We really have to stop calling these people really smart people, if they were truly smart people then they would more aware of the real world that is around them not the imaginary world that we measure with measurements we created. Intelligence and intellect are two completely different things, one lies in ignorance and the other in truth. The very first words you will hear an intelligent person say is I don't know.
A quick list to remember the major points of the video 1. Expertise is domain specific 2. If they can't explain their plan simply, that's because there is no plan 3. Plan to live your own life, not to replicate someone elses 4. Don't ever trust the hype 5. Don't ever trust the hype
To expand upon 2, the truest expression of your mastery of a subject is being able to explain it to other people. If you can't explain it to a 3rd grader without an endless stream of technical jargon, you're not as smart as you think you are.
the vast majority of revenue is generated through products and services. and that's really all there is to investing or not. Is this a good product/service or not? Do I believe people will buy/rent/lease this or not? And all valid business can be explained in one sentence. i.e. "generating ad revenue through a web based search service" or "selling two wheeled transpotation systems without a combustion engine for inner city customers"... if you can't explain your business in one sentence than I wouldn't leave my money with you...
I love the line "...actually think that their path to success is repeatable without the advantages or good fortune they had along the way." We don't want to hear about how little control we have in our lives about success and that major fortune can be as much a part of lucky circumstance as hard work. Influencers create the image that they were in the same position and you are just as much one step away from their success as them - such a dangerous idea well explained here.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug Well said and it's true, great reminder! Had to re-google it but reminds me tangentially of quote about holding two opposing ideas in mind by Scott Fitzgerald - for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise. Life can be such a paradox sometimes, but we have to find what works for each of us individually. Figure out the way forward.
I have always been big on this, always being an unlucky guy growing up I realized how much of a role it plays in life. And even tho I am smart and competent I have realize that even my successes are thanks to me getting lucky despite being unlucky in general
I have an above average IQ, a masters degree, a successful business, a paid for house and I will tell you that I didn't choose my brain, my parents, my health, my location, my extended family, the time that I was born, the backwardness of the industry that I work in, the failure of others to take advantage of obvious opportunities, the personalities and risk tolerances of the people I compete against, the personality of my wife, the health of my children, the fact that i haven't died in a car accident, the country of my birth, or the invention of the internet and all the other technology that I need. Smart people are just people. Successful people are just people too. There is very little difference between me and my friend who hasn't experienced so much blessing.
Sounds nice but it's not true. I'm working with someone who is dumb but very good at reading people and playing with them. On the other side I'm very good on technical fields but I suck on communicating with people. We "thrive" by combining forces.
The worst is when their initial start of the conversation is actually logical and no one can refute it. Then once they gain your trust, they slowly divert into their true intention while not being alarming.
As someone who is often called smart, I have two quotes that I (try to) live by: 1: "A fool *thinks* he is wise, but a wise man *knows* he is a fool." 2: "If you think you're the smartest man in the room, you're either wrong, or you need to find another room."
Yeah, I get called smart frequently, even by people I've only met briefly. I graduated college with a perfect GPA, despite not having to really try too hard. The first phrase you gave is not a good example at all. I'm assuming it is supposed to be related to the concept that as someone becomes more familiar with a concept they learn more about what they don't know about such concept. Thus someone who is good in a wide variety of fields, will know that there is so much that they don't know about those fields. It's OK to know if you are wise or not, it ultimately comes down to why you think you are wise and what you are using for comparison for what is considered 'unwise'. The second phrase is also mostly pointless. You are going to dump your existing family and friends because you are smarter than them? Are you actually smarter than they (from an adaptable standpoint) or are you more disciplined than them? What metric is used to determine if you are 'smarter' than them, and how will you find another group of people who you consider smarter than you, who are even going to want to waste their time around you? If you actually want to improve in life, is it really necessary to be in a group of people smarter than you? You have access to the internet and can retrieve knowledge from people smarter than you without having to socialize with them. Discipline is ultimately what is going to matter for improving your life.
1. A wise man is not a fool 2. It is very much possible that you could be the smartest person in any given room. That doesn't mean nothing anyone else says has merit though.
#1 is actually also due to media seeking out smart people who are willing to answer questions outside their expertise. I worked as an academic for a brief time and spent a lot of time around very well published academics. I can't imagine that any one of them would ever be comfortable answering questions that are even slightly outside their expertise. Just about everyone I worked with would have refused to comment on anything that wasn't their own research or broadly accepted concepts that we teach in courses. Most academics are smart enough to keep their mouth shut about stuff they don't genuinely know to be 100% true or at least be very upfront about the limit of their knowledge. However, that's really boring to publish. Much more interesting when you get a charismatic person with a PhD willing to talk about anything and everything on your show. That would get lots more views.
It's the same thing when the media interviews famous people about unrelated things. Such as actors on topics like investing, science, history etc. And the layman mistakes their fame for credibility.
Every expert of every country was wrong about covid, stop pretending academics are better than rich people. Most people don't really know what they're talking about most of the time. If you don't even try to do anything outside of your own expertise ever, you'll end up being dumber in the long run.
If you say the atomic weight of gold is this and get it wrong your stupid. If you say I believe the atomic weight of gold is this if I remember correctly will make you seem smart even if you're wrong.
The issue with that approach that often progress comes from fields and often unrelated fields or accidents, the cloud chamber that physicists used to observe particles came from a curious Meteorologists. Often progress comes from a different field and outside perspectives from people completely unrelated, people just staying in their own lane can easily devolve into a stagnant technocracy. It’s a balance of people staying in their own lane and also being able to go out on a limb on topics they might not be experts in.
As a teacher, researcher and considering myself a "smart guy", I can add some things: In the world of science and research, people usually ask questions to almost everyone and critics (constructive or not) are a thing. People are aware that even if you are smart, bad things can happen and scalate pretty quickly. On the other hand, people who "admire" smart people, don't ask such questions and just believe in everything they say. They try to be the same they are in their research or academic environment, with people who are not in the same environment. Also, school systems tend to idealize smart people, when really it is a group of individual with special needs in education, due to their high IQ. This should be addressed in every school system, to avoid this kind of biases in the future. Still, as the author says, they are a natural phenomena, but we can tackle it with some doubts and more information.
In the book Psycology of money, there is a chapter about people playing a different game than you. I feel like this episode is a video version of that chapter. Basically that chapter was saying that taking financial advise from people isn't always great because you don't know their plan, their financial situations and how long they are willing to stay even when things start going south, unlike you. Basically, financial advises should be very personal and tailored to you and your situation.
People become rich/powerful for one reason. They are ruthless. In Machiavelli's the prince he says good people should be as ruthless as the evil as to attain the same amount of power.
2:04 [“Stay In Your Lane”] 3:35 More questions one is demanded to answer, the more possibility to screw up and fall from perfection. 5:07 Enron 7:25 (Success for one person is not always directly translatable to a different persons different circumstances) 10:33 Assumption of Excellence in all fields 11:53 Reputation overestimation
The self confidence problem is something I think Veritasium explained very nicely in their video "Is Success Luck or Hard Work". Hard work is necessary for success but so is luck. When the smart person with a lot of hard work becomes successful, in their eye their success is a direct result of their hard work, while in reality many others with the same intelligence and hard work ended up failing.
I can personally attest to this. I admit I could work much harder, but I'd also say I'm profoundly much more well-off than most of my contemporaries. To your point, I think it's largely because of my parents - not just financially, but also emotionally, as they're very caring without being coddling.
I once found myself at a company renowned for hiring smart people, and I was finding some of them frustrating because they were pushing ahead on things that obviously weren't working. Not long after starting, I ran across an article which made the argument that really smart people sometimes need to fail more often than smart people, because they don't have enough experience with failure to recognize it. The basic idea was that smart people probably floated through high school, but then got some challenges in college and learned to recognize when to change their path because their approach wasn't working. But if a person was smart enough, even college would be easy, and then they found themselves in the workforce without having learned how to recognize failure. So where a smart person would try something two or maybe three times, and then change tack because it wasn't working, a REALLY smart person might keep trying over and over and over in the belief that they are right and the world is wrong. I don't know if this is actually true. Maybe it's just general ego as the video suggests at one point. But I have often heard smart people arguing points which are CLEARLY failing, seemingly not able to comprehend why their hypothesis isn't being born out by the real world. Sometimes you're just wrong, unfortunately.
The importance of quick learning feedback. I work on machine learning, where initial experiments are (hopefully) quick and short and you learn to fail quick and try something else. "It didn't work. Why?" "Ok, this other thing worked... Why??" Unfortunately, not all fields have a quick feedback loop. As example, for someone in human resources it could take months, to figure out someone was a bad hire. For a manager, a business decision can take years to show results. Delayed feedback delays learning too. Smart people should probably push their learning to the point where it's challenging and they do make mistakes consistently. Make it harder until you make mistakes or get a Nobel prize lol
No, I wouldn't say that's entirely correct. Per my definition, being "smart" generally has to encompass everything, not just in one specific domain or practice since if that's the case, with enough time, everyone can be geniuses. Truly smart people don't act like the typical smart people you meet. They listen more than they speak and when they share their thoughts, they usually back it up with evidence or a logically tight argument. It's hard to argue with someone who is truly smarter than you, because they would (by definition) know more than you and thought further ahead than you. Oftentimes, you can tell when a person is smart by the consensus of people who agree with what they say, even when they aren't the most outspoken or popular person in a group. The people who are obnoxiously smart are typically just being pretentious.
I agree, but disagree. Sometimes the 'really smart' person (might be an average person, too, btw) just has a greater bandwidth to tolerate failure, or a greater safety buffer. Let's say I had 3 billion dollars in the bank, while you only had $300,000; we would likely not have the same tolerance for risk and failure. Above all else, I think that's what you witnessed in the situations you described in your comment-''really smart" people having a greater tolerance for risk and failure.
Thank you for being one of the very few rational people who can acknowledge that luck is always a required part to success. I believe there is, at most, a handful of people who would succeed a second time.
@@mwase7782 Luck is never a result of anything, luck is a spontaneous unintentional positive outcome. In order to have any influence over/reproduce luck, you'd have to be able to predict the true randomness of the universe which is impossible for us, or completely impossible, since you'd have to predict virtually infinite possibilities of everything.
It sucks because I really want to like Neil. He was one of my favorites for years, but I can't get behind this "Oh normal people are too stupid to know what's good for them, therefore my voice is the only one that matters" authoritarian attitude that he has had recently.
That's what a representative democracy looks like. That is our actual system of governance in the United States of America... It's just that politicians DO NOT communicate with the public. You seem to not notice that; or appreciate the humility it takes to be a leader. Lead soldiers into battle and you'll hear a lot about cannon fodder and toy soldiers. Apparently foot-soldiers are too stupid to know what's good for them (they know what is good for the group).
Yeah I don't have much respect for people who complain about others being too stupid to understand them. It's a fact of life that some people are smarter than others. If these people are so smart, then how come they can't work out how to communicate with another, at that person's level? Maybe they're not as smart as they think they are.
@@2bfrank657 exactly. In my opinion, if you can't explain a subject to someone unintelligent or normal, then you don't truly know the subject. Like the Physicist Brian Cox.. He can explain things that are just way too complex for me to understand in a way I can somewhat grasp it
@@Ryan-wx1bi Youre making the assumption that that is wanted. What is wanted is eye level communication. Swooping down to be understood by others, would feel oppressive.
