<story><title>Willingness to look stupid</title><url>https://danluu.com/look-stupid/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Ensorceled</author><text>&amp;gt; The insurance dealer does his job and tries to get a higher premium? Not surprised.&lt;p&gt;This is actually an example of where the author IS stupid.  You will often be found &amp;quot;at fault&amp;quot; in cases where you are not actually at fault (the other driver lies better than your truth) and there are many cases (at least in Ontario) where you are legislatively at fault even if you did nothing out of the ordinary (making a left turn while overtaking traffic attempts to pass rather than yield).  That the broker was trying to protect them from this isn&amp;#x27;t even a conflict of interest for the broker.&lt;p&gt;I wonder how many insurance brokers encounter the &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m such an amazing driver, I don&amp;#x27;t really need insurance.&amp;quot; macho man ... I&amp;#x27;m presuming the broker, at least initially, assumed the author was one of &amp;quot;those drivers&amp;quot; and not &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>alexandrerond</author><text>Totally.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s distance between:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;people think I&amp;#x27;m stupid because I&amp;#x27;m not scared to show that I don&amp;#x27;t know about something&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;and some of the examples which are more along the lines of&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;people think I&amp;#x27;m stupid because I act as a self-entitled genius who provides little context or reasoning behind choices and expect everyone to line up behind with no question&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What is the Apple store employee supposed to do to not make someone feel stupid when they ask for the smallest box? What are the chances they&amp;#x27;re not a clueless customer in need of help and have solid reasons behind?&lt;p&gt;The boss raises an eyebrow when someome proposes to skip half of the test suite? Means a lack of trust.&lt;p&gt;The insurance dealer does his job and tries to get a higher premium? Not surprised.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s quite a bit of narcissism here: &amp;quot;They though I&amp;#x27;m stupid but I&amp;#x27;m not&amp;quot;, &amp;quot; I was right in the end&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s actually arguing how everyone else is dumber in the end.&lt;p&gt;A more sincere approach would have been to explain how he realized how stupid he actually was and how not being defensive about it helped. But perhaps the author knows better after all.</text></item><item><author>pydry</author><text>One way to prove that he truly doesn&amp;#x27;t mind looking stupid would be to list times when he risked looking stupid... and it turns out he actually was.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s happened to all of us though we dont like to admit it.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure it&amp;#x27;s happened to him too  and I looked but I didn&amp;#x27;t see any of those examples listed.&lt;p&gt;Giving only examples of when people thought he was dumb and it turned out he wasn&amp;#x27;t... that&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;kind&lt;/i&gt; of just a roundabout way of humblebragging that you&amp;#x27;re an unrecognized genius.&lt;p&gt;Sadly I think this undermines the point of the article which otherwise makes a good point.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Zarel</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s about who&amp;#x27;s at fault, it&amp;#x27;s about what risks you&amp;#x27;re willing to tolerate.&lt;p&gt;Insurance is always a trade-off of EV for tail risk. In exchange for losing money on average (the insurance company has to earn money somehow, after all), you&amp;#x27;re protected from the worst case scenario. You can think of it like, yourself from parallel universe where you don&amp;#x27;t get into a crash, pays yourself in the parallel universe where you do get into a crash. And the insurance company skims a little off the top as payment for the service of sending money across parallel universes.&lt;p&gt;But if you can afford to just eat the cost of a crash, you don&amp;#x27;t need to pay the insurance company for that service. And maybe you can eat the costs of some crashes but not others: If you crash into a rich guy&amp;#x27;s car, maybe you can&amp;#x27;t afford those costs, but damage to your own car is capped at the price of your own car. So that&amp;#x27;s all Dan&amp;#x27;s doing: insuring the costs he can&amp;#x27;t pay (damage to others) but not the ones he can (damage to his own car).&lt;p&gt;The math isn&amp;#x27;t affected by his chances of being found at fault, or how good of a driver he is, at all.</text></comment>
<story><title>Willingness to look stupid</title><url>https://danluu.com/look-stupid/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Ensorceled</author><text>&amp;gt; The insurance dealer does his job and tries to get a higher premium? Not surprised.&lt;p&gt;This is actually an example of where the author IS stupid.  You will often be found &amp;quot;at fault&amp;quot; in cases where you are not actually at fault (the other driver lies better than your truth) and there are many cases (at least in Ontario) where you are legislatively at fault even if you did nothing out of the ordinary (making a left turn while overtaking traffic attempts to pass rather than yield).  That the broker was trying to protect them from this isn&amp;#x27;t even a conflict of interest for the broker.&lt;p&gt;I wonder how many insurance brokers encounter the &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m such an amazing driver, I don&amp;#x27;t really need insurance.&amp;quot; macho man ... I&amp;#x27;m presuming the broker, at least initially, assumed the author was one of &amp;quot;those drivers&amp;quot; and not &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>alexandrerond</author><text>Totally.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s distance between:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;people think I&amp;#x27;m stupid because I&amp;#x27;m not scared to show that I don&amp;#x27;t know about something&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;and some of the examples which are more along the lines of&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;people think I&amp;#x27;m stupid because I act as a self-entitled genius who provides little context or reasoning behind choices and expect everyone to line up behind with no question&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What is the Apple store employee supposed to do to not make someone feel stupid when they ask for the smallest box? What are the chances they&amp;#x27;re not a clueless customer in need of help and have solid reasons behind?&lt;p&gt;The boss raises an eyebrow when someome proposes to skip half of the test suite? Means a lack of trust.&lt;p&gt;The insurance dealer does his job and tries to get a higher premium? Not surprised.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s quite a bit of narcissism here: &amp;quot;They though I&amp;#x27;m stupid but I&amp;#x27;m not&amp;quot;, &amp;quot; I was right in the end&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s actually arguing how everyone else is dumber in the end.&lt;p&gt;A more sincere approach would have been to explain how he realized how stupid he actually was and how not being defensive about it helped. But perhaps the author knows better after all.</text></item><item><author>pydry</author><text>One way to prove that he truly doesn&amp;#x27;t mind looking stupid would be to list times when he risked looking stupid... and it turns out he actually was.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s happened to all of us though we dont like to admit it.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure it&amp;#x27;s happened to him too  and I looked but I didn&amp;#x27;t see any of those examples listed.&lt;p&gt;Giving only examples of when people thought he was dumb and it turned out he wasn&amp;#x27;t... that&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;kind&lt;/i&gt; of just a roundabout way of humblebragging that you&amp;#x27;re an unrecognized genius.&lt;p&gt;Sadly I think this undermines the point of the article which otherwise makes a good point.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pja</author><text>I think you’ve got that backwards - he wanted to only buy coverage for damage he did to other vehicles &amp;#x2F; people &amp;amp; not to cover his own vehicle.&lt;p&gt;However, sometimes, for some drivers, fully comprehensive insurance can be cheaper than 3rd party only for arcane internal insurance risk-accounting reasons. So by not letting his agent even look at the whole market he was cutting himself off from the possibility of cheaper insurance.</text></comment>