Socrates
Not supposing that you know
The whole margin is that thin
Plato, Apology
The poster says he knew that he knew nothing. This page is about the narrower and far more useful thing he said.
What actually happened?
A friend asked the oracle at Delphi whether anybody was wiser than Socrates, and was told nobody was. Socrates did not believe it, so he went out to test it: politicians, poets, craftsmen, one after another, questioning each. The result came back the same every time. They supposed they knew things they did not. I do not think I know what I do not know, he says, and that thin margin is the whole of his advantage. He kept questioning until Athens executed him for it.
His response to good news was to go and test it
He was handed a judgement flattering to himself and his first move was to look for a counter-example rather than to accept it. The habit is independent of content: the more agreeable a conclusion, the earlier you should go looking for what would break it.
When the research comes back entirely positive, go and find three people who left. Confirming cases are unlimited; one counter-example saves half a year.
Competence in one place leaks into confidence everywhere
He found the craftsmen genuinely expert, and precisely because of it convinced they were wise about the greatest matters too. Somebody whose judgement has been repeatedly validated in one domain is the least able to say I do not know in another.
A founder whose technical calls are excellent rules on pricing, contracts and hiring with identical confidence. The record in the first is the risk in the rest.
Examination is a procedure, not a posture
His examining had a fixed shape: make the other person define the term they are using, then test that definition against concrete cases. Modesty can be performed. A procedure produces something every time, either a definition that holds or a gap that opens.
Are we confident about this is an attitude. Which three assumptions is it resting on, and which is weakest, is examination, and it always yields an answer.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: about to give a confident verdict outside the field you are good at.
Ask first: is the confidence coming from this question, or from your record somewhere else?
Where it goes wrong: wearing modesty as a manner with no procedure attached, or examining only the conclusions you dislike.
Lines to keep
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Good at their craft, they supposed themselves wise about everything.
Same situation, other people are asking
By the time the data is in, will it be too late?Everyone I know is in this. I don't actually understand it.I keep listing reasons this will work. Should I do the other list?Everything I know about this came up one reporting line.I don't have enough information · all 12 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.