I really appreciate your concise overview of the expert bias, especially your emphasis on how a PhD is the product of nothing more than original research (with varying degrees of originality) in a specific field, with one’s dissertation focusing on an extremely specific topic within that specific field. I’m an academic working in the humanities and it’s really unfathomable to me to see scholars from other friends speak with such confidence about areas of expertise entire unrelated to their specialty. My discipline involves a fair amount of philosophy and theory, so I do think that the formal and logical approach I take in my research influences the way I approach ideas and problems that aren’t related to my field at all. But I would never claim that my approach makes me knowledgeable, it makes me critical, maybe even skeptical, and it may lead me to learn more about the topic both due to the questions I’m asking but also because I have research skills (as well as access to things like journals via my university) that make it easier for me to gather information. What’s strange is that one of the first things most people learn in graduate school is just how fragile the concept of “authority” can be. If we look at the “authority on X,” the person who knows more than anyone else in the world about a given topic, most of their knowledge is going to be knowledge of the problems and outstanding questions that pertain to the subject on which they’re an authority. So it makes absolutely no sense for any scholar to emerge from academia with a sense of entitlement to speak on subjects far outside of their field or specialty. The most egregious example of this would be Pinker’s work that attempts to objectively synthesize dozens of branches of scholarship covering centuries of time and spanning hemispheres just because he… works at Harvard? I’ve met plenty of people who worked or went on to be Harvard professors. Suffice it to say, none of them left me awestruck by the sort of near-omniscience required to actually complete a project like Pinker claims to have (twice). The quality that most informs these “experts” who speak far outside their field isn’t their knowledge or intelligence, it’s a lack of self-awareness at best and sheer narcissism at worst. I’m sure there’s some degree of a snowball effect, where media starts reaching out about subjects you know a lot about, and then building up your persona, and then asking about other things that you don’t know as much about, so you try your best, and then it keeps going from there until you’re suddenly no longer an expert on a specific niche subject, you’re now an expert sans qualifier. A good example of someone who has managed to do the opposite of a Tyson or Pinker is Brian Greene, who has for the most part stayed in his lane as a physicist. He does dumb things down in a way that’s perhaps problematic to other physicists, but he doesn’t speak to topics that he hasn’t himself mastered. He leaves the niche of his hyper-specialized research, to be sure, but only to explain the more fundamental ideas that underpin that niche. In this way, he proves that remaining true to one’s expertise doesn’t prevent you from engaging with a popular audience. It just means you have can’t talk about climate science as a psychologist, in the same way that you wouldn’t consult a electrician to fix your plumbing.
I think Socrates said that he disliked those who had knowledge on one subject, and because of that they felt they could speak on all matters with confidence as if they were experts on that matter. It made them believe that they were considered smarter than people around them and as a consequence that their argument would hold more weight even discussing a topic they knew little to nothing about. I suppose the image they held of themselves as "intellectuals" didn't allow them to approach such discussions with humility and admit they don't really know.
Well written argument. I'm going to have to, however, disagree in the strongest terms. As someone who has studied courses from 5 different faculties and constantly works in interdisciplinary research, I believe there are several big problems with this idea of "staying in your lane": 1) Accountability. This is the biggest one by far. The more that you insist that people stay in their lane, and the more narrow those lanes become, the smaller the pool of people becomes who are "allowed" to criticize any given academic's work. This allows bullsh*t to survive far longer, leads to major difficulties in obtaining independent replication/verification and peer review (since everyone in that lane is probably part of a small group of close-nit researchers/friends), and allows theories to only ever be questioned by people who think and believe the same things as the person who proposed the theory (see, eg, string theory). 2) Duplication of effort. It is very often the case that problems in different fields require solutions to the same types of problems, just in different contexts. You don't want each of those fields to independently tackle those problems. An amazing example of this going wrong was when a medical doctor published a paper a few years ago on "a new method for estimating drug administration quantities" or something to that effect which, when it was looked at by someone with a BSc, was quickly found to be nothing more than a re-discovery of the centuries old and very well known trapezium method of integration estimation. Thank goodness that people other than medical experts were "allowed" to "stray from their lane" and point this out. 3) Better understanding. I can tell you that when I studied philosophy, I often found concepts explained there that were analogous to some other concept I had learned in electrical engineering. No jokes. I forget who said this quote but it's 100% true IMO: "He who understands only chemistry does not understand chemistry". 4) Changing areas of progression in a subject. Take the study of the mind for example. 100 years ago we did not have the tools to study the mind from a computational perspective. The best way to study the mind was using the traditional tools of psychology. However, we now do have these computational tools. As a result, people like the artificial intelligence expert Joscha Bach are making inroads into questions such as the role of emotion in cognition with powerful results that would never be possible within the domain of psychology because psychologists simply do not have the tools to do this. Data science is another example of an area that can make progress in other disciplines in areas where they have been stuck. Like Mythological studies, for example, which would previously have been seen as a purely humanities discipline. But nowdays they are able to tackle problems such as finding the origin of myths and their dispersal patterns by apply sophisticated AI natural language processing techniques. 5) Different perspectives. This one is obvious. 6) Because even when these people who are "straying from their lanes" are wrong, they are more often than not wrong for a very different reason that the reasons that the people within that lane are wrong. And the process of having to figure out why these people are wrong can very often lead to new insights. 7) Because the whole idea of subjects being independent is a fiction of commercialised knowledge production in the first place. If you were to suggest to the ancients that philosophy and physics were different subjects they'd think you're mad. And I would tend to agree. Physicists go completely astray very often due to basic errors of philosophical reasoning. And philosophers, for the same reason. 8) Because the narcissism argument cuts both ways. Assuming that noone but you and people who have studied the exact thing that you have could possibly know anything about it is highly presumptuous. There are a large number of historical examples of absolutely game changing discoveries being made in fields by people who weren't experts in them. So what about idiots like Neil de grasse Tyson? Well, simple, he's an idiot. The problem is not that he's talking outside his lane. The problem is that he's wrong. And that's how we should treat people who speak on subjects they're not experts in. Listen carefully but skeptically, make sure we really understand exactly what they're saying, decide whether they're wrong or not, and react appropriately. Do not dismiss people's ideas on principle. Ever.
@@neildutoit5177 I think you make a good point but this is a very subtle distinction. The desirable quality is not so much staying in your lane in terms of artificially constraining your intellectual pursuits but rather staying in your lane in terms of knowing your own limits of knowledge and reasoning. That is, it is humility rather than narrow-mindedness which is at play here.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug That's a fine distinction to make. But it is an exclusively personal one. One should know one's own limits. But that does not give you any grounds to shut someone else down. Whether or not they are suffering from a deficit of humility is something that you can only determine by examining the content of their argument. So I agree everyone should try to know the limits of their own knowledge and be humble. But I cannot tell whether someone else is doing that or not without engaging in what they're actually saying, I can only know for myself whether I'm doing that or not. It reminds me of this conversation I saw on New Years Eve where this guy was lecturing this girl for like 20 minutes about something and she eventually tries to give her own input and he says to her "a wise man once said you should listen to understand and not to respond" and I just thought my word, if you are using that quote as a way to shut someone else up so that you can speak more then you have 100% missed the point. The quote is how you personally are meant to behave. Not how you're meant to tell other people to behave. So it's a fine quote if you apply it in your own life but a terrible idea if you use it as a weapon against others IMO and I think your distinction is the same.
I use the chatGPT answer style: partially informed or incomplete answer + "however, I am not fully familiar with that topic. You should probably verify the information or ask someone who knows better if possible "
2:23 I can't believe he said that, it is the other way around, every transcendental number is irrational, but not the other way around. Some of them are algebraic, like √2. The definition of an algebraic number is being a zero of a rational (or integer) coefficient polynomial ( the above example is a zero of x^2 - 2) . The transcendental numbers are those real (or complex) numbers that are not algebraic. It is relatively easy to see that every rational number is algebraic, and as I said there are some irrational numbers which are are algebraic too, but π for example is not algebraic. As the video suggest, some physicists should stay better with physics. Edit: I forgot to mention that if the continuum hypothesis is true then there is the same number of transcendental numbers than irrational numbers (although the former is contained in the latter as I mentioned above). So double fail for this physicist. And also I am sorry if someone already said this, it is probably the case as this is kind of basic undergraduate maths. I didn't read all the comments. Finally excuse me if there is some gramatical mistake, english is my third language.
@Lino Sey nah, OP worded it correctly, even if a bit awkwardly. Another way to say it is, being good at something doesn't make you special, or it doesn't make you superior to other people.
I was raised by an MD and a PhD who thought they knew everything. I went to medical school, where I was far from the smartest in the room. I have learned that “smart” people without common sense, personal responsibility, kindness, and a willingness to learn from others are positively dangerous. To themselves and others.
In my school years the invited a sucessful (running their own institute at an university) former student to give a talk on their career. Half way through the talk, my best friend and I concluded that you definetively have to be lucky to find sucess.
Nope. Most people are lazy , also in this vid it doesn’t mention that Women prioritize feelings. Most disciplines are BS if you apply the scientific method
Lord Kelvin estimated the Earth to be 100 million years old, Linus Pauling convinced himself of vitamin C megadosage. They were smart and within their field.
Something that needs to be redefined in our language is the word "genius". To me, personally, genius does not describe a state of being, but a type of action. You can't be a genius, but you can perform acts of genius. It's these little cues that I think are so powerful. I think that little change will help us from categorically putting someone on a pedestal to simply respecting the work done by some very smart people who are very good at certain things.
@@DAMfoxygrampa he was brilliant, don't get me wrong. But I'm pretty sure he also understood that his wheelhouse was in mathematics, natural science, and engineering. He wasn't a skilled athlete or sportsman, and to my knowledge he wasn't huge into the arts. Again, no disrespect on this scientific and mathematical titan. He was a master at the things he did, but I still hold the belief that genius is an act, not a state of being.
@@me0101001000 I was just thinking about some predictions that he made about WW2 that, if I remember correctly, came true. But yeah I do get your point haha I just like playing devil's advocate
I don’t think that would work in practice. Because someone who had more resources, connections, and luck can claim that their success were “acts of geniuses” while downplaying any other person who is a conventional “genius” by simply asking them, “If you are so smart, where are your acts of geniuses, hmm?”. Which is quite a childish attitude.
Check out the Rational Reminder podcast. They interview litteral Nobel Prize winners who apologize for talking too long on a question. Intelligence + humility is insanely refreshing. Specifically 100 and 200 Fama and French are both class acts.
On the NDT example: I am not a career scientist, but I rubbed shoulders with them for a while. Really, truly smart people have a knowledge pool a foot wide and a mile deep. Anything outside that foot is splashing The Modern Rogue youtube channel did a video about radiation with a real scientist, and watching him answer questions was fascinating because a lot of the time he _didn't_ answer them.
I think smart people in the modern world have a T-shape knowledge pool. Deep in one field and superficial in others. They will still be more informed than the average person in most areas, but they will be aware they are no experts there so they will warn and turn off people who believe they are.
I'm a new subscriber. This video is aging better day by day. I'm a relatively successful tech startup founder. I used to admire a lot of the people in the industry that I am now considering, well, not very wise. My takeaway is, you can admire someone's skill in a particular field, and take their insight anywhere else with a grain of salt. Or a whole bucket sometimes ;)
There is a good book that gets into this in great detail. Read Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell. It’s all about people that are smart in one field being treated as experts in every field. It also explains how most are actually wrong in their assertions outside of their specialty.
@@ethanslamberry6982 I see what you mean, but I consider this book to be very accurate because as a professor. He been around a lot of other intellectuals that go into the public eye and venture into fields they are not experts in. His observations are far more up close and personal then you or I. Also, the book came out 10 years ago and it’s still stands the test of time.
@@SoUnDMaN831 oh i've nothing against the core theme of that book, in fact it's more true than ever in this day and age. i was just pointing out the irony xD
@@ethanslamberry6982 to be fair I have rarely seen Sowell give hot "takes" outside of sociology/economics, which is quite literally his field of expertise. That doesn't mean he can't be wrong of course, but I don't think he's straying outside of his lane or speaking out of school.
We have a word for people like that in German which is “Fachidiot”, literally meaning subject idiot. In general though it’s always good to vet information, because even if something is within the broader field of expertise of that person doesn’t guarantee they are experts in regards to your specific question. If someone studied Physics and you ask them how a quantum computer works, they might have a better understanding than the general population but not necessarily the in-depth knowledge to answer very specific questions or make judgements about that topic. On the same note, it’s important to look at how information was obtained when reading things online, like checking sample sizes or additional information in regards to methodology or even when a theory was published. Most scientific papers are very specific and only apply within specifically set conditions and use cases.
