<story><title>The world is run by people no smarter than you</title><url>https://www.swyx.io/no-smarter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nh23423fefe</author><text>Seems like the failure was imagining that smart people don&amp;#x27;t make mistakes. Smart people make tons of mistakes and they are confident in their ability to correct and improve. They aren&amp;#x27;t fragile and afraid to be wrong in public because they know saying &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t know&amp;#x27; isn&amp;#x27;t a death sentence.&lt;p&gt;Regular people generally just sit in one place improving nothing, learning nothing, changing little year over year. Terrified of being &amp;quot;caught out as an imposter&amp;quot; whatever that means.&lt;p&gt;The difference isn&amp;#x27;t smart&amp;#x2F;not smart. It&amp;#x27;s movement vs stationary.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dasil003</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re defining &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; as some grab bag of traits that you deem virtuous.  But if we use the common connotation of smart (ie. raw cognitive ability), and decouple it from wisdom, judgement, EQ, charisma, independence, self-awareness, then what you are saying is nonsense.&lt;p&gt;Dumb people don&amp;#x27;t feel imposter syndrome more than smart people.  Ambition is not limited to the smart.  And if anything I would say being high percentile IQ can work against your ability to learn from others because you&amp;#x27;re used to being the smartest person in the room.&lt;p&gt;Remember, the universe is big and chaotic, intelligence only enables a limited amount of optimization, and the difference between a &amp;quot;dumb&amp;quot; person and a &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; person is insignificant next to our evolved social capabilities that allowed us to specialize and create huge civilizations with strong safety and wellbeing guarantees.  Every &amp;quot;self-made&amp;quot; millionaire and billionaire on the planet would be nothing without those base traits of the populace.</text></comment>
<story><title>The world is run by people no smarter than you</title><url>https://www.swyx.io/no-smarter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nh23423fefe</author><text>Seems like the failure was imagining that smart people don&amp;#x27;t make mistakes. Smart people make tons of mistakes and they are confident in their ability to correct and improve. They aren&amp;#x27;t fragile and afraid to be wrong in public because they know saying &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t know&amp;#x27; isn&amp;#x27;t a death sentence.&lt;p&gt;Regular people generally just sit in one place improving nothing, learning nothing, changing little year over year. Terrified of being &amp;quot;caught out as an imposter&amp;quot; whatever that means.&lt;p&gt;The difference isn&amp;#x27;t smart&amp;#x2F;not smart. It&amp;#x27;s movement vs stationary.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tablespoon</author><text>&amp;gt; Seems like the failure was imagining that smart people don&amp;#x27;t make mistakes. Smart people make tons of mistakes and they are confident in their ability to correct and improve. They aren&amp;#x27;t fragile and afraid to be wrong in public because they know saying &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t know&amp;#x27; isn&amp;#x27;t a death sentence.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re creating connections that don&amp;#x27;t exist between unrelated things. &amp;quot;Smart people&amp;quot; don&amp;#x27;t all have the personality traits, attitudes, and beleifs that you&amp;#x27;re attributing to them.  I&amp;#x27;d say &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; and the things you describe are actually completely orthogonal.</text></comment>