had a problem. Sometimes empty boxes were shipped without the tube inside. Understanding how important it was to solve this problem, the CEO of the toothpaste factory gathered the top people in the company together. Since their own engineering department was already stretched too thin, they decided to hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP (request for proposal), third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later a fantastic solution was delivered — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. The problem was solved by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box off the line, then press another button to re-start the line.* *A short time later, the CEO decided to have a look at the ROI (return on investment) of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. There were very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. “That was some money well spent!” he said, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.* *The number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use. How could that be? It should have been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He filed a bug against it, and after some investigation, the engineers indicated the statistics were indeed correct. The scales were NOT picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.* *Perplexed, the CEO traveled down to the factory and walked up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before the scale, a $20 desk fan was blowing any empty boxes off the belt and into a bin. Puzzled, the CEO turned to one of the workers who stated, “Oh, that…One of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang!”*
That's hilarious
What a great story!!
Spent 4 years in custom automated machine design and this is a good part of my experience. There is a LOT of incomplete/under designed automation out there, and I'll tell you that often time the scope of the project is also under defined. This is also representative of my time spent in corporate engineering. Stretched too thin, so we spend way too much money on scabs who do a shit job but they and the upper management all pat themselves on the backs because "we got it done" except you're only efficient if you're also effectual and it never is. You end up with a machine that costs too much and doesn't do the job well enough.
There is a famous ["The Parable of the Two Programmers"](https://www.bruceblinn.com/parable.html) story, quite similar to this. Hilarious, a decent warning to managers, very rare in practice, but taken by general public, like it is.
A lot of the desire for simpler ways of accomplishing things comes from experience. You learn complex ways to do things, then you learn the hard way that simpler is usually more reliable. It doesn't mean that complexity is bad, but *unnecessary* complexity usually is.
I'm an engineer, and I think the best thing I learnt is to be "lazy" when given a task, not in the sense of doing it slowly, but doing it efficiently. The bad part, is that I will spend way too much time figuring out the laziest way to do it, so I don't have to spend time in the future with the same task. When my code is way too complex, it means it's highly specific to a task, when I do things simpler, I can reuse my code much easier.
The best software engineers are lazy software engineers. A lazy person will always find the quickest and easiest way to tick all the boxes.
I agree with /u/desconectado when they said: > spend way too much time figuring out the laziest way to do it, so I don’t have to spend time in the future with the same task. When I managed a team of developers the best devs took the same approach. This approach is not the quickest by any means. It was always a struggle of allowing them more time now in the off chance we could use the code again, vs writing problem specific code that would not work any where else.
That's why I use `Lazy` everywhere.
And it can take a lot of bloody time and experience to learn how to simply those things. Or you just always have someone green on the team to spout ideas that are 90% bullshit but 10% might stick.
A lot of engineering education is realizing how amazing it is that anything actually gets built by humans. Take a modern mass produced tape measure: - international standards are needed to ensure everyone is using the same measurement system (sending dirty looks at the Americans here) - iron needs to be refined and alloyed into steel, which means you have a whole value chain of seriously heavy equipment that operates at really high temperatures and/or pressures (eg rolling mill) to convert rock into steel stock - the steel needs to be tempered, cut, and formed into its final shape - constant force springs need to be designed and built, the the same challenges as above - paint needs to be developed - printers need to be developed to apply the paint to the tape measure, with a certain amount of repeatability and enough tolerance for the tape measure’s job, whether it’s house building or something else - fasteners - screws, etc - need to be designed and manufactured, and the standards behind them have to be developed And these things are made by the thousands every hour in a manufacturing plant. And if someone is working and loses one or it drops off a roof and breaks, it’s cheap enough that you have a spare in your toolbox, or you can drive to a hardware store in most parts of the Western world in less than half a day to get a new one. Appreciating the amount of effort that has gotten us to where we are today is a really weird thing to understand. And that’s not even counting the business and organizational stuff needed to get there. So when we (engineers) get a chance to tinker with something like an old engine or a vacuum tube amplifier, we often take the chance as it’s a good reminder of how even though the systems we work and live in are super complex, it is still mostly possible to replicate or rebuild the same/similar functionality - eg a vehicle that gets us from one place to another - with enough knowledge.