When people ask me how to do I have such a wonderful life, I always reply, "Circumstances." I work and live in Norway. I think that the average annual income here is around 55.000 dollars. My wife and I have like 350.000 dollars (before tax). House that now costs 2.5 million, an apartment that we are renting. House in Marbella, Spain, that is on Airbnb when we are not visiting. Two big apartments in our home country that we are also renting. Two mounting cabins are on Airbnb, and one house is next to the Adriatic sea where my father lives, but we are renting one unit there during the season. We have six million dollars in real estate and no loans or debts. But, there is a HUGE BUT. We inherited all of our real estates. 🤣 My wife and I didn't have any siblings. My parents, mother, and father didn't have siblings, and my grandfather's brother didn't have kids. Grandparents died, unforchenatly and my mother. Then my father gave up on his part to inference on my behavior. He transferred all assets to me because he fell into depression, and I'm his only child. I inherited two apartments, two cabins, house next to the Adriatic sea. My wife inherited one apartment, a village house, and a cabin. We have sold one apartment, cabin, and village house. We moved to Norway and brought an apartment with a 5-year loan because we had a good amount of equity. After six years, prices in that neighborhood skyrocketed, and we sold that apartment for eight times of amount we initially brought it. We took another apartment and a house with only five years loan. Now, after seven years, we are debt free and have all those assets. We both work as architects for one big company, and we have a private architectural studio. We are not ultra-mega-rich people, nor are we more intelligent than any of the people I know. (Sometimes I feel like a real dumbass) But we have decent lives. And people are confused when I say it all came to us by "Circumstances," but it is the truth. We could be just two regular architects, earning 70.000 (before tax) a year and having some apartment with 20-30 years loan, like most of our friends, are. But circumstances were different; starting positions. PS. I do not consider my mother's death, my wife's parents' death, and my father's condition as lucky. It is better to say Circumstances. PS.PS. We were bying some objects that required a complete renovation, and since we are architects, we did almost all the jobs ourselves. That increased the value a lot.
@@ambientparallax2984 He causes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. He gives and he takes away. It does not do to be ungrateful for the gifts you do receive, just because another received more.
I strongly disagree with the first point for the following reasons: 1) Accountability. This is the biggest one by far. The more that you insist that people stay in their lane, and the more narrow those lanes become, the smaller the pool of people becomes who are "allowed" to criticize any given academic's work. This allows bullsh*t to survive far longer, leads to major difficulties in obtaining independent replication/verification and peer review (since everyone in that lane is probably part of a small group of close-nit researchers/friends), and allows theories to only ever be questioned by people who think and believe the same things as the person who proposed the theory. 2) Duplication of effort. It is very often the case that problems in different fields require solutions to the same types of problems, just in different contexts. You don't want each of those fields to independently tackle those problems. An amazing example of this going wrong was when a medical doctor published a paper a few years ago on "a new method for estimating drug administration quantities" or something to that effect which, when it was looked at by someone with a BSc, was quickly found to be nothing more than a re-discovery of the centuries old and very well known trapezium method of integration estimation. Thank goodness that people other than medical experts were "allowed" to "stray from their lane" and point this out. 3) Better understanding. I can tell you now that when I studied philosophy, I often found concepts explained there that were analogous to some other concept I had learned in electrical engineering. No jokes. I forget who said this quote but it's 100% true IMO: "He who understands only chemistry does not understand chemistry". 4) Changing areas of progression in a subject. Take the study of the mind for example. 100 years ago we did not have the tools to study the mind from a computational perspective. The best way to study the mind was using the traditional tools of psychology. However, we now do have these computational tools. As a result, people like the artificial intelligence expert Joscha Bach are making inroads into questions such as the role of emotion in cognition with powerful results that would never be possible within the domain of psychology because psychologists simply do not have the tools to do this. Data science is another example of an area that can make progress in other disciplines in areas where they have been stuck. Like Mythological studies, for example, which would previously have been seen as a purely humanities discipline. But nowdays they are able to tackle problems such as finding the origin of myths and their dispersal patterns by apply sophisticated AI natural language processing techniques. 5) Different perspectives. This one is obvious. 6) Because even when these people who are "straying from their lanes" are wrong, they are more often than not wrong for a very different reason that the reasons that the people within that lane are wrong. And the process of having to figure out why these people are wrong can very often lead to new insights. 7) Because the whole idea of subjects being independent is a fiction of commercialized knowledge production in the first place. If you were to suggest to the ancients that philosophy and physics were different subjects they'd think you're mad. And I would tend to agree. Physicists go completely astray very often due to basic errors of philosophical reasoning. And philosophers, for the same reason. 8) Because the narcissism argument cuts both ways. Assuming that noone but you and people who have studied the exact thing that you have could possibly know anything about it is highly presumptuous. There are a large number of historical examples of absolutely game changing discoveries being made in fields by people who weren't experts in them. So what about idiots like Neil de grasse Tyson? Well, simple, he's an idiot. The problem is not that he's talking outside his lane. The problem is that he's wrong. And that's how we should treat people who speak on subjects they're not experts in. Listen carefully but skeptically, make sure we really understand exactly what they're saying, decide whether they're wrong or not, and react appropriately. Do not dismiss people's ideas on principle. Ever.
Every point you made is correct, but in the context of the academic field. Advantages of collaboration with multidisciplinary teams are already a common practice, and so is the practice of diligently questioning hypothesis’, logic, and conclusions in team meetings between scientists and thesis defenses’ (which don’t require the questioner to know more about the field than the one making the presentation, since a thesis is an area that should be completely new). The video however was about fallacies and biases in terms of experts speaking with the general public and how the average person isn’t taught these best academic practices.
This is the most realistic video on the matter I have ever seen. People think luck is doing nothing and strike gold. Luck is doing a lot and still only striking gold by luck! And this happens way more than striking gold because of the hard work and personal individual capacity!
Problem with Niell is that he KNOWS answering questions is the only way to entertain the masses and to keep his job going strong. He is very much in the business.
A clear example of this is how someone can be very smart when it comes to finance and making videos, but still have very flawed views on music. Interpret that however you wish
The whole time he was talking about Neil Degrasse Tyson, I was thinking of Jordon Peterson. I have a huge amount of respect for Jordon, but when he talks about our "over-reaction" to climate change - it's just embarrassing.
Love your channel! A slight issue I have. Eventually every sentence you say begins and ends with the same cadence. It becomes grating after extended listening. Maybe you could try speaking more casually as if we were in the same room. More conversational. I love the content!
For those who don't understand the bit with transcendental numbers, they are by definition numbers that can't be a solution of a polynomial with rational coefficients. Therefore transcendantal numbers are always irrational because any rational number r is the solution of polynomial x-r. Consequently, there can't be more transcendantal numbers than irrational numbers since transcendantal numbers are included in irrational numbers.
transcendal numbers are part of irrational numbers . Therefore we cannot have more transcendal than irrational numbers ( because transcendal forms a sub group) Try to picture a venn diagram inside circle A (irrational ) there exist B (transcendal),. Irrational numbers will have B plus any other numbers that will add up to A
Using a quote from Pederson at the start critizicing this, while he is a prime example of talking about lots and lots of stuff he has no real clue about is peak comedy.
Yeah, his recent complaints about those who are trying to mitigate climate change are really off-putting. I'm no climate change expert, but it's clear to me that he has no clue what he's talking about in that regard.
I think the school system encourages this mindset. Students are encouraged to be "the best" (which is often narrowly defined) and rewarded for doing so. Students who are often at the top gain an opinion that they're _always_ the smartest and this is continuously reinforced. But maybe we should put less emphasis on academic smarts and more on actual life and people skills. Like are you the best in listening to the opinions of others, in generosity, in losing graciously, in not comparing yourself ...etc.
Ah, yes. That is the dream: to cater to real needs. To build knowledge, develop skills, and hone characters that will produce the best quality humans we can. That is the dream. I've been a teacher for a few years, and I tried to implement that very personalized individualized approach for a bit. It's just too much work. Too much. And it's too much because when you try implementing that idealistic and holistic approach, that's all on top of the work you have to comply with the requirements of the Department of Education (Ministry, Department, whichever). And if you truly care for the students, which ideally you should, you will do all this extra unpaid work. And then more complexities creep in. Some students live in abject poverty, some engage in none age-appropriate behavior, some are abused... It's emotionally taxing too. And what's worse, you all do that... For what compensation? A few of my past students really miss me and ask me to continue teaching, and sometimes I get really tempted to do it for them. But goodness gracious was I miserable with all that work. I hear you @mr.ambientsounds1291 , I hear your desire to 'make it better' for students. And in principle, I agree. But to be honest, I also find it difficult to avoid hearing the nagging in such words. "This is how teachers should do it! They're doing it all wrong. Can't believe teachers are spewing academic nonsense." That's what I often hear. But that's most probably my problem stemming from my own experience, it's not your fault. :)
"here's why you need to be more skeptical about authority figures" "Also here's a course you should take, recommended by me, an authority figure in finances"
How do you so sorely miss the point? He's basically just saying use your critical thinking and don't stop using it even when hearing advice from a "smart person".
Yeah I am a physician and whenever I tell people this, they ask me questions about stuff completely unrelated to medicine like government policies, and want my opinion on them as if I am any more qualified than them to answer it.
Hey idiot, the government and mass media are conspiring to take your hard earned cash! They're spreading fake news to get you to buy into their shill media products. (It goes like that)
I love NDT, but as an example to this video’s point, he once commented on a post by a father who for his child’s birthday was taking her for a helicopter ride, that planes glide and helicopters fall when the engine fails. He was unaware that there are a couple maneuvers that can be done to safely land a helicopter with a failed engine. He makes a lot of good points about what we can do to fix society, but as stated in this video, being well versed in one field doesn’t mean you’re as knowledgeable in other fields, and I’ve seen a lot of comments about how we should do what he says simply because he’s so smart. I wouldn’t disregard what a known highly intelligent person says about any subject, I feel that they may see things in a different perspective that us with much less cognitive abilities simply cannot. But I wouldn’t just blindly believe everything they say either. He also admitted he didn’t know about that when confronted about it and thought it was pretty cool. I saw it the “Smarter Everyday” channel.
Which is so unfortunately ironic cos he keeps commenting on stuff well outside of his field especially over the past decade. People still lap it up cos he's a "smart person".
Being knowledgeable does not make you smart, It just means you have recited a lot of information and committed it to memory. Applied understanding of information is the true measure of intelligence. Which means if you have a degree it does not mean you pass the "smart Person" test, This is a misguided presumption that most people make. These days there are more Academics, CEO's, Industry Specialists etc just spouting ideological nonsense more than anything else and when you look at how they spend their time you realise why as they are being institutionally indoctrinated at the education level. This is also a way of screening people out who do not agree the new doctrine from becoming higher achievers. We don't have a smart people problem, We have a ideological bias and institutional bias problem that has manifested itself partly as a lack of intellectual humility which is a symptom of that, Using Neil deGrasse is exemplary of just this. Intellectually arrogant and Institutionally indoctrinated (He toed the line over the last couple of years and hard) Problem with Higher education is it's not turning out people even of Neil's calibre anymore, We have serious Brain Drain problems right now and it is attributed to the abandonment of merit in academia, correctly too. Ironically studies in the last few years demonstrate this conclusively as there has been enough of them with sufficient sample size's, Whether anybody listens to what they are being told or not remains to be seen but if the trends are anything to go by. We may as well kiss our backsides good bye cause it's all downhill from her most likely.
Great post! Part of the reason why NDT (Neil DeGrasse Tyson) is at his level in popularity is because of his personality and ability to explain science/astrophysics to the average person In laymen’s terms with examples. He can also explain to the average person the relationship of science vs politics and how they worked hand in hand in history Most scientists/experts at his level are, let’s face it, r boring and/or un-relatable or don’t have that skill which in media is very valuable.
It's also because he is heavily astroturfed by the media information establishment for various reasons (I mean he was groomed as the Orthodox Science Communicator since the days of Sagan). I have never come across a candid accounting of anyone who has actually met him in real life who has not described him as completely insufferable.
