"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish
and stupid." -Epictetus
Dan Ariely is the author of Predictably
Irrational and Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at
Duke University. He does research in behavioral economics on the irrational
ways people behave, described in plain language. Dan discovered that when
teaching large classes (an average of 500 pupils) the students were afraid to
ask questions. Consequently, Dan would start the semester by taking a few
paragraphs from postmodern literature and randomly adding in words and phrases
about economics and behavioral psychology. To give you some perspective,
Wikipedia defines postmodern literature as ‘a form of literature that
is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality,
and which often thematizes both historical and political issues’. (If you
didn’t understand the definition, well….join the club.) He would then begin the
lecture by saying “Let me start by explaining what behavioral economics is …”
and proceeds to read this nonsense out loud for 5-7 minutes. Predictably,
everyone would start taking copious notes. No one questioned the information.
Then Professor Ariely stops and asks the group ‘Why didn’t
you stop me? If you don’t understand, just ask. Don’t look at other people-
assume that you’ll help others and that others don’t understand just as much as
you do. Everyone is thinking the same thing. But no one has the guts to change
it.”
Rocket scientist Ozan Varol says that “dumb” questions are
the starting point for innovation. This comes with a disclaimer: Dumb doesn’t
mean stupid. It signifies the
basic. It means fun-dumb-ental. Asking a dumb question requires taking a
complex concept and asking a seemingly simple question that has no easy
answers. Change almost always begins with a dumb question. Here are a few that
changed the world: What makes an apple fall down to the ground, rather than go
up? What if the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the other way
around? What if suitcases had wheels on them?
Malcolm Gladwell, author of the international bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink (2005) traces his
inquisitive nature to his father’s inclination to ask dumb questions:
“My father has zero intellectual insecurities. It has never
crossed his mind to be concerned that the world think he’s an idiot. He’s not
in that game. So if he doesn’t understand something, he just asks you. He
doesn’t care if he sounds foolish. If my father had met Bernie Madoff, he never
would have invested money with him because he would have said, ‘I don’t
understand’ a hundred times. ‘I don’t understand how that works,’ in this kind
of dumb, slow voice.”
Humility and genuine
curiosity are perhaps the most under rated attributes to expanding your
knowledge. The minute you wake up and think you know everything- you know
nothing
