Someone said to me yesterday: “You seem to doubt yourself a lot.”
My answer? “Oh, definitely! Constantly. If I didn’t, I’d be a Republican.”*
Confidence doesn’t impress me.
In fact, it does the opposite.
There’s a difference between knowing things and acting like you know things. After a while, it gets easier to spot the fakers. They’re the ones who never say, “I don’t know.”
Seems to me confidence is vestigial. A display of mating fitness for less-evolved life forms.
It’s related to status — which leads to bullying, pecking order, social dominance hierarchies. We don’t need it. (That is… if we’re going to become super-logical aliens.)
For me, it’s always a red flag.
Standing up straight, pushing your shoulders back, speaking loudly, being funny, smiling, making eye contact — being likable in any way — these have nothing to do with the accuracy of your information or your ability to make good decisions.
Confidence and correctness are not coupled. If they were, we wouldn’t have cult leaders and con(fidence) men.
Unfortunately, humans still value confidence more than maybe anything. Presidential elections are purely confidence competitions. The first puppet to show self-doubt loses. (Think: what are we really selecting for? On “both sides?”)
I prefer people who shut up and check their work.
Much of life is plain old math. If you want the right answer to important questions, run through it again. Find the errors. Ask a friend to proofread your brain.
Doubt yourself.
It’s one of the few things I’m (kinda) sure of.
*This comes from an old blog post I wrote about Sarah Palin’s sociopathic level of confidence. At the time, that behavior was shocking.