Have more fruitful discussions by questioning your knowledge

“I’m very stupid, you see, but I own my stupidity.”

The most memorable lesson of this came to me recently from an unexpected source: A comedy sketch on YouTube. In it, stand-up comedian Joel Kim Booster makes fun of himself: "I am very stupid, you see, but I own my stupidity." He follows up by saying that often, he finds himself having to end conversations with friends by saying: “Oh I'm sorry, but I don't think either of us read enough books to be talking about this."

This phrase has become somewhat of a mantra for me. Now, when I am in a situation in which my conversation partner and I try to convince each other of some truth, or make particularly opinionated statements on a subject, I try to remind myself of this phrase, wondering if I actually know what I'm talking about enough to perpetuate my ideas without doing damage. My way of answering this question is to think about where my ideas originated from, and whether they are based on either proven facts from a trusted source, personal experience, or really just mere assumptions or hear-say.

“Knowing is the enemy of learning.”

To get smarter and be able to participate in a conversation responsibly though, we need to learn. Unfortunately, communicating knowledge seems to be in contradiction to learning. As Tom Chi, co-founder of Google's "moonshot factory" X says in his TEDx talk on this topic: Knowing is the enemy of learning.

Next time you get more and more excited, and the conversation heats up, why not try to take pause to think about these questions: Is what I am saying:

• grounded in proven facts from a reputable source?

• based on solid, personal experience?

• really just assumptions or hypotheses derived from hearsay or deduced from other information?

If you do this and then decide whether to learn or to inform or teach, you may end up with more satisfying conversations altogether.