Should You Be Strategically Self-Effacing?

You should just be REAL. As confident as warranted by data. No more, no less

Reality tempers your confidence.

Pretending you’re smaller than you are is just disingenuous

You are what you are — no more no less. You can (maybe) do what you can do, you can’t do what you can’t do — and that’s the end of it

HOWEVER

There is a point to be made for being a LITTLE EXTRA humble

It makes your mistakes, your failures less costly

LESS EMBARRASSING

Make big announcements

Call people names

Declare your abilities,

And then you’re wrong all the same

And then you fail,

And you look extra stupid

And those who witnessed it will remember to remind you

Especially those you offended

(and ironically — if you are successful — that alone is offensive)

And in such cases — wouldn’t it be easier to be SMALL?

When you win — you STILL win

But when you lose — there’s nothing to pick apart. You never said you would win. You never said you were all that

…but then again,

DOES IT REALLY MATTER, that you EMBARRASSED yourself?

A chimpanzee does all that fucking chest-pounding… then it gets humbled by another chimpanzee…

…is that “CRINGE”?

Is “cringe” so horrible? So damning?

…maybe you should STILL say what you think,

and risk looking stupid and being embarrassed

It’s your short life

You and them are as good as rotting in the ground already

I still think that if you’re genuinely epistemically humble,

you will be reluctant to overpromise, underdeliver, over-advertise, exaggerate, overtalk…

If truth and accuracy and reality are the criterion — then pleasing and pleasing-sounding fantasies are not

And I still think that if you truly know yourself, and know your brothers,

you will feel little desire to take someone down a peg, to “show them”, to “prove them wrong”,

You’ll say what you think, more or less considerately, and move on

You’re busy with your own fucking business

Nocturnal Contemplations