Destigmatize being dumb - Defender’s Corner
I’ve gotten much smarter over the past year because I no longer feel bad about being dumb. I think everyone should do this. I think it will improve your life AND society.
Understanding in what ways I am dumb helps me improve. Example: I’m not very good at abstract thinking. A lot of my engineer peers seem to grasp things much quicker than me without concrete examples. Accepting that meant I no longer feel bad for “being slow”, instead I ask, “can we look at an example?” This allows me to make valuable contributions: I can find bugs or design flaws that they can’t see.
I claim that this is a root cause of a lot of problems in society. If we destigmatize “being dumb” (1) a lot of people will get smarter (2) leaders will admit it more often and ask for help.
I think we currently don’t admire & reward intelligence ENOUGH , and I think this will help with that. Any system that rewards finding flaws will improve. Apple, Google, etc will pay you a lot of money if you can find a security flaw in any of their systems. The military does this with matters of life & death (if admitting failure is punished, people hide failure). If you find an inefficiency in the economy, you can make a lot of money fixing it (through betting on the stock market, or starting a business).
