Curt Jaimungal: Why You Are Brighter Than You Think
4/10/202616 min
SPONSORS: - Go to https://shortform.com/toe for a free trial and an exclusive $50 OFF on your annual subscription - I subscribe to The Economist for their science and tech coverage. As a TOE listener, get 35% off! No other podcast has this: https://economist.com/TOE The intellectual world is designed to erode your confidence — through rejection rates, delayed feedback, unfair comparisons, and the silence of everyone you've actually helped. In this video I break down why feeling like a fraud is almost a structural inevitability in serious academic and self-directed learning, not a reflection of your actual ab...
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Curt Jaimungal· Host0:29
I was just watching this video about the various signs that you're a better writer than you think. I'm assuming YouTube recommended it to me because ever since I signed this book deal with Penguin Press, I've had the pleasant thoughts of every sentence I write is utter garbage, what the F is wrong with me, trending in my mind like Opalite meets Snape. As I watched that video, I realized almost verbatim these tips can be applied to you as a self-learner, as a student, as a researcher, someone who watches this channel, for instance. If you're trying to sincerely understand math, physics, philosophy, whatever your field is, it's likely that you feel that you're not good enough, but that's okay. The structure of intellectual life is set up to vaporize your confidence, and once these are pointed out, you won't be able to unsee them. Tally it up. How many rejections have you accumulated? Whether it's journals or grants or graduate programs or job applications, even innocuous comments here or posts on YouTube. Think about how ferocious