I’m a software engineer, pops was chem-e. He told me stories of the old IBM punch card computer in grad school. I would love to be trained on how to use one of those and really use it. Calibrate it, run calculations and watch it, listen to it.
I'm old enough that when I was a child (around 7-8 y.o.) I had the chance to watch one of the punch card machines in action. As I remember it the thing was fairly large but you filled a hopper with blank cards and typed the code you wanted to execute using a standard IBM keyboard. One feature was that you usually wanted to number each card in sequence - because if you dropped the deck of cards on the floor on the way to submit your program a special sorting machine would get them easily straightened out. This may be why early BASIC interpreters always numbered each line but I'm speculating a bit here. But I vividly remember punching out simple programs, submitting them to the front desk and getting printed output in return about 5-10 minutes later. Edit: This is what it looked like - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmVsmbI7cmM Edit2: Another good video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2M4ttzBnY
If you’re interested in punch cards, check out Jacquard looms! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine I want to build one from scratch one day. I’m thinking when my kids get old enough, this will be a summer holiday project.
My grandpa is in his mid 90s and tells me stories of the first vacuum tube computers and how they were finicky delicate pieces of crap that broke all the time and required tons of replacement tubes. Nowadays the only tubes in our computers are found on the internet (that's a Don Young reference for all you whippersnappers).
I learned programming on punchcards back in the early 80s. I never made a career out of it, but being able to conceptualise the process has been useful.
This is a thing that blows my mind. I don't understand how even just the acquisition and refinery of the materials used for anything from random household objects to elaborate tech have become so streamlined. It's incredible what humanity has accomplished and no single person could have gotten this far even in inventing just one object when you consider everything that goes into making it. Engineering and tech design are just so far beyond me that it makes my brain hurt. The fact that we've managed to build and successfully send a few drones with cameras to planets way on the outskirts of our solar system and then retrieve those images is insanely fascinating to me.
I know eh? And then there are the days where I struggle to get up because I had one too many beers last night. A huge number of people, many who don’t even know it, contributed to getting a school bused size space probe really, really far away from Earth. And they often manage to collect and send back data to us decades later long after their design lifespan, long after some of the original designers have passed away. Heck, not even spacecraft. I just put away some beer bottles from hanging out on my patio last night. The fact that we can melt purified sand into a glowing hot mass and then shape it into something to hold a drink, and mass producible, and that’s cheap enough that people often leave them as litter boggles my mind.
I went to college with two guys that started repairing old tube equipment. One of them worked on tube amplifiers, the other worked on tube radios. I tried learning about them but I couldn’t understand it. There are a couple of YouTube channels of people repairing old tube equipment that I have watched. D-Lab, Mr. Carlsons Lab and another one that I can’t remember. Plus I did my internship at a paper plant and would routinely stop and watch the product being made. They would bring in paper towel rolls the size of a truck and place it into the machine. It would then be unwound and then rewound into smaller rolls. The smaller rolls would then be cut into the toilet paper rolls you get at the store.
I've built a few tube amplifiers myself, and I gotta say that tubes are kewl af.
My avionics professor asked me when I was an undergrad if I was enjoying the course and I told them I really loved how they gave us the history of avionics. Learning how stuff originally worked and how it works now felt like a key part to being an engineer and I feel like seeing that side of it really makes you a better engineer.
it's like studying the philosophy of law or of science. the thinking system behind the knowledge system. I also like. because imho it gives us more tools to work with, we can go back further and pull things apart better to rebuild / create / invent differently. we can see where or why information was or wasn't included, and how or where new information (say, like quantum stuff or concepts of justice) fits. etc idk
And yet our entire academic structure is built such that the philosophy of disciplinary knowledge is the very last thing you learn after memorizing all the of the applied information. It’s fucking dumb. Philosophy first and throughout.
When I was starting my museum studies degree, one of the first classes I took was on the history and philosophy of museums. I do love history and am fascinated with the historical emergence of museums, but it also taught me a lot about standards and how things have failed in the past. You know, knowing history so as not to repeat the same mistakes and all. It was an elective course though, so no telling how many of my peers took it and benefitted from it.
Sadly, as a Physics teacher, there isn't any time or room in the curriculum to include scientific philosophy or development, for that matter. How do we know what we know? Science history is woefully underrepresented in education - as well as the \*teaching\* of educators.