"well... they could always be wrong" is the first thing I think whenever someone tells me something second guessing everything may slow you down a little, but you'll be confident in your answers once you have them
The quote from the opening scene of The Big Short would have been a good opening scene for this video. "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble; it's what was we know for sure that just isn't so." Although I've gone through many stupid moments in my life, I've grown to see that in almost every case I really thought I was smarter than I really am. I'm sure that's the case for most people in their 20s. This especially rings true for investing and novel business ideas. Sometimes you just have to admit it - stop thinking you're onto something and just do what works, even if what works is boring. But I'll never tell someone to not go for their dreams. Sh*t, someone has to! lol See you on mars!
@@robertbeisert3315 He might have. I think in the movie it was attributed to Mark Twain or something. But I couldn't find much of anything showing that he actually said it.
My good friend is an orthopedic surgeon. He pointed out a lot of his peers are convinced they can put together great investment portfolios because they're "smart" (which most people would agree with) and they can solve investing better than these "less smart" guys.
no he has great skill. twitter is not an example of that. without his efforts the electric car industry would not exist. it would be a failure . no car company wanted to do it. this is a fact . people who say it would have happened anyway are plain wrong. he also created the most innovative rocket company since the 70's. his rockets are still the only ones that land back on earth. the starlink system is also revolutionary. his vision to populate mars however is stupid.
@@ronblack7870 I think he's not the only one. A lot of what Steve Jobs did was to go around hyping up Steve Jobs and Apple. You could put Steve Jobs in front of a room and he'd sound better than a random engineer.
@@ronblack7870 Musk literally bought his way into Tesla while they were selling their first cars. He has never done anything technical in the company, he just markets and tells blatant lies to falsely drive up the stock price. And yes, it is a fact that the industry would absolutely have expanded with no involvement of Musk. In fact, considering how much of the disappointment people have about electric cars is the direct result of Musk constantly lying about the magical advancements Tesla is gonna release the end of that year or the next year, there's a strong case to be made we'd probably be having more success with electric car changeover without his idiot ass getting involved. Twitter is actually the clearest example and why people are finally seeing through Musk. Because it's not a technical company where someone else creates stuff he can take credit for, like all his previous companies, it's entirely him and his incredible stupidity that drives it where it's going, down the shitter. SpaceX is by any reasonable measurement a complete fucking miserable failure. They are completely held up by government grants, purely because they were initially chosen for those contracts which is the reason no other company at this point has the base level to start from. They still are years from accomplishing things NASA did in the fucking 1960s. Reusable rockets are actually fucking stupid. Rockets can only launch and land fully vertically, requiring perfect weather conditions and holding and effectively wasting fuel on landings that an intelligent design, like the space shuttle that NASA used decades ago didn't need. SpaceX's supposedly efficient reusable rockets are a shit ton more costly than any rocket ever used before. Also not anywhere near reliable enough to have any chance of getting safety rated to carry human passengers at any point in the near future. Star link, like literally everything else Musk has done was an idea that has been around for fucking decades, yes SpaceX has finally actually put it together and that's potentially a net positive, although some of the dirty crap and blatant war profiteering he's done with it in Ukraine are strong cases for why this sort of thing really can't be in the hands of business.
100 people with $100 walk into a Casino. The smartest person walks out with $100, and the richest person walks out with an undue sense of superior intelligence.
This video is basically the premise of Thomas Sowell's "Intellectuals and Society". A valid critique of these academics who presume because they have expertise in one domain, it can thus broadly transition into other domains.
Watch the entire video. The video literally negate Sowell’s fundamental point that rich people got richer because of their merit and not because of their fortune.
I was a consultant and I was really good at it. It scared me though to move up to that level of investing; I wasn’t brave enough at that time to keep promoting I met a lot of good people at that time doing it (:
The monopoly case was very interesting. Obviously due to the fact that those players demonstrated not acknowledging their head start and advantages as they went... That being said, using that example, your overall point here aside from the first couple points is that even genius level human success is essentially unattainable without and mostly attributable to luck. I would disagree anecdotally from the standpoint of the two phrases: "The harder I work the luckier I get." And "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity." I think as usual there is a balance of both points here. But I always feel the need to bring up that just as people don't typically become successful long term WITHOUT luck, I would say it's just as unlikely to become successful long term WITH luck alone as a primary reason for success.
I think the reason people attribute their success to their own actions rather than luck is because no one likes the idea. Not being in control of your success or failure (in some way or another) and not understanding why things happen to you is at odds with our nature as living things. We would much rather succeed as a result of our hard work and not just because statistically, someone had to, because it would mean us and our achievements are almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. There's nothing unique about us and we might as well be replaceable. The natural world is supposed to have the fittest be the most successful, so if someone succeeds just on chance and not by being the best, there is an inconsistency. And we would much rather fail because we were not good enough than fail because of effects outside of our control because we can accept our defeat if it aligns with darwins natural principle. Also if we lost due to something we can control, we can try again and win next time, otherwise there's no point of trying at all. Because of this, it's more comfortable to say "I succeeded because I'm superior" than to say "I just got lucky, I didn't do anything special".
To my understanding this just proves how much we need an edged as an investors because playing the market like everyone else just isn’t good enough. I’ve been quite ensured about investing in this current market and at the same time I feel it’s the best time to get started on the market,what are your thoughts?!
That’s true , I’ve been getting assisted by a FA for almost a year now , I started out less than $200k and I’m just $19,000 short of half a million in profits.
I met Neil Degrase Tyson years ago he gave a lecture at my college and we got to ask him all kinds of questions and he gave us autographs afterwards. He was pretty cool!
My FIL won awards for his studies in all of russia in nuclear physics/ microwave radiation, and does theoretical math as a hobby but he can't remember how to use the oven . He's been trying to work on a forumla to prove numbers can't be random for the past 30 years.
The challenge with randomness is that we cannot know if it is random. It is possible for randomness to produce a pattern, and it is possible for a pattern to repeat only after long, long observation. Computers and brains cannot produce randomness, because as far as we can tell they are both deterministic machines and thus follow rules. But to prove it with math...
Thank you so much for the first point of your video regarding expertise. Also, just because someone is intelligent doesn't mean that they will make good decisions or have sound reasoning even within their area of expertise. Also, maybe the cutting edge of a field is still problematic. Think of medicine, anthropology, or psychology in the early 20th century.
Niel Tyson knows his limits, I believe. That's why most of conversations that he has is about Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM). He doesn't wander in areas of Finance, economics, management. However, he does speak freely on subject of politics, but through scientific perspective.
Being "smart" is not a real thing. Sure you can be skilled at particular skills but these aren't super powers that make you all -knowing and all-skilled. They are confined.
Yeah, I hate it when people say “oh I’m so dumb I hate math” or “I’m not creative” or ahhhhh!!!! Shut up!! IQ is the dumbest metric ever created, intelligence is not a quantifiable physical attribute! You can learn and get better at anything. Even learning.
Related to these, I think people who are smart in “hard” topics like physics or medicine make the mistake of assuming that because nutrition or finance is “easier”, they don’t need to take the time to develop the relevant expertise. As a result they do what so many of us did as university freshmen: read a handful of articles and think we’ve cracked the code.
Bro, there's exactly one smart guy in this list, and he expressly states he is just about the science. The rest are idiots who got to play with other people's money. SBF and Musk are the two polar opposites of the same problem; One convinced people he knew what he was doing, so give me money, while the other was born into two big bank accounts, and bought the papers saying he knew what he was doing. Really smart people aren't the problem; People thinking someone rich is smart is. Margin Call laid it out with what John Tuld said in the big meeting.
Upgrade the way you learn with Brilliant! To get started for FREE go to www.brilliant.org/howmoneyworks
We really have to stop calling these people really smart people, if they were truly smart people then they would more aware of the real world that is around them not the imaginary world that we measure with measurements we created. Intelligence and intellect are two completely different things, one lies in ignorance and the other in truth. The very first words you will hear an intelligent person say is I don't know.
There's a what's app bott lurking
Why do you have to censor the word “city” on RUclips…
"Take a lot of what I'm saying with a grain of salt, because I often am wrong" - One of the most incredible humans to ever live.
ruclips.net/video/SA8ZBJWo73E/видео.html
A quick list to remember the major points of the video
1. Expertise is domain specific
2. If they can't explain their plan simply, that's because there is no plan
3. Plan to live your own life, not to replicate someone elses
4. Don't ever trust the hype
5. Don't ever trust the hype
This is excellent!
I'd amend those last two to:
4. Don't ever trust your own hype.
5. Don't ever trust others' hype.
To expand upon 2, the truest expression of your mastery of a subject is being able to explain it to other people.
If you can't explain it to a 3rd grader without an endless stream of technical jargon, you're not as smart as you think you are.
@@HowMoneyWorks Cool opinion, but on the web, any dumbass can claim to be an expert. Did you even watch the video?
the vast majority of revenue is generated through products and services. and that's really all there is to investing or not. Is this a good product/service or not? Do I believe people will buy/rent/lease this or not? And all valid business can be explained in one sentence. i.e. "generating ad revenue through a web based search service" or "selling two wheeled transpotation systems without a combustion engine for inner city customers"... if you can't explain your business in one sentence than I wouldn't leave my money with you...
I love the line "...actually think that their path to success is repeatable without the advantages or good fortune they had along the way." We don't want to hear about how little control we have in our lives about success and that major fortune can be as much a part of lucky circumstance as hard work. Influencers create the image that they were in the same position and you are just as much one step away from their success as them - such a dangerous idea well explained here.
People have a lot less control over their success than they think. People have a lot more control over their success than they are willing to admit.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug I think the best words of advice is "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
@@Laotzu.Goldbug Well said and it's true, great reminder!
Had to re-google it but reminds me tangentially of quote about holding two opposing ideas in mind by Scott Fitzgerald - for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.
Life can be such a paradox sometimes, but we have to find what works for each of us individually. Figure out the way forward.
I have always been big on this, always being an unlucky guy growing up I realized how much of a role it plays in life. And even tho I am smart and competent I have realize that even my successes are thanks to me getting lucky despite being unlucky in general
Yeah, we humans are very uncomfortable with the reality of the huge role that random chance plays in our lives.
I have an above average IQ, a masters degree, a successful business, a paid for house and I will tell you that I didn't choose my brain, my parents, my health, my location, my extended family, the time that I was born, the backwardness of the industry that I work in, the failure of others to take advantage of obvious opportunities, the personalities and risk tolerances of the people I compete against, the personality of my wife, the health of my children, the fact that i haven't died in a car accident, the country of my birth, or the invention of the internet and all the other technology that I need. Smart people are just people. Successful people are just people too. There is very little difference between me and my friend who hasn't experienced so much blessing.
“True intelligence comes from knowing your limits and knowing who and when to trust”
isn't that wisdom ?
@@agmuntianu combined with humility.
"That is outside my field of expertise"
Sounds nice but it's not true. I'm working with someone who is dumb but very good at reading people and playing with them. On the other side I'm very good on technical fields but I suck on communicating with people. We "thrive" by combining forces.
@@perseusarkouda you’re confusing being dumb with being slow and confusing being smart with being manipulative
The worst is when their initial start of the conversation is actually logical and no one can refute it. Then once they gain your trust, they slowly divert into their true intention while not being alarming.
You are right, similar to some kind of the rhetoric used by sect or cult pundits.
The Jordan Peterson effect
That is how com artists fool people. Half the stuff they say are true and the other half is the con.
I call this 'the bullshit rollercoaster'. It starts off credible/true, and then slowly it takes you for a ride
That's why you have to learn to float, so when the cart dips into bullshit land, it doesn't drag you with it.
As someone who is often called smart, I have two quotes that I (try to) live by:
1: "A fool *thinks* he is wise, but a wise man *knows* he is a fool."
2: "If you think you're the smartest man in the room, you're either wrong, or you need to find another room."
bro ☝️
Yeah, I get called smart frequently, even by people I've only met briefly. I graduated college with a perfect GPA, despite not having to really try too hard.
