Comment by grigjd3
8 years ago
As a person who basically made it through college without internet, I can tell you that I had just as much trouble admitting I was wrong when I didn't have access to the internet, perhaps more because I was younger and more hotheaded.
I've sometimes had the problem as well. Usually because my self esteem had been based heavily on believing that I'm really smart.
It sounds like you had equated being smart with knowing things.
My self esteem has also been heavily based on believing that I'm really smart, but I never had a problem admitting I didn't know something. "Smart" to me means my ability to learn, problem solve, and make connections.
One of the most significant factors in my success to date has been my almost eager willingness to admit my lack of knowledge, and to ask others to share their knowledge.
How else are you going to learn new things?
Not everyone gets there in one step. A lot of people have the problem described by the parent because they don't have these insights yet.
Don't blame yourself. Go read argument culture. Everything is positioned as a debate rather then a discussion ; take an opposing side and it's about winning not understanding. As an example If you've caught yourself ever leveraging syntax in a discussion to derail someone's ideas
I've always hated debate because of that and could never understand why it was valued. It is always about winning and never about getting to the bottom of what could be the truth.
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Can you elaborate on “leveraging syntax”? Like commenting on the structure of their argument?
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You reminded me of this comment (www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/19qonw/any_advice_on_how_to_get_remotivated_for_studying/c8qia6b) on reddit. I wish I'd have read that sooner.
After relating an anecdote, that comment mentions Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck "In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.[3] This is important because (1) individuals with a "growth" theory are more likely to continue working hard despite setbacks and (2) individuals' theories of intelligence can be affected by subtle environmental cues. For example, children given praise such as "good job, you're very smart" are much more likely to develop a fixed mindset, whereas if given compliments like "good job, you worked very hard" they are likely to develop a growth mindset. In other words, it is possible to encourage students, for example, to persist despite failure by encouraging them to think about learning in a certain way."