The StoWicks Conversations
by
Carolyn and Seth Wicks
Seth: Most of you probably have go-to people for certain things. Maybe one of your friends is the "plant" person with the green thumb, an endless source of knowledge on keeping your Snake Plant alive. Maybe another knows everything about Skyrim and has walked you through the entire Dragonborn path. Whatever it is, you have people you trust as experts in that one particular thing.
Then there's the opposite type: the person who has an answer for literally everything, and yet you don't fully trust their knowledge on anything. That's the confidence paradox - know-it-alls seem trustworthy but aren't, while learners seem uncertain but are.
The most respected people among us are the ones who are honest about what they know, but are also quick to say "I'm not sure" if they don't. And in the areas they have mastered, they teach rather than perform, sharing what they know instead of using it to sit above you. That combo is what actually makes someone worth going to for answers.
Carolyn: What is it about the loudest person in the room? (It's giving Gaston.) They're yelling it, so it must be true. But who would yell something without first knowing for a fact they're right? Turns out, a lot of people would.
It's the same paradox Seth's talking about, the loud ones look trustworthy, but that's not the same as being right. So how does that affect you? Well, when the loudest person in the room tells you they have the answer, a lot of times you never find out if they're actually right, because you've stopped checking. Somewhere around the fifth confident answer in a row, you've gone from verifying to trusting, and that's not a compliment to them. Double-checking someone who has never said "let me confirm," or never once looked unsure, starts to feel almost insulting, so you stop.
When the loudest and most confident person in the room is wrong, it's because you got fooled by consistency. It's not laziness, it's that their bravado made you believe you didn't need to verify.
The funny part is I don't think the loud ones believe they're lying. They just haven't built the habit of flagging where their certainty actually ends, (self awareness is key folks!) which is exactly why "I don't know, let me find out" matters so much.
Seth: I started a dynasty fantasy football league last year, so going into this year's draft, we just needed to look at rookies who had just been drafted. I have a buddy (who shall remain nameless) who knows fantasy football like it's his second job, and has been in several leagues for over 10 years. So naturally, I sought his advice for who I should pick with my 7th overall pick. So who did he tell me to pick?
If you guessed an actual player, you're wrong. He didn't name any players at all. What he did was ask me questions about my team, specifically about the strengths and weakness of the roster. He asked how old the league was, how many picks I had in this draft and future capital, he asked about league formats and scoring. He, the so-called fantasy expert, was asking me a thousand questions before giving an answer. THAT is trust. That is what competence looks like. He literally didn't know the answer until he had all the information, because the answer wasn't straightforward. He had to learn, on the spot, and then give his advice.
Carolyn: It's time for Carolyn's Science Corner 🤓
Let's start with what happens when someone's always sure. Psychologists have been measuring this since the 1980s, in one major review, researchers found that when people said they were 98% certain about something, they were actually only right about two-thirds of the time. Confidence and accuracy just don't track each other as closely as we assume, which is part of why the Dunning-Kruger effect exists in the first place: people with lower competence tend to misjudge both their own performance and other people's.
So as far as trust goes, overconfidence can actively damage your credibility. Researchers who study this have found that confident speakers who turn out to be wrong pay a bigger reputational price than uncertain speakers who turn out to be wrong. In other words, the loud wrong answer costs you more than the quiet wrong answer, even when both are equally wrong.
So scientifically speaking, what earns trust? It's whether your confidence matches your evidence. One recent study found that what makes a speaker seem trustworthy has more to do with whether their confidence matches the strength of their evidence than whether their confidence matches their actual accuracy. Meaning: someone can be wrong and still be trusted, as long as their certainty was earned. And someone can be right and still lose trust, if their certainty wasn't.
That's the mechanism behind "I don't know, let me find out." It's honest and the research says honest signals are the ones people actually learn to rely on.
Seth: One of the strongest honest signals that Carolyn is talking about is rooted in the ability to admit fault. Someone who can say they were wrong, whether it was their word or their action, is someone who is actively learning. A know-it-all would never admit they were wrong, because their ego couldn't handle it.
Another one is absolutes. Maybe one of the most heated debates of the past 20 years is Jordan vs LeBron. Everyone's got a take, and most people are so locked into their guy that they can't even entertain the other side's argument. The people I actually respect in that debate aren't the ones who scream their pick the loudest, but rather the ones who can say "I'm a Jordan guy, but LeBron's longevity and passing are genuinely incredible", or vice versa. That's someone who's actually watched the game closely enough to see the whole picture. It's humble and competent at the same time, and I'll take that person's opinion over a diehard's any day.
Carolyn: We're always learning, we are always growing. So our goal is not to have all the answers, how could we?
The goal is to be okay not having them. To ask the question you think you should already know. To say "I don't know, but I can find out." As Seth said, nobody likes the guy who can't admit he's wrong. You know that person. Everyone does. And they're not impressive, they're just stuck. Refusing to admit you don't know something is really just refusing to grow.
So remember, you become trustworthy by being honest about what you know, and honest about what you don't. Then doing something about it.
Seth: This week, challenge yourself to dig deeper. When you are certain about something, ask questions about your stance and try to see it from the other side. You might actually change your own mind.
Carolyn: Curious where you land on this? Hit reply and tell us, are you a "loudest person in the room" in recovery, or are you already the "let me confirm" type? We read every single one.
Both: If this one landed for you, send it to someone who'd get something out of it too, a teammate, a friend, anyone who's better at admitting "I don't know" than you give them credit for.
See you next week,
Carolyn & Seth
​The StoWicks
Quote of the Week:
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
Socrates
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