Simone Stolzoff

We need to have a little bit more intellectual humility as opposed to hubris.

Well, I'm sure it's something that you've seen interviewing so many experts on this show.

A lot of the smartest people I know are the ones who are most willing to admit what they don't know.

And they're able to say, oh, I am not sure.

I've never thought about it this way.

Oh, I need to update my thinking.

Oh, I need to learn more about that.

And that, I think, is actually a much better sign of someone who has expertise than someone who fronts like they know about everything.

But a lot of people, a lot of smart people double down instead of updating.

So what's going on there?

It goes back to that sort of escalating commitment thing where rather than have to reckon with the fact that you might have been wrong in the past, we have this cognitive need to maintain a positive self-image.

And so we think that admitting that we were wrong would somehow undermine our positive self-image of ourselves.

And so we'd rather double down than update our beliefs.

Even though updating our beliefs is what builds trust from the outside perspective.

And it's what allows you to see the world in a more accurate way.

I think particularly in people's careers right now, we see a lot of this, where people are so uncertain and worried about how AI might impact their industry, how the future of their ability to provide for their family, whether they might get laid off or not.

And part of what we do in these situations is we try and control all the outcomes.

The problem is you don't always have power to control the things that we try to control.

And so you might have heard of the serenity prayer.

God grant me the serenity to...