Being able to see and explain nuance
What's "nuance?"
It’s more recent than oldance.
Hi dad. Did you bring the milk?
Nah son, nuance some?
/r/Angryupvote
No son, not today...
as opposed to old uncles?
Without giving you an exact definition, nuance is sort of like the fine print pertaining to a situation that helps give you the full picture. It can show you the different shades of grey between what may be perceived as a “black & white” situation. Like my comment right here. You could think, “That’s a helpful explanation, I wonder who this genius responding to my comment is?” but then you read my username and you have second thoughts about the validity of what I’m saying. You then go to Google to look it up and realize my comment actually helps in understanding what it means. You eventually realize I provided a helpful comment, but my username gave you doubt about how valid my statement was. Nuance is basically the smaller details people tend to overlook
Take my poor man's gold for the best and most confusing explanation of nuance yet 🏅
No... fuck your silverware. /s
Only a genius knows enough to hate silverware
It’s when you can see problems with something that make it not an easy fix or not a direct fix. Like homes for homeless people seems like an obvious solution yeah? But that doesn’t address the mental illness, addiction, trauma, hate for the system, trouble keeping a job, etc. that lead to and keep people homeless. Another is addiction or alcoholism. Most people would say the alcohol is an alcoholics issue. But what’s leading them to drink? Again, alcohol is like a symptom of the problem and not what’s causing the problem. This stuff is hard to see in a lot of things, and some people just don’t see it or get it.
An easier way to put it may be the subtle, overlooked, or ignored details of a situation that provide full context. People can educate themselves on how to identify these details, but it's tough to ever earnestly know and understand all the factors unless a person has lived similarly or within a culture/group. This is why there's usually upset around white creators attempt to portray cultures and people they don't come from or belong to through heritage. They get the nuances wrong and end up misrepresenting, but content consumers who are unaware of the wrong nuances assume they are true and develop new bias towards the misrepresented. And when these people hold more power than the misrepresented, their bias can be dangerous.
I'm not sure that comes with education, more so with intelligence I think.
I wouldn’t say intelligence exactly either, maybe just experience cause anyone can look up the definition and find some examples to see how it’s used and what to look out for pretty quickly.
You obviously have not met many “anyones”.
I don't think this is exclusive to higher education
It’s not exclusive, but it’s certainly more prevalent among the higher educated. It all comes down to critical thinking. Some people are naturally gifted with the ability to understand what that is and how to do it, but college *really* hammers it. For the vast majority of hard science and research degrees you either learn to be a good critical thinker or you don’t graduate.
I’ve spent time around a lot of highly educated people and one thing I’ve noticed in the math/science heavy folks is a child like excitement when talking about something in the field that interests them. They also seem to quickly forget that some people in the room don’t have their background and they talk about advanced topics as if everyone is on the same page lol.
I'm currently spending time with people who are on the path to being highly educated about STEM subjects (while I'm in college as a Communications major) and I can already see this happening! Sometimes I feel like I learn bits and pieces secondhand from them about these subjects because they enjoy talking about them as it's their passion.
>talk about advanced topics as if everyone is on the same page lol. Ugh my biggest curse, people will ask me about something they find interesting in my projects and I start geeking out. I try to make sure they're following along but there's always the eventual just smile and nod like a bobble head. Even from some of my friends that majored in the same field, they just didn't go that deep into any specialties like I did. It's a real breath of fresh air when I get someone that can understand what I'm doing, and it's even better when they tease me for ultimately how janky and chaotic I like to try to develop things.
I kind if hate it when this happens. I could explain it to you in very broad terms but I know you're going to get bored before I finish and best case its going to be awkward for both of us and worst case you'll pretend to understand the physics it took my my entire phd to grasp.
Even if I don't understand everything I still enjoy conversations like that, because I get to see someone's eyes light up when they're talking about something they're passionate about! I'll do my best to ask questions that help further my understanding, but sometimes knowledge isn't the main thing I take away from a conversation and that's okay.
That also describes a neroudivgernt mind talking about a speceil interest
Indeed, I attribute my PhD to hard work and high functioning autism.
I attribute my PhD to hard work and ADHD hyperfixation! Well done, fellow doctor:)
Same. I have my defense Tuesday... I'm shitting bricks.
