The skill of never saying anything stupid

The skill of almost never saying anything stupid is a highly valuable skill that greatly increases people's respect for you, and it does not require great intelligence to master.

Over the years, I have talked with multiple people that are very skillful in not saying stupid things. This includes people that nobody would describe as “highly intelligent” or “very smart”.

For example, a person that works in a hotel is not considered to be a genius. For years, I have known somebody that works in a hotel, and I cannot even remember the last time when he said something stupid (if he ever did!). He almost never says anything stupid or foolish.

If other people were asked to judge his intelligence or IQ, they would shrug and say average. I know multiple people with this skill, and I know how it works.

The key is knowing your limits and estimating your probability of being correct (or at least not stupid) before speaking aloud the thought that you are considering saying.

After sufficient practice, this skill becomes part of your intuition. You can feel it before it happens, and then you can avert it. You develop a habit of always feeling for it before speaking.

When you do not feel confident that your planned statement/thought does not sound stupid, then you simply shut your mouth, and nobody ever knows that you thought something stupid for a moment.

I think stupid things. Everybody does. It is unavoidable. However, I usually succeed in cancelling my stupid thoughts before I speak them or post them, thus my final output is much better than the original unspoken version. This happens because I have made it my habit to try to always do this.

And I am certainly not the only person doing this. As I said, many people are skillful in almost never saying stupid things. And many other people have not yet even begun to practice and develop this valuable skill.

I go further with it. I really hate being wrong. You would think that everybody hates being wrong, but no, many people do not hate it nearly enough. They may claim to hate it, but their actions indicate otherwise. If they genuinely hated being wrong (as I do), then they would make more effort to avoid being wrong (as I do).

💯 Estimate the accuracy of each memory

In order to minimize my probability of being wrong, I have developed a skill of estimating/judging the accuracy of my memories. Human memories are always fallible, and they degrade over time. However, after sufficient practice, it is possible to develop an intuitive ability to feel the strength and accuracy of one of your memories.

I can feel whether one of my memories is definitely still accurate versus probably accurate versus doubtfully accurate. If I feel that one of my memories is not trustworthy, then I will verify it before speaking. For example, if it is a factual issue, I will look it up somewhere (such as Wikipedia or in a book etc.) in order to check whether my memory is accurate.

If a memory is suspicious, and if I cannot look it up immediately (for example, if I am in the middle of a meeting), then I shut my mouth, and I do not take the risk of saying something that is possibly incorrect or stupid. I wait until I can verify it, and then I say what I want to say. Better to say it later with confidence than to rush into saying it immediately when the memory feels untrustworthy/risky.

💪🏻 Identify strengths & weaknesses in your argumentation

When writing a message or an article, before I send/post/publish it, I take some time to think about how my argumentation, logic, reasoning, and facts could be attacked. I identify weaknesses in my argumentation, and I strengthen them (or delete them) before sending/posting the final version of my message or article.

⚖️ Think like a lawyer

Competent lawyers are (or should be) trained and experienced in the art of choosing wording that eliminates ambiguity. Lawyers also create or eliminate loopholes as desired. This skill is useful for everybody. I try to think like a lawyer all the time, even when not writing a legal document. This assists me in formulating statements in a manner that makes them much more difficult to attack, disprove, or discredit.

For example, the first version of your message might contain a sentence like “Roses are red”. This type of sentence is too easy to attack. To make it stronger, you can change it to something like “Roses are commonly red” or you can add disclaimer-like wording such as “exceptions exist”.

Likewise, stereotyped assertions such as “Men are ...” and “Women are ...” are usually wrong, because much diversity exists. The solution is to change it to “Many men are ...” or perhaps “Most men are ...”, so that nobody can make you wrong by pointing out an example that contradicts your assertion.

🤥 Do not try to cover up mistakes using weak lies

This happens commonly: Some people make a mistake, and then when their mistake is revealed, they tell lies about their mistake in a juvenile attempt to cover up their mistake. This makes their situation even worse.

A lot of people drastically overestimate their ability to lie and get away with it. They keep persisting for hours with lie after lie after lie, desperately trying to cover up their mistake, despite the fact that their lies are weak and recognized by most people.

Part of the reason why they do not realize the failure of their lies is because other people often do not reveal that they know when someone is lying. Many people recognize the cover up type of lie and then say nothing about it, because of one of these reasons:

• They are too “polite” to complain about the lie.

• They want to avoid conflict.

• They simply do not want to expend the energy to call out the liar.

The above reasons contribute to liars overestimating the efficacy of their lies, because they receive little or no feedback about the failure of their lies.

After making a mistake, it is better to shut your mouth than to dig yourself even deeper into the hole. There is no sense in making a bad situation even worse.

Alternatively, you might consider downplaying the mistake. Maybe. Downplaying it might or might not improve your reputation. It could also worsen your reputation. It depends on the specific circumstances. However, downplaying it is sure to produce better results than telling stupid unconvincing lies that nobody believes.

If you are communicating with a nasty manipulative person that plays psycho-games, then do not admit to any mistakes, because they will use it against you. When you are communicating with decent ethical people, admitting to a mistake can increase people’s respect for you, because it demonstrates that you have admirable qualities: Strength, courage, moral fiber, integrity, and trustworthiness.

Many people neglect the opportunity to admit to a tiny mistake such as misreading a few words in an article. Admitting a tiny mistake makes you look good overall. The advantage is much larger than the disadvantage.

🌤 Uncloud your thinking

Human judgement is normally clouded by emotions, vested interests, conflict of interest, bias, motivated reasoning, and tribalism.

A clever person uses this fact to his/her advantage to protect himself/herself from the misinformation that people produce.

An even cleverer person uses this fact to protect himself/herself from his/her own misinformation.

🦉 Conclusion

With sufficient practice, you too can master the intuitive skill of almost never saying stupid things, and if you want to kick it up to the next level, you can learn to really, truly, properly hate being wrong like I do.