The first phrase you gave is not a good example at all. I'm assuming it is supposed to be related to the concept that as someone becomes more familiar with a concept they learn more about what they don't know about such concept. Thus someone who is good in a wide variety of fields, will know that there is so much that they don't know about those fields. It's OK to know if you are wise or not, it ultimately comes down to why you think you are wise and what you are using for comparison for what is considered 'unwise'.
The second phrase is also mostly pointless. You are going to dump your existing family and friends because you are smarter than them? Are you actually smarter than they (from an adaptable standpoint) or are you more disciplined than them? What metric is used to determine if you are 'smarter' than them, and how will you find another group of people who you consider smarter than you, who are even going to want to waste their time around you? If you actually want to improve in life, is it really necessary to be in a group of people smarter than you? You have access to the internet and can retrieve knowledge from people smarter than you without having to socialize with them. Discipline is ultimately what is going to matter for improving your life.
1. A wise man is not a fool
2. It is very much possible that you could be the smartest person in any given room. That doesn't mean nothing anyone else says has merit though.
Lmfao, this "Brain flexing" in a RUclips comment section is hilariously painful to witness.
@@YourPalHDee yeah lol. It's so cringe.
#1 is actually also due to media seeking out smart people who are willing to answer questions outside their expertise. I worked as an academic for a brief time and spent a lot of time around very well published academics. I can't imagine that any one of them would ever be comfortable answering questions that are even slightly outside their expertise. Just about everyone I worked with would have refused to comment on anything that wasn't their own research or broadly accepted concepts that we teach in courses. Most academics are smart enough to keep their mouth shut about stuff they don't genuinely know to be 100% true or at least be very upfront about the limit of their knowledge. However, that's really boring to publish. Much more interesting when you get a charismatic person with a PhD willing to talk about anything and everything on your show. That would get lots more views.
Attracting views is my guess
It's the same thing when the media interviews famous people about unrelated things. Such as actors on topics like investing, science, history etc. And the layman mistakes their fame for credibility.
Every expert of every country was wrong about covid, stop pretending academics are better than rich people. Most people don't really know what they're talking about most of the time. If you don't even try to do anything outside of your own expertise ever, you'll end up being dumber in the long run.
If you say the atomic weight of gold is this and get it wrong your stupid.
If you say I believe the atomic weight of gold is this if I remember correctly will make you seem smart even if you're wrong.
The issue with that approach that often progress comes from fields and often unrelated fields or accidents, the cloud chamber that physicists used to observe particles came from a curious Meteorologists. Often progress comes from a different field and outside perspectives from people completely unrelated, people just staying in their own lane can easily devolve into a stagnant technocracy. It’s a balance of people staying in their own lane and also being able to go out on a limb on topics they might not be experts in.
Good thing I have an IQ of 185 and am the smartest guy in the room giving people advice so I don't need to worry about being misled.
This is obviously a joke please don't reply and make a fool of yourself
🤣🤣🤣😜👌🏾
@@bradleytaylor8009 How could I my IQ is in this minute 190, and therefor no fool cold be made of me. Or something 😁.
Facts
@@bradleytaylor8009 bro i was replying im 186
As a teacher, researcher and considering myself a "smart guy", I can add some things:
In the world of science and research, people usually ask questions to almost everyone and critics (constructive or not) are a thing. People are aware that even if you are smart, bad things can happen and scalate pretty quickly. On the other hand, people who "admire" smart people, don't ask such questions and just believe in everything they say. They try to be the same they are in their research or academic environment, with people who are not in the same environment.
Also, school systems tend to idealize smart people, when really it is a group of individual with special needs in education, due to their high IQ. This should be addressed in every school system, to avoid this kind of biases in the future. Still, as the author says, they are a natural phenomena, but we can tackle it with some doubts and more information.
This one goes out to all the geniuses in special education.
Women prioritize feelings
Women prioritize feelings
Neil DeGrasse Tyson says women competing in men's sports is no problemo 🙄
In the book Psycology of money, there is a chapter about people playing a different game than you. I feel like this episode is a video version of that chapter. Basically that chapter was saying that taking financial advise from people isn't always great because you don't know their plan, their financial situations and how long they are willing to stay even when things start going south, unlike you. Basically, financial advises should be very personal and tailored to you and your situation.
You mean meet Kevin rug pulled everyone?
Are you saying there's no universal way to get rich?
People become rich/powerful for one reason.
They are ruthless.
In Machiavelli's the prince he says good people should be as ruthless as the evil as to attain the same amount of power.
Psychology of money looool bro start reading philosophy and you’ll laugh at yourself for reading that type of books
@@sopademacaco1535if you read philosophy, you’d laugh at yourself for saying something so foolish
2:04 [“Stay In Your Lane”]
3:35 More questions one is demanded to answer, the more possibility to screw up and fall from perfection.
5:07 Enron
7:25 (Success for one person is not always directly translatable to a different persons different circumstances)
10:33 Assumption of Excellence in all fields
11:53 Reputation overestimation
The self confidence problem is something I think Veritasium explained very nicely in their video "Is Success Luck or Hard Work". Hard work is necessary for success but so is luck. When the smart person with a lot of hard work becomes successful, in their eye their success is a direct result of their hard work, while in reality many others with the same intelligence and hard work ended up failing.
I can personally attest to this. I admit I could work much harder, but I'd also say I'm profoundly much more well-off than most of my contemporaries. To your point, I think it's largely because of my parents - not just financially, but also emotionally, as they're very caring without being coddling.
Derek of veritasium is ironically another example of a person with a platform who uses their platform to talk about subjects he has no expertise in.
I once found myself at a company renowned for hiring smart people, and I was finding some of them frustrating because they were pushing ahead on things that obviously weren't working. Not long after starting, I ran across an article which made the argument that really smart people sometimes need to fail more often than smart people, because they don't have enough experience with failure to recognize it. The basic idea was that smart people probably floated through high school, but then got some challenges in college and learned to recognize when to change their path because their approach wasn't working. But if a person was smart enough, even college would be easy, and then they found themselves in the workforce without having learned how to recognize failure. So where a smart person would try something two or maybe three times, and then change tack because it wasn't working, a REALLY smart person might keep trying over and over and over in the belief that they are right and the world is wrong.
I don't know if this is actually true. Maybe it's just general ego as the video suggests at one point. But I have often heard smart people arguing points which are CLEARLY failing, seemingly not able to comprehend why their hypothesis isn't being born out by the real world. Sometimes you're just wrong, unfortunately.
The importance of quick learning feedback.
I work on machine learning, where initial experiments are (hopefully) quick and short and you learn to fail quick and try something else.
"It didn't work. Why?"
"Ok, this other thing worked... Why??"
Unfortunately, not all fields have a quick feedback loop. As example, for someone in human resources it could take months, to figure out someone was a bad hire.
For a manager, a business decision can take years to show results.
Delayed feedback delays learning too.
Smart people should probably push their learning to the point where it's challenging and they do make mistakes consistently.
Make it harder until you make mistakes or get a Nobel prize lol
You are correct. They may not recognize failure soon enough.
No, I wouldn't say that's entirely correct. Per my definition, being "smart" generally has to encompass everything, not just in one specific domain or practice since if that's the case, with enough time, everyone can be geniuses.
Truly smart people don't act like the typical smart people you meet. They listen more than they speak and when they share their thoughts, they usually back it up with evidence or a logically tight argument. It's hard to argue with someone who is truly smarter than you, because they would (by definition) know more than you and thought further ahead than you.
Oftentimes, you can tell when a person is smart by the consensus of people who agree with what they say, even when they aren't the most outspoken or popular person in a group.
The people who are obnoxiously smart are typically just being pretentious.
@@Jackson_Zheng No. Also, why are y'all so hung on gatekeeping the label "smart"? It's as useless as being gifted once you make it out of high school.
I agree, but disagree. Sometimes the 'really smart' person (might be an average person, too, btw) just has a greater bandwidth to tolerate failure, or a greater safety buffer. Let's say I had 3 billion dollars in the bank, while you only had $300,000; we would likely not have the same tolerance for risk and failure. Above all else, I think that's what you witnessed in the situations you described in your comment-''really smart" people having a greater tolerance for risk and failure.
Thank you for being one of the very few rational people who can acknowledge that luck is always a required part to success. I believe there is, at most, a handful of people who would succeed a second time.
From memory, Veritasium has a good video on this subject too, about the paradox of success. Called "is success luck or hard work"
Luck is a part of success, yes, but luck is also a result of your actions.
@@mwase7782 Luck is never a result of anything, luck is a spontaneous unintentional positive outcome. In order to have any influence over/reproduce luck, you'd have to be able to predict the true randomness of the universe which is impossible for us, or completely impossible, since you'd have to predict virtually infinite possibilities of everything.
It sucks because I really want to like Neil. He was one of my favorites for years, but I can't get behind this "Oh normal people are too stupid to know what's good for them, therefore my voice is the only one that matters" authoritarian attitude that he has had recently.
That's what a representative democracy looks like. That is our actual system of governance in the United States of America... It's just that politicians DO NOT communicate with the public. You seem to not notice that; or appreciate the humility it takes to be a leader. Lead soldiers into battle and you'll hear a lot about cannon fodder and toy soldiers. Apparently foot-soldiers are too stupid to know what's good for them (they know what is good for the group).
Yeah I don't have much respect for people who complain about others being too stupid to understand them. It's a fact of life that some people are smarter than others. If these people are so smart, then how come they can't work out how to communicate with another, at that person's level? Maybe they're not as smart as they think they are.
As a non-American, he looks like complete clown
@@2bfrank657 exactly. In my opinion, if you can't explain a subject to someone unintelligent or normal, then you don't truly know the subject. Like the Physicist Brian Cox.. He can explain things that are just way too complex for me to understand in a way I can somewhat grasp it
@@Ryan-wx1bi Youre making the assumption that that is wanted. What is wanted is eye level communication. Swooping down to be understood by others, would feel oppressive.
I really appreciate your concise overview of the expert bias, especially your emphasis on how a PhD is the product of nothing more than original research (with varying degrees of originality) in a specific field, with one’s dissertation focusing on an extremely specific topic within that specific field. I’m an academic working in the humanities and it’s really unfathomable to me to see scholars from other friends speak with such confidence about areas of expertise entire unrelated to their specialty. My discipline involves a fair amount of philosophy and theory, so I do think that the formal and logical approach I take in my research influences the way I approach ideas and problems that aren’t related to my field at all. But I would never claim that my approach makes me knowledgeable, it makes me critical, maybe even skeptical, and it may lead me to learn more about the topic both due to the questions I’m asking but also because I have research skills (as well as access to things like journals via my university) that make it easier for me to gather information.
What’s strange is that one of the first things most people learn in graduate school is just how fragile the concept of “authority” can be. If we look at the “authority on X,” the person who knows more than anyone else in the world about a given topic, most of their knowledge is going to be knowledge of the problems and outstanding questions that pertain to the subject on which they’re an authority. So it makes absolutely no sense for any scholar to emerge from academia with a sense of entitlement to speak on subjects far outside of their field or specialty. The most egregious example of this would be Pinker’s work that attempts to objectively synthesize dozens of branches of scholarship covering centuries of time and spanning hemispheres just because he… works at Harvard? I’ve met plenty of people who worked or went on to be Harvard professors. Suffice it to say, none of them left me awestruck by the sort of near-omniscience required to actually complete a project like Pinker claims to have (twice).
The quality that most informs these “experts” who speak far outside their field isn’t their knowledge or intelligence, it’s a lack of self-awareness at best and sheer narcissism at worst. I’m sure there’s some degree of a snowball effect, where media starts reaching out about subjects you know a lot about, and then building up your persona, and then asking about other things that you don’t know as much about, so you try your best, and then it keeps going from there until you’re suddenly no longer an expert on a specific niche subject, you’re now an expert sans qualifier.
