You're listening to Roundtable with myself, Hye-Young. I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yushan in the studio. Coming up, we're diving into the power of intellectual humility.
Why admitting I might be wrong isn't a weakness but a real strength. This mindset can transform relationships, sharpen our thinking, and make life more interesting. We discuss why being humble about your knowledge is truly smart.
And need a boost to crush the week? Our special segment, Motivational Monday, is your ultimate adrenaline shot to kick things off strong. Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on Apple Podcast. Got a question that's keeping you curious from social issues to tech and everything in between? Let us take a stab at it. Email us at roundtablepodcast at qq.com. Emails are fine, but voice memos are always better because we're a radio show slash podcast and it's
really our listeners' favorite. Now let's switch gears. Ever been absolutely sure that you were right, only to realize, oops, not quite? That humbling moment when you find out you don't know it all. That's what we call an aha moment, and it's at the heart of something powerful. It's called intellectual humility. What exactly is it?
This is very, very challenging for human beings, at least for the human beings that I've met, and I include myself in that group. Intellectual humility is very simple. It's knowing what you don't know. It's acknowledging that you have limits in terms of your own knowledge and that your beliefs, as strong as they may be, may be a work in progress. They may be incomplete.
It's not a lack of confidence, but it's just an honest look at your understanding. It's admitting to yourself and admitting to others. I'm not an expert, but I'm curious to learn more. This shows humility and it shows intellectual humility because of your self-awareness that you might not know everything all the time.
I remember there are chances when either me or Yushun points out something that we thought is mistaken in Steve's speech. And then Steve will freeze for three seconds and then say, you're right. And that was a test for you. Yeah, right. Yeah, having that humility. But also, I wonder...
also coming from a Chinese background, this is nothing new. Ever since grade one, we were taught to be humble. It's considered as a virtue that we should all adhere to. And you should not...
only be humble to your peers, to the superior. I don't know who you should not be humble with. This isn't necessarily humility in that sense of the word, though, because that's like you're a great piano player, but you say, oh, no, I'm not really great. Well, you're being humble, right? But this is intellectual humility. This is you saying, you know what?
I might be wrong about some of the things that I believe strongly. And you know what? Maybe I should rethink some of my beliefs. Maybe I should take advice or maybe I should at least listen to other people's opinions, how they think about the world, how they perceive the world, because they might not perceive it the way I do. And I could learn something from them. That is intellectual humility. And that's a great way to explain it. And I wish the world...
Well, actually online and in real life. Yeah, online. If we can practice, this would be a completely different world. But also you pointed out to something that
I realized just could be the biggest hypocrisy in Chinese culture. I'm Chinese, I guess I can say this. That is, on the one hand, we preach, you got to be humble to practice a good virtue and become a good person. But on the other hand, we're so extremely shameful of saying, oh, I'm wrong.
And saying I'm sorry is like so hard. Because is it related to losing face somehow? I think maybe there's something about that. So you just helped me look at my culture in a different light. And it's really interesting. Do you have something you want to share? Because you look like gobsmacked. It just reminded me of how in an international, say, classroom,
And it's very often discussed that Chinese students, they are not very good at asking questions because they're always listening, always agreeing, always taking in instead of sharing out. Because we're told that you're being humble and then you're respecting other people. Especially the teachers and lecturers. Yeah. And whoever is speaking, you're like, oh, they must have something good to share.
And I don't necessarily do. So I'll just be a listener. I'll hear what everybody else is saying because they