When questioning your intentions as arrogant, entitled, immature vs confident, moral right, correctness. Or even questioning if the Duning Kruger effect is at play.
What process do you incorporate to back-up your self-judgement or in identifying your decisions/choices are in-fact “correct” in online discussions and/or personal life with friends/family.
How do you remove “self-doubt”?
Stay intellectually humble. It’s a huge component of wisdom in my observation. Understand you can always make mistakes that can be corrected, and that you have arrived at your opinions through limited information that can always be supplemented, so stay open to both of these possibilities.
You can be confident in your opinions that you arrived upon through spending a lot of effort thinking about them, and you don’t need to have self doubt when challenged on them baselessly. But when someone does point out an error or something you missed, it’s essential you haven’t become closed to accepting it.
Always remember what the basis are for your opinions and how well-founded they really are. For example: how much do you actually know about a thing when you’re relying on something you read in the news? How much do they really know about that thing?
As a check on yourself believing you’ve put a lot of effort into thinking about something, be on the guard for unwarranted confidence. If a professional has put their efforts into something in their field of expertise they’ve spent their whole lives working on, chances are you haven’t thought of something they haven’t in the first five minutes of hearing about their work. That might seem ridiculous, but you see this all the time on Lemmy, where for example commenters seem to think they’ve figured out key errors in scientific papers after reading a single popular science article about an experiment or figured out solutions to incredibly complex problems like fair taxation.
Why would you want to get rid of self doubt? Questioning ones reasons or whether they’re wrong is vital.
It’s always good to have self doubt, it leaves you open to changing your mind. Do what you think you should, but those who realise they are fallible will more easily change their view of things when proven why they should.
There’s a line in Nicholas Roeg’s movie Insignificance that has stayed with me for decades now.
There’s an obvious Einstein expy just called “The Professor.” At one point, he’s asked why he’s so cautious about his claims - why he habitually says things like, “I think that…” or “The theory is that…” or “One might argue that…”
His response is, “If I say ‘I know,’ I stop thinking.”
That, IMO, points to the primary answer to your question - don’t try to remove self-doubt. Nourish it. Revel in it. Because it’s the thing that will keep you thinking, and the more you think, the more likely you are to get to actual truth.
I completely agree, and I try to frame my opinions like this, and be open to me being wrong and accepting better information. I don’t do it perfectly 100% of the time, but I do try, especially in a work setting.
One thing to be wary of: some people will call these humble qualifiers “weasel words” and accuse you of lacking conviction. Most likely to happen if you’re having a political discussion with a person who’s convinced themselves that they have it all figured out and/or they mistake bullying for a good argument. I try to disengage with that type of person, but they’re out there in the wild.
Yes - I’ve had many of those asshats over the years insist that I have to “choose a side.”
That’s generally because they can’t actually argue for their position, and the best they can manage is to find fault with a self-serving characterization of a falsely dichotomous opposing position. So they need to be able to assign me to one or the other team, so they know whether they can ignore me or if they need to hurl some emotive rhetoric and fallacies somewhere in my general direction.
And yes - they’re almost never worth engaging with.
And to go all the way back, it could be said that the exact problem is that they have unfounded confidence.
And it’s sort of ironic really, because they’re generally driven by a psychological need to be right, and clinging desperately to one fixed position pretty much guarantees that right is the one thing they will not be.
can manage is to find fault with a self-serving characterization of a falsely dichotomous opposing position. So they need to be able to assign me to one or the other team
Oh wow, this is kind of what I have experienced. The tougher part for me, it was someone that wasn’t a stranger. It made me self-doubt intensely. And I resorted to doing the same, without thinking that I changed myself completely at the moment. Pointing out flaws rather than bringing it back to the main “issue”. (I never am one to “confront”, so it felt like a new frontier).
Cutting ties with these types, has probably been the biggest mental improvement I have had. And a huge boost in most other aspects of my life. But, I still have these self-doubt questions. But, this time around trying to discover those answers via the suggestions/similar strategies listed in this thread, I feel is much healthier moving forward.
And to go all the way back, it could be said that the exact problem is that they have unfounded confidence.
And it’s sort of ironic really, because they’re generally driven by a psychological need to be right, and clinging desperately to one fixed position pretty much guarantees that right is the one thing they will not be.
This is all spot on to be honest
And to go all the way back, it could be said that the exact problem is that they have unfounded confidence.
I definitely have unfounded confidence as well, but am one to internalize all the causation or experiences that aggravate it. Leaning on those I view have “resolved” those issues I see in myself.
And it’s sort of ironic really, because they’re generally driven by a psychological need to be right, and clinging desperately to one fixed position pretty much guarantees that right is the one thing they will not be.
Which is why when I see traits like this, I tend to mirror thinking its the correct approach. Instead of realizing the flaws of absolutism.
I don’t. There is no absolutely “right” answers, we just need to accept the bad choices and move on. Like anyone else, you will choose the wrong choice eventually, and that’s is fine, just learn from it.