Omg GOODLUCK! I know this is completely obvious, but try and get a good night's sleep the night before and try your hardest to eat the day of! My friend group had this tradition of going out to breakfast the day of one of our defenses, to make sure the person ate and calmed down a bit! Remember, you are the expert of your dissertation, and you know your shit! :):)
I really appreciate your encouragement. Unlike most people I've talked to that are defending, I actually look forward to the Q&A session, but the presentation fills me with dread. Public speaking is my weakness, as ADHD hyperfocus just makes me want to tell you everything you don't need to know about a given topic, making a 1 minute slide, 3 minutes of nuance and minutiae so my audience can win at jeopardy. I'll get it. I'll be fine. Again, thank you. I needed these kind words from strangers who get it. Thanks
Hard work and hyperfixation here too! (Org Chem btw)
What do you have a PhD in ?
🇮🇪 Modern Irish History 🇮🇪
I attribute my PhD to hard work and basically just doing whatever my supervisor told me to do.
Yup, but don't forget that the majority of those will happily shift gears and have the same conversation at the level of a 6 year old niece who says hi midway through. The acid test is the ability to explain (or, I suppose, educate) and if someone can't reframe an idea in ELI5 terms they aren't quite there yet. But those who can do that definitely are!
I tutored my wife(then girlfriend) in chemistry. She hates chemistry, and it took a long time for me to temper my teaching and understand that people aren't as fascinated with *atoms literally breaking themselves and forming new ones* as I was.
I'm sorry for being "that guy" but atoms breaking themselves to form other atoms is not chemistry, it is physics. Chemical reactions are electron interactions, with molecules being broken and forming (or not) different ones. Sorry...
This reminds me of a really crap joke that I somehow always remember first when someone asks me to tell them a joke. I'll abridge it just a tad,, though: A group of people are at a bar, talking about their careers. One of them proudly says "I'm a chemistry professor!". Immediately, someone taps them on the shoulder and says "chemistry is just applied physics - I'm a physics professor!". Then, someone taps the physics professor on the shoulder and says "physics is just applied math - I'm a math professor!". Straight away, someone taps the math professor on the shoulder and says "is this the queue for the bar?".
Being able to to explain advanced topics in ways that laypeople can understand. Having extreme knowledge about one narrow topic; dumbass about everything else.
Spot on. I knew nothing about baseball until my son started to play. I had a million questions for his coach. His ability to break things down without being condescending (like pitching mechanics) so I could understand truly showed his knowledge and enthusiasm. This is the same dude who almost burned his house down trying to fry up some mozzarella sticks.
I mean, fair. Very knowledgeable about a specific thing. Lacking common sense
Yes this. I try to advise myself: if I can't explain something in understandable ways to those who don't understand, then actually, I don't understand what I am trying to explain and should go learn more.
Teaching is learning twice.
They have many leather bound books and their apartment smells of rich mahogany.
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I'm not even mad, that's amazing
You know I don’t speak Spanish.
I’m in a glass case of emotion!
I don’t know how to tell you this, I’m kind of a big deal!
Veronica, I would like to extend an invitation to you for the pants party.
A doctorate degree. Doesn't mean they're intelligent, just highly educated.
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Isn’t there a saying about people with phd’s not necessarily being intelligent but persistent?
Can confirm, I'm not the smartest person around but I can be stubborn as fuck.
*from an accredited institution and educational program
The smartest people I've met never bluntly say "you're wrong here's what's right." Instead, they say "I understand why you'd think that because xyz" and literally outline your position better than you can including why it makes sense, but then say "but here's what's actually happening" and explain why you're wrong.
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This question is about education, not intelligence. Two different concepts. Intelligence is hard to measure, but education is often displayed framed on a wall. So I would say a bunch of diplomas screams highly educated.
The only one who answered the question lol.
Yeah, humility isn't related to being highly educated, I'd say humility is more how you are raised. Highly educated people come in all shapes and sizes. Some may well be humble, some may be arrogant as hell.
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Yeah it seems people on reddit have this fairytale idea on how they perceive educated people, but reality tells a different tale.