A good example of someone who has managed to do the opposite of a Tyson or Pinker is Brian Greene, who has for the most part stayed in his lane as a physicist. He does dumb things down in a way that’s perhaps problematic to other physicists, but he doesn’t speak to topics that he hasn’t himself mastered. He leaves the niche of his hyper-specialized research, to be sure, but only to explain the more fundamental ideas that underpin that niche. In this way, he proves that remaining true to one’s expertise doesn’t prevent you from engaging with a popular audience. It just means you have can’t talk about climate science as a psychologist, in the same way that you wouldn’t consult a electrician to fix your plumbing.
Well said. You've given words to something I've thought about for awhile.
I think Socrates said that he disliked those who had knowledge on one subject, and because of that they felt they could speak on all matters with confidence as if they were experts on that matter. It made them believe that they were considered smarter than people around them and as a consequence that their argument would hold more weight even discussing a topic they knew little to nothing about. I suppose the image they held of themselves as "intellectuals" didn't allow them to approach such discussions with humility and admit they don't really know.
Well written argument. I'm going to have to, however, disagree in the strongest terms. As someone who has studied courses from 5 different faculties and constantly works in interdisciplinary research, I believe there are several big problems with this idea of "staying in your lane":
1) Accountability. This is the biggest one by far. The more that you insist that people stay in their lane, and the more narrow those lanes become, the smaller the pool of people becomes who are "allowed" to criticize any given academic's work. This allows bullsh*t to survive far longer, leads to major difficulties in obtaining independent replication/verification and peer review (since everyone in that lane is probably part of a small group of close-nit researchers/friends), and allows theories to only ever be questioned by people who think and believe the same things as the person who proposed the theory (see, eg, string theory).
2) Duplication of effort. It is very often the case that problems in different fields require solutions to the same types of problems, just in different contexts. You don't want each of those fields to independently tackle those problems. An amazing example of this going wrong was when a medical doctor published a paper a few years ago on "a new method for estimating drug administration quantities" or something to that effect which, when it was looked at by someone with a BSc, was quickly found to be nothing more than a re-discovery of the centuries old and very well known trapezium method of integration estimation. Thank goodness that people other than medical experts were "allowed" to "stray from their lane" and point this out.
3) Better understanding. I can tell you that when I studied philosophy, I often found concepts explained there that were analogous to some other concept I had learned in electrical engineering. No jokes. I forget who said this quote but it's 100% true IMO: "He who understands only chemistry does not understand chemistry".
4) Changing areas of progression in a subject. Take the study of the mind for example. 100 years ago we did not have the tools to study the mind from a computational perspective. The best way to study the mind was using the traditional tools of psychology. However, we now do have these computational tools. As a result, people like the artificial intelligence expert Joscha Bach are making inroads into questions such as the role of emotion in cognition with powerful results that would never be possible within the domain of psychology because psychologists simply do not have the tools to do this. Data science is another example of an area that can make progress in other disciplines in areas where they have been stuck. Like Mythological studies, for example, which would previously have been seen as a purely humanities discipline. But nowdays they are able to tackle problems such as finding the origin of myths and their dispersal patterns by apply sophisticated AI natural language processing techniques.
5) Different perspectives. This one is obvious.
6) Because even when these people who are "straying from their lanes" are wrong, they are more often than not wrong for a very different reason that the reasons that the people within that lane are wrong. And the process of having to figure out why these people are wrong can very often lead to new insights.
7) Because the whole idea of subjects being independent is a fiction of commercialised knowledge production in the first place. If you were to suggest to the ancients that philosophy and physics were different subjects they'd think you're mad. And I would tend to agree. Physicists go completely astray very often due to basic errors of philosophical reasoning. And philosophers, for the same reason.
8) Because the narcissism argument cuts both ways. Assuming that noone but you and people who have studied the exact thing that you have could possibly know anything about it is highly presumptuous.
There are a large number of historical examples of absolutely game changing discoveries being made in fields by people who weren't experts in them.
So what about idiots like Neil de grasse Tyson? Well, simple, he's an idiot. The problem is not that he's talking outside his lane. The problem is that he's wrong. And that's how we should treat people who speak on subjects they're not experts in. Listen carefully but skeptically, make sure we really understand exactly what they're saying, decide whether they're wrong or not, and react appropriately. Do not dismiss people's ideas on principle. Ever.
@@neildutoit5177 I think you make a good point but this is a very subtle distinction. The desirable quality is not so much staying in your lane in terms of artificially constraining your intellectual pursuits but rather staying in your lane in terms of knowing your own limits of knowledge and reasoning. That is, it is humility rather than narrow-mindedness which is at play here.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug That's a fine distinction to make. But it is an exclusively personal one. One should know one's own limits. But that does not give you any grounds to shut someone else down. Whether or not they are suffering from a deficit of humility is something that you can only determine by examining the content of their argument. So I agree everyone should try to know the limits of their own knowledge and be humble. But I cannot tell whether someone else is doing that or not without engaging in what they're actually saying, I can only know for myself whether I'm doing that or not. It reminds me of this conversation I saw on New Years Eve where this guy was lecturing this girl for like 20 minutes about something and she eventually tries to give her own input and he says to her "a wise man once said you should listen to understand and not to respond" and I just thought my word, if you are using that quote as a way to shut someone else up so that you can speak more then you have 100% missed the point. The quote is how you personally are meant to behave. Not how you're meant to tell other people to behave. So it's a fine quote if you apply it in your own life but a terrible idea if you use it as a weapon against others IMO and I think your distinction is the same.
There are three words that are a great defense when people ask you a question about an area you are not familiar with - "I don't know".
Yup, those three little words can save sooo much embarrassment.
I use the chatGPT answer style:
partially informed or incomplete answer + "however, I am not fully familiar with that topic. You should probably verify the information or ask someone who knows better if possible "
2:23 I can't believe he said that, it is the other way around, every transcendental number is irrational, but not the other way around.
Some of them are algebraic, like √2. The definition of an algebraic number is being a zero of a rational (or integer) coefficient polynomial ( the above example is a zero of x^2 - 2) . The transcendental numbers are those real (or complex) numbers that are not algebraic. It is relatively easy to see that every rational number is algebraic, and as I said there are some irrational numbers which are are algebraic too, but π for example is not algebraic.
As the video suggest, some physicists should stay better with physics.
Edit: I forgot to mention that if the continuum hypothesis is true then there is the same number of transcendental numbers than irrational numbers (although the former is contained in the latter as I mentioned above). So double fail for this physicist.
And also I am sorry if someone already said this, it is probably the case as this is kind of basic undergraduate maths. I didn't read all the comments. Finally excuse me if there is some gramatical mistake, english is my third language.
As mob psycho says just because you're good at something it doesn't make you less of a normal person.
You mean make you “more” of a normal person right?
@Lino Sey nah, OP worded it correctly, even if a bit awkwardly. Another way to say it is, being good at something doesn't make you special, or it doesn't make you superior to other people.
@@kookiekommenterthis is a good message fr. We were ultimately put on this planet to help each other and that is the main goal
Bruh. I died at calling the plain bagel a boomer
~obviously that guy is an idiot
Our favorite boomer
Literally made me belly laugh
Aging Gen-Xer, here. Glad I wasn’t just hearing things. 😂
I was raised by an MD and a PhD who thought they knew everything. I went to medical school, where I was far from the smartest in the room. I have learned that “smart” people without common sense, personal responsibility, kindness, and a willingness to learn from others are positively dangerous. To themselves and others.
In my school years the invited a sucessful (running their own institute at an university) former student to give a talk on their career. Half way through the talk, my best friend and I concluded that you definetively have to be lucky to find sucess.
Nope. Most people are lazy , also in this vid it doesn’t mention that Women prioritize feelings. Most disciplines are BS if you apply the scientific method
Truly smart people are able to evaluate the limits of their knowledge and know to keep quiet on subjects not in their field.
I thought that was wise people.
This whole video is about how not true that is
Lord Kelvin estimated the Earth to be 100 million years old, Linus Pauling convinced himself of vitamin C megadosage. They were smart and within their field.
It starts out that way. But becoming public figures undoes all that. Success can make anyone lazy, regardless of IQ.
I like outing know it all’s. Drag them into your area of expertise and give them the floor.
Something that needs to be redefined in our language is the word "genius". To me, personally, genius does not describe a state of being, but a type of action. You can't be a genius, but you can perform acts of genius. It's these little cues that I think are so powerful. I think that little change will help us from categorically putting someone on a pedestal to simply respecting the work done by some very smart people who are very good at certain things.
Your take is genius
But then you meet John von Neumann and realize true geniuses do exist from time to time
@@DAMfoxygrampa he was brilliant, don't get me wrong. But I'm pretty sure he also understood that his wheelhouse was in mathematics, natural science, and engineering. He wasn't a skilled athlete or sportsman, and to my knowledge he wasn't huge into the arts.
Again, no disrespect on this scientific and mathematical titan. He was a master at the things he did, but I still hold the belief that genius is an act, not a state of being.
@@me0101001000 I was just thinking about some predictions that he made about WW2 that, if I remember correctly, came true. But yeah I do get your point haha I just like playing devil's advocate
I don’t think that would work in practice. Because someone who had more resources, connections, and luck can claim that their success were “acts of geniuses” while downplaying any other person who is a conventional “genius” by simply asking them, “If you are so smart, where are your acts of geniuses, hmm?”. Which is quite a childish attitude.
Check out the Rational Reminder podcast. They interview litteral Nobel Prize winners who apologize for talking too long on a question. Intelligence + humility is insanely refreshing. Specifically 100 and 200 Fama and French are both class acts.
It’s one of my favorite podcasts. Ben Felix is incredible underrated.
On the NDT example: I am not a career scientist, but I rubbed shoulders with them for a while. Really, truly smart people have a knowledge pool a foot wide and a mile deep. Anything outside that foot is splashing
The Modern Rogue youtube channel did a video about radiation with a real scientist, and watching him answer questions was fascinating because a lot of the time he _didn't_ answer them.
I think smart people in the modern world have a T-shape knowledge pool. Deep in one field and superficial in others. They will still be more informed than the average person in most areas, but they will be aware they are no experts there so they will warn and turn off people who believe they are.
I'm a new subscriber. This video is aging better day by day. I'm a relatively successful tech startup founder. I used to admire a lot of the people in the industry that I am now considering, well, not very wise.
My takeaway is, you can admire someone's skill in a particular field, and take their insight anywhere else with a grain of salt. Or a whole bucket sometimes ;)
There is a good book that gets into this in great detail. Read Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell. It’s all about people that are smart in one field being treated as experts in every field. It also explains how most are actually wrong in their assertions outside of their specialty.
this is incredibly ironic given some of the takes that thomas sowell has given over the years
@@ethanslamberry6982 I see what you mean, but I consider this book to be very accurate because as a professor. He been around a lot of other intellectuals that go into the public eye and venture into fields they are not experts in. His observations are far more up close and personal then you or I. Also, the book came out 10 years ago and it’s still stands the test of time.
@@SoUnDMaN831 oh i've nothing against the core theme of that book, in fact it's more true than ever in this day and age. i was just pointing out the irony xD
@@ethanslamberry6982 I give you a thumbs up 😆
@@ethanslamberry6982 to be fair I have rarely seen Sowell give hot "takes" outside of sociology/economics, which is quite literally his field of expertise. That doesn't mean he can't be wrong of course, but I don't think he's straying outside of his lane or speaking out of school.
A true genius is not afraid to admit when they don’t know something.
We have a word for people like that in German which is “Fachidiot”, literally meaning subject idiot.
In general though it’s always good to vet information, because even if something is within the broader field of expertise of that person doesn’t guarantee they are experts in regards to your specific question. If someone studied Physics and you ask them how a quantum computer works, they might have a better understanding than the general population but not necessarily the in-depth knowledge to answer very specific questions or make judgements about that topic.
On the same note, it’s important to look at how information was obtained when reading things online, like checking sample sizes or additional information in regards to methodology or even when a theory was published. Most scientific papers are very specific and only apply within specifically set conditions and use cases.
Plain bagel is a Canadian treasure
When people ask me how to do I have such a wonderful life, I always reply, "Circumstances."