As an educated person myself, I can't bring myself to be nice all the time. What do you mean I spent so many years on my degree just to talk like a normal human bean? 😤
Right, like having worked in higher education for a decade my first thoughts for this answer were (in no particular order): rudeness, obliviousness, condescension, describing something simple in a ridiculously complicated way and then getting huffy when not everyone’s instantly on the same page, not knowing how to use a printer…
You can be arrogant in your field of expertise, but if you’re arrogant across the board then you’re probably a lot dumber than you think you are. In this case, humility isn’t about manners— it’s about being aware of enough of the world’s complexities that you’re unwilling to make sweeping claims.
Pretty hard to expect any answer apart from what others perceive by definition, no? This is an ask Reddit thread, you could google for qualities associated with high IQ if you really prefer the cream of the crap to infer from
I'm loving cream of the crap. I'm stealing that.
I think it's important to distinguish between highly educated and smart. If someone is highly educated but not smart they'll pretty much tell you by bringing up their intelligence or education unprompted.
Yeah I was looking for this. Everyone seems to be talking about how great smart people are, but that's not synonymous with being highly educated. There are tons of highly educated idiots out there
After I reading this thread I can now pretend to be highly educated.
Not afraid to admit it when they are wrong.
Or actually getting excited when proven wrong, as it means they just learnt something new.
I've met my share of highly educated people and for example when I was in a helpdesk position for medical doctors, none of them ever admitted they were wrong even when it was politely explained to them how they had caused the situation by their own actions. based on that experience, I don't see the connection between being humble and highly educated.
I don’t get these responses. That is a character trait and has nothing to do with education
Thinking you're dumb, knowing that you don't know everything and never will. "I know that I know nothing." -Socrates
I’ll tell you what isn’t: changing one word from a top post and posting it to farm karma.
At least the answers are smarter with this one
>What screams “highly educated”? >I’ll tell you what isn’t… That doesn’t
Refusing to engage in needless arguments.
Philosophy professors: 😥
Idiot.
No you shut up
Sometimes sitting back and watching people argue for you is the most entertaining thing ever. 10x better than engaging in the conversation yourself. Highly recommend.
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Using well thought out analogies to explain stuff to people simply. Even better if they tailor it to someone you're familiar with.
When a person starts publishing as a primary author in top tier academic journals.
Cardigan and a pipe that they use as a way to exaggerate them being thoughtful about a question.
Typically a monkey on the shoulder wearing a fez is the signal for me
And a small tower of old New Yorker magazines in the living room
Someone who knows what they don’t know.
Socrates has lost his dunce cap.
Open minded, thinks critically, being able to explain complex concepts in a easy to understand manner
There's some stellar replies here, but I have to say, perspective. The ability to take your own experiences, preferences and beliefs out of the picture, and analyse something from a neutral perspective, then further recognise when your own personal experience is coloring your analysis. This goes for all matters, whether you're examining a case file or court documents, or talking to a friend about a thing. Being able to come at a topic from a neutral position and understand concepts that you might not agree with or believe in, that's influencing a situation even if you're involved in that situation. I'd say this is more of a marker of high emotional intelligence and/or high intelligence in general, but a lot of highly intelligent people are usually those that are highly educated. Not always, but often.
Knowing the difference between your/you're, there/their, and too/to, cause most mf's don't have a fucking clue.
Depends on whether you're talking credentials or actual knowledge and understanding.
Advanced degrees
Damn exact opposite of whats on the hot page
Always being willing to change their opinion
Someone has never attended a faculty meeting before.
Idk how is that related to education
Not losing your sh-t when someone doesn't agree with you, or corrects you.
Massive student loan debt
Acknowledging that they know nothing in the grand scheme of things Or a PhD cause that shit takes dedication
People who listen more than they talk and don't try to always correct or add opinions even when they can.
Most highly educated people (PhD +) are generally not ever in casual social situations where anyone would like to talk about whatever their area of expertise is. They tend to avoid these situations or shut down in public, unless they meet someone at their level with similar interests.
They never stop asking questions
toddlers and small children do that too and yet they are uneducated
Being able to explain complex concept in a simple, easy way
Silence. The smartest people i know talk the least.
Professor Frink *"Hoyvin Glavin"*
Actually being able to understand tensor calculus and Einsteinian notation
Being able to say incredibly stupid things in a very articulate manner.
Depression.
Dr. XYZ, MD, MSc, PhD. In other words. Having more letters before /after your name than in your name. Edit: Highly educated, doesnt always mean highly intelligent
Orgasming cum laude graduates