I work and live in Norway. I think that the average annual income here is around 55.000 dollars. My wife and I have like 350.000 dollars (before tax). House that now costs 2.5 million, an apartment that we are renting. House in Marbella, Spain, that is on Airbnb when we are not visiting. Two big apartments in our home country that we are also renting. Two mounting cabins are on Airbnb, and one house is next to the Adriatic sea where my father lives, but we are renting one unit there during the season. We have six million dollars in real estate and no loans or debts.
But, there is a HUGE BUT. We inherited all of our real estates. 🤣 My wife and I didn't have any siblings. My parents, mother, and father didn't have siblings, and my grandfather's brother didn't have kids. Grandparents died, unforchenatly and my mother. Then my father gave up on his part to inference on my behavior. He transferred all assets to me because he fell into depression, and I'm his only child. I inherited two apartments, two cabins, house next to the Adriatic sea. My wife inherited one apartment, a village house, and a cabin.
We have sold one apartment, cabin, and village house. We moved to Norway and brought an apartment with a 5-year loan because we had a good amount of equity.
After six years, prices in that neighborhood skyrocketed, and we sold that apartment for eight times of amount we initially brought it.
We took another apartment and a house with only five years loan. Now, after seven years, we are debt free and have all those assets. We both work as architects for one big company, and we have a private architectural studio.
We are not ultra-mega-rich people, nor are we more intelligent than any of the people I know. (Sometimes I feel like a real dumbass) But we have decent lives. And people are confused when I say it all came to us by "Circumstances," but it is the truth. We could be just two regular architects, earning 70.000 (before tax) a year and having some apartment with 20-30 years loan, like most of our friends, are. But circumstances were different; starting positions.
PS. I do not consider my mother's death, my wife's parents' death, and my father's condition as lucky. It is better to say Circumstances.
PS.PS. We were bying some objects that required a complete renovation, and since we are architects, we did almost all the jobs ourselves. That increased the value a lot.
I go with, "God has blessed me," myself, but principle's similar
Rare to see so much honesty on RUclips, thank you.
Lucky bastard 😂❤
@@ambientparallax2984 He causes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. He gives and he takes away.
It does not do to be ungrateful for the gifts you do receive, just because another received more.
i just can't get used to using a period instead of a comma. 55,000 dollars
The idea of “find and stick to your weird thing” that brings you the most success seems wiser than trying to copy someone else
I strongly disagree with the first point for the following reasons:
1) Accountability. This is the biggest one by far. The more that you insist that people stay in their lane, and the more narrow those lanes become, the smaller the pool of people becomes who are "allowed" to criticize any given academic's work. This allows bullsh*t to survive far longer, leads to major difficulties in obtaining independent replication/verification and peer review (since everyone in that lane is probably part of a small group of close-nit researchers/friends), and allows theories to only ever be questioned by people who think and believe the same things as the person who proposed the theory.
2) Duplication of effort. It is very often the case that problems in different fields require solutions to the same types of problems, just in different contexts. You don't want each of those fields to independently tackle those problems. An amazing example of this going wrong was when a medical doctor published a paper a few years ago on "a new method for estimating drug administration quantities" or something to that effect which, when it was looked at by someone with a BSc, was quickly found to be nothing more than a re-discovery of the centuries old and very well known trapezium method of integration estimation. Thank goodness that people other than medical experts were "allowed" to "stray from their lane" and point this out.
3) Better understanding. I can tell you now that when I studied philosophy, I often found concepts explained there that were analogous to some other concept I had learned in electrical engineering. No jokes. I forget who said this quote but it's 100% true IMO: "He who understands only chemistry does not understand chemistry".
4) Changing areas of progression in a subject. Take the study of the mind for example. 100 years ago we did not have the tools to study the mind from a computational perspective. The best way to study the mind was using the traditional tools of psychology. However, we now do have these computational tools. As a result, people like the artificial intelligence expert Joscha Bach are making inroads into questions such as the role of emotion in cognition with powerful results that would never be possible within the domain of psychology because psychologists simply do not have the tools to do this. Data science is another example of an area that can make progress in other disciplines in areas where they have been stuck. Like Mythological studies, for example, which would previously have been seen as a purely humanities discipline. But nowdays they are able to tackle problems such as finding the origin of myths and their dispersal patterns by apply sophisticated AI natural language processing techniques.
5) Different perspectives. This one is obvious.
6) Because even when these people who are "straying from their lanes" are wrong, they are more often than not wrong for a very different reason that the reasons that the people within that lane are wrong. And the process of having to figure out why these people are wrong can very often lead to new insights.
7) Because the whole idea of subjects being independent is a fiction of commercialized knowledge production in the first place. If you were to suggest to the ancients that philosophy and physics were different subjects they'd think you're mad. And I would tend to agree. Physicists go completely astray very often due to basic errors of philosophical reasoning. And philosophers, for the same reason.
8) Because the narcissism argument cuts both ways. Assuming that noone but you and people who have studied the exact thing that you have could possibly know anything about it is highly presumptuous.
There are a large number of historical examples of absolutely game changing discoveries being made in fields by people who weren't experts in them.
So what about idiots like Neil de grasse Tyson? Well, simple, he's an idiot. The problem is not that he's talking outside his lane. The problem is that he's wrong. And that's how we should treat people who speak on subjects they're not experts in. Listen carefully but skeptically, make sure we really understand exactly what they're saying, decide whether they're wrong or not, and react appropriately. Do not dismiss people's ideas on principle. Ever.
Wow. This was better than the video ❤
Facts
Every point you made is correct, but in the context of the academic field. Advantages of collaboration with multidisciplinary teams are already a common practice, and so is the practice of diligently questioning hypothesis’, logic, and conclusions in team meetings between scientists and thesis defenses’ (which don’t require the questioner to know more about the field than the one making the presentation, since a thesis is an area that should be completely new). The video however was about fallacies and biases in terms of experts speaking with the general public and how the average person isn’t taught these best academic practices.
This is the most realistic video on the matter I have ever seen. People think luck is doing nothing and strike gold. Luck is doing a lot and still only striking gold by luck! And this happens way more than striking gold because of the hard work and personal individual capacity!
Problem with Niell is that he KNOWS answering questions is the only way to entertain the masses and to keep his job going strong. He is very much in the business.
Appreciate you shouting out Patrick Boyle. He’s great
A clear example of this is how someone can be very smart when it comes to finance and making videos, but still have very flawed views on music.
Interpret that however you wish
Just watched Patrick's latest video as well? 😆
Pin worthy comment
i strongly agree on this one
The whole time he was talking about Neil Degrasse Tyson, I was thinking of Jordon Peterson. I have a huge amount of respect for Jordon, but when he talks about our "over-reaction" to climate change - it's just embarrassing.
Like, liking rap
I have love how "The Plain Bagel" and "How Money Works" are building up their own Financial Expanded Universe
Don’t leave Patrick the GOAT out of this
RUclips: How many people do you want to call out?
How Money Works: Yes
This channel provides the most down to earth information you will ever find. Love this ♥️
Love your channel! A slight issue I have.
Eventually every sentence you say begins and ends with the same cadence. It becomes grating after extended listening. Maybe you could try speaking more casually as if we were in the same room. More conversational. I love the content!
This is a great observation and I feel the same.
This is impossible. Being smart means you know everything and can see the future. All these people were obviously just pretending to be smart.
“The game of monopoly is a balance of skill and luck” I was rofl when I heard this 😂
This video is why I would argue the important philosophy to embrace is actually skepticism.
For those who don't understand the bit with transcendental numbers, they are by definition numbers that can't be a solution of a polynomial with rational coefficients.
Therefore transcendantal numbers are always irrational because any rational number r is the solution of polynomial x-r.
Consequently, there can't be more transcendantal numbers than irrational numbers since transcendantal numbers are included in irrational numbers.
I am gonna pretend like I understood everything
Now I’m even more confused 😂
transcendal numbers are part of irrational numbers . Therefore we cannot have more transcendal than irrational numbers ( because transcendal forms a sub group) Try to picture a venn diagram inside circle A (irrational ) there exist B (transcendal),. Irrational numbers will have B plus any other numbers that will add up to A
Everyone should watch this... We live in a crazy world. Great video!
Using a quote from Pederson at the start critizicing this, while he is a prime example of talking about lots and lots of stuff he has no real clue about is peak comedy.
Yeah, his recent complaints about those who are trying to mitigate climate change are really off-putting. I'm no climate change expert, but it's clear to me that he has no clue what he's talking about in that regard.
I think the school system encourages this mindset. Students are encouraged to be "the best" (which is often narrowly defined) and rewarded for doing so. Students who are often at the top gain an opinion that they're _always_ the smartest and this is continuously reinforced. But maybe we should put less emphasis on academic smarts and more on actual life and people skills. Like are you the best in listening to the opinions of others, in generosity, in losing graciously, in not comparing yourself ...etc.
Ah, yes. That is the dream: to cater to real needs. To build knowledge, develop skills, and hone characters that will produce the best quality humans we can. That is the dream. I've been a teacher for a few years, and I tried to implement that very personalized individualized approach for a bit. It's just too much work. Too much. And it's too much because when you try implementing that idealistic and holistic approach, that's all on top of the work you have to comply with the requirements of the Department of Education (Ministry, Department, whichever). And if you truly care for the students, which ideally you should, you will do all this extra unpaid work. And then more complexities creep in. Some students live in abject poverty, some engage in none age-appropriate behavior, some are abused... It's emotionally taxing too. And what's worse, you all do that... For what compensation?
A few of my past students really miss me and ask me to continue teaching, and sometimes I get really tempted to do it for them. But goodness gracious was I miserable with all that work. I hear you @mr.ambientsounds1291 , I hear your desire to 'make it better' for students. And in principle, I agree. But to be honest, I also find it difficult to avoid hearing the nagging in such words. "This is how teachers should do it! They're doing it all wrong. Can't believe teachers are spewing academic nonsense." That's what I often hear. But that's most probably my problem stemming from my own experience, it's not your fault. :)
"here's why you need to be more skeptical about authority figures"
"Also here's a course you should take, recommended by me, an authority figure in finances"
😂 the irony. This channel is just another fake guru
Good point. Though, let's be fair here. He did not paint any expectation that his own statements do not apply to himself as well
How do you so sorely miss the point? He's basically just saying use your critical thinking and don't stop using it even when hearing advice from a "smart person".
Brilliant is not a course buta platform on which people can buy and sell courses. Whatever it is you think you did, you didn't do it.
Yeah I am a physician and whenever I tell people this, they ask me questions about stuff completely unrelated to medicine like government policies, and want my opinion on them as if I am any more qualified than them to answer it.
Ok, now make a version of this for people who don’t think exactly like I do. Cuz this whole thing was playing perfectly into my worldview.
Hey idiot, the government and mass media are conspiring to take your hard earned cash! They're spreading fake news to get you to buy into their shill media products. (It goes like that)
I love NDT, but as an example to this video’s point, he once commented on a post by a father who for his child’s birthday was taking her for a helicopter ride, that planes glide and helicopters fall when the engine fails. He was unaware that there are a couple maneuvers that can be done to safely land a helicopter with a failed engine. He makes a lot of good points about what we can do to fix society, but as stated in this video, being well versed in one field doesn’t mean you’re as knowledgeable in other fields, and I’ve seen a lot of comments about how we should do what he says simply because he’s so smart. I wouldn’t disregard what a known highly intelligent person says about any subject, I feel that they may see things in a different perspective that us with much less cognitive abilities simply cannot. But I wouldn’t just blindly believe everything they say either. He also admitted he didn’t know about that when confronted about it and thought it was pretty cool. I saw it the “Smarter Everyday” channel.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but when someone tries to talk tens of millions of people into buying a product, my gut says he owns that product.
Either that, or they're getting paid to sell it.
Excellent video.
Thomas Sowell talks a lot about this type of thing in his book Intellectuals and Society. Such a good read.
Which is so unfortunately ironic cos he keeps commenting on stuff well outside of his field especially over the past decade. People still lap it up cos he's a "smart person".
@@devilex121 Stuff outside his field such as what?
Sowell is way worse than any of the folks in the video!
Do the work dip-sheit it is true! @@ParisAlxandr
Being knowledgeable does not make you smart, It just means you have recited a lot of information and committed it to memory. Applied understanding of information is the true measure of intelligence. Which means if you have a degree it does not mean you pass the "smart Person" test, This is a misguided presumption that most people make. These days there are more Academics, CEO's, Industry Specialists etc just spouting ideological nonsense more than anything else and when you look at how they spend their time you realise why as they are being institutionally indoctrinated at the education level. This is also a way of screening people out who do not agree the new doctrine from becoming higher achievers.
We don't have a smart people problem, We have a ideological bias and institutional bias problem that has manifested itself partly as a lack of intellectual humility which is a symptom of that, Using Neil deGrasse is exemplary of just this. Intellectually arrogant and Institutionally indoctrinated (He toed the line over the last couple of years and hard) Problem with Higher education is it's not turning out people even of Neil's calibre anymore, We have serious Brain Drain problems right now and it is attributed to the abandonment of merit in academia, correctly too.
Ironically studies in the last few years demonstrate this conclusively as there has been enough of them with sufficient sample size's, Whether anybody listens to what they are being told or not remains to be seen but if the trends are anything to go by. We may as well kiss our backsides good bye cause it's all downhill from her most likely.
Great post! Part of the reason why NDT (Neil DeGrasse Tyson) is at his level in popularity is because of his personality and ability to explain science/astrophysics to the average person In laymen’s terms with examples.
He can also explain to the average person the relationship of science vs politics and how they worked hand in hand in history
Most scientists/experts at his level are, let’s face it, r boring and/or un-relatable or don’t have that skill which in media is very valuable.
It's also because he is heavily astroturfed by the media information establishment for various reasons (I mean he was groomed as the Orthodox Science Communicator since the days of Sagan).
I have never come across a candid accounting of anyone who has actually met him in real life who has not described him as completely insufferable.
A clown.
So there's every benefit to marketing yourself as a genius with virtually no downside. Thanks I'd never have seriously thought of that.
I was once told by a very Wise Old Man:
"If you can't Impress Them With Intellect,
Baffle Them With BullSh!+"
"well... they could always be wrong" is the first thing I think whenever someone tells me something
second guessing everything may slow you down a little, but you'll be confident in your answers once you have them
The quote from the opening scene of The Big Short would have been a good opening scene for this video.
"It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble; it's what was we know for sure that just isn't so."
Although I've gone through many stupid moments in my life, I've grown to see that in almost every case I really thought I was smarter than I really am. I'm sure that's the case for most people in their 20s.
This especially rings true for investing and novel business ideas. Sometimes you just have to admit it - stop thinking you're onto something and just do what works, even if what works is boring.
But I'll never tell someone to not go for their dreams. Sh*t, someone has to! lol
See you on mars!
I think Reagan said that, too.
@@robertbeisert3315 He might have. I think in the movie it was attributed to Mark Twain or something. But I couldn't find much of anything showing that he actually said it.
People believe successful people not smart people, big difference.
The problem is when you say something about it,people say we are jealous or poor.
I think that's just projecting on their part. Denial, perhaps.
“Even reputable news outlets will run stories about peoples business success for a small fee.“
“reputable” 😂😂😂
My good friend is an orthopedic surgeon. He pointed out a lot of his peers are convinced they can put together great investment portfolios because they're "smart" (which most people would agree with) and they can solve investing better than these "less smart" guys.
Thank you so much for sharing what should be obvious but clearly is not.
The only scam I ever fall for was to switch to AT&T cell phone and I m regretting it every day.
I am surprised you were even able to watch this video
Get out, now. I wound up paying for services I never ordered, and the only way I got them off my bill was to change providers.
I think this isn’t about smart people but successful people and “experts”.
I actually think that Elon Musk is an expert in three things:
1) Marketing
2) Crashing companies
3) Being a con artist
no he has great skill. twitter is not an example of that. without his efforts the electric car industry would not exist. it would be a failure . no car company wanted to do it. this is a fact . people who say it would have happened anyway are plain wrong. he also created the most innovative rocket company since the 70's. his rockets are still the only ones that land back on earth. the starlink system is also revolutionary. his vision to populate mars however is stupid.
@@ronblack7870 he CREATED Rocket company? When?
@@ronblack7870 I think he's not the only one. A lot of what Steve Jobs did was to go around hyping up Steve Jobs and Apple. You could put Steve Jobs in front of a room and he'd sound better than a random engineer.
@@ronblack7870 Musk literally bought his way into Tesla while they were selling their first cars. He has never done anything technical in the company, he just markets and tells blatant lies to falsely drive up the stock price. And yes, it is a fact that the industry would absolutely have expanded with no involvement of Musk. In fact, considering how much of the disappointment people have about electric cars is the direct result of Musk constantly lying about the magical advancements Tesla is gonna release the end of that year or the next year, there's a strong case to be made we'd probably be having more success with electric car changeover without his idiot ass getting involved.
Twitter is actually the clearest example and why people are finally seeing through Musk. Because it's not a technical company where someone else creates stuff he can take credit for, like all his previous companies, it's entirely him and his incredible stupidity that drives it where it's going, down the shitter.
SpaceX is by any reasonable measurement a complete fucking miserable failure. They are completely held up by government grants, purely because they were initially chosen for those contracts which is the reason no other company at this point has the base level to start from. They still are years from accomplishing things NASA did in the fucking 1960s. Reusable rockets are actually fucking stupid. Rockets can only launch and land fully vertically, requiring perfect weather conditions and holding and effectively wasting fuel on landings that an intelligent design, like the space shuttle that NASA used decades ago didn't need. SpaceX's supposedly efficient reusable rockets are a shit ton more costly than any rocket ever used before. Also not anywhere near reliable enough to have any chance of getting safety rated to carry human passengers at any point in the near future.
Star link, like literally everything else Musk has done was an idea that has been around for fucking decades, yes SpaceX has finally actually put it together and that's potentially a net positive, although some of the dirty crap and blatant war profiteering he's done with it in Ukraine are strong cases for why this sort of thing really can't be in the hands of business.
Always interesting, thank you.
One of the better videos How Money Works has produced.
100 people with $100 walk into a Casino. The smartest person walks out with $100, and the richest person walks out with an undue sense of superior intelligence.
This video is basically the premise of Thomas Sowell's "Intellectuals and Society". A valid critique of these academics who presume because they have expertise in one domain, it can thus broadly transition into other domains.
Quoting Thomas Sowell on this video is ironic lol
@@afrosamurai125 lol yaeh
Watch the entire video. The video literally negate Sowell’s fundamental point that rich people got richer because of their merit and not because of their fortune.
I was a consultant and I was really good at it. It scared me though to move up to that level of investing; I wasn’t brave enough at that time to keep promoting I met a lot of good people at that time doing it (:
"People make bad decisions when they get emotional"-Patrick Boyle. This is true, so these days only bad decisions are being made.
I’m glad you brought up NGT. He’s the king of not staying in his lane.
The monopoly case was very interesting. Obviously due to the fact that those players demonstrated not acknowledging their head start and advantages as they went...
That being said, using that example, your overall point here aside from the first couple points is that even genius level human success is essentially unattainable without and mostly attributable to luck.
I would disagree anecdotally from the standpoint of the two phrases:
"The harder I work the luckier I get."
And
"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."
I think as usual there is a balance of both points here. But I always feel the need to bring up that just as people don't typically become successful long term WITHOUT luck, I would say it's just as unlikely to become successful long term WITH luck alone as a primary reason for success.
I think the reason people attribute their success to their own actions rather than luck is because no one likes the idea. Not being in control of your success or failure (in some way or another) and not understanding why things happen to you is at odds with our nature as living things. We would much rather succeed as a result of our hard work and not just because statistically, someone had to, because it would mean us and our achievements are almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. There's nothing unique about us and we might as well be replaceable. The natural world is supposed to have the fittest be the most successful, so if someone succeeds just on chance and not by being the best, there is an inconsistency. And we would much rather fail because we were not good enough than fail because of effects outside of our control because we can accept our defeat if it aligns with darwins natural principle. Also if we lost due to something we can control, we can try again and win next time, otherwise there's no point of trying at all.
Because of this, it's more comfortable to say "I succeeded because I'm superior" than to say "I just got lucky, I didn't do anything special".
To my understanding this just proves how much we need an edged as an investors because playing the market like everyone else just isn’t good enough. I’ve been quite ensured about investing in this current market and at the same time I feel it’s the best time to get started on the market,what are your thoughts?!
That’s true , I’ve been getting assisted by a FA for almost a year now , I started out less than $200k and I’m just $19,000 short of half a million in profits.
>>
>>>
>
Her resume is mind blowing 😮just checked it out 😮😮..I really would give her a try
The smartest person you will ever meet, is someone comfortable saying "I Don't Know".
I met Neil Degrase Tyson years ago he gave a lecture at my college and we got to ask him all kinds of questions and he gave us autographs afterwards. He was pretty cool!
Yeah, I think Tyson’s goal is to create an interest in science. Not to be deemed a super genius.
Man I love that you had a Patrick Boyle clip. He’s always pumping good videos.
My FIL won awards for his studies in all of russia in nuclear physics/ microwave radiation, and does theoretical math as a hobby but he can't remember how to use the oven . He's been trying to work on a forumla to prove numbers can't be random for the past 30 years.
Bro he's going to be still working on that formula in his 2nd and 3rd life
@@behindtherack9056 seriously you're right 😅
The challenge with randomness is that we cannot know if it is random. It is possible for randomness to produce a pattern, and it is possible for a pattern to repeat only after long, long observation.
Computers and brains cannot produce randomness, because as far as we can tell they are both deterministic machines and thus follow rules.
But to prove it with math...
Would be nice to have an overview of the movie clips you use. I think many of those movies would be very interesting for us to watch.
Thank you so much for the first point of your video regarding expertise. Also, just because someone is intelligent doesn't mean that they will make good decisions or have sound reasoning even within their area of expertise. Also, maybe the cutting edge of a field is still problematic. Think of medicine, anthropology, or psychology in the early 20th century.
Niel Tyson knows his limits, I believe. That's why most of conversations that he has is about Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM). He doesn't wander in areas of Finance, economics, management. However, he does speak freely on subject of politics, but through scientific perspective.
When we can elect non specialists as politicians, we have right to speak about it as non specialists.
Being "smart" is not a real thing. Sure you can be skilled at particular skills but these aren't super powers that make you all -knowing and all-skilled. They are confined.
Yeah, I hate it when people say “oh I’m so dumb I hate math” or “I’m not creative” or ahhhhh!!!! Shut up!! IQ is the dumbest metric ever created, intelligence is not a quantifiable physical attribute! You can learn and get better at anything. Even learning.
Related to these, I think people who are smart in “hard” topics like physics or medicine make the mistake of assuming that because nutrition or finance is “easier”, they don’t need to take the time to develop the relevant expertise. As a result they do what so many of us did as university freshmen: read a handful of articles and think we’ve cracked the code.
Smart people need to sometimes respond by saying "this is outside my field of expertise"
I go with, "I'm just spitballing, here, but..."
Still often the only answer in the room, and sometimes it even works.
This is a really good video. I see so many of these online "gurus" and think....they're just "selling" the views.
I predict that the survivorship bias will be strong with this video.
We’re all dumb at something.
Bro, there's exactly one smart guy in this list, and he expressly states he is just about the science. The rest are idiots who got to play with other people's money. SBF and Musk are the two polar opposites of the same problem; One convinced people he knew what he was doing, so give me money, while the other was born into two big bank accounts, and bought the papers saying he knew what he was doing. Really smart people aren't the problem; People thinking someone rich is smart is. Margin Call laid it out with what John Tuld said in the big meeting.
Peter's principle is very much applicable. Just because you're great at sales, doesn't mean you should become a manager.
It took me several years to realize that great psychologist Jordan Peterson might be an equally bad political figure Jordan Peterson
Haha me too man. What a shame
Bro the amount of knowledge people have access to is overwhelming for way too many.
This is the best RUclips channel on RUclips , this is my new school.
Genuinely refreshing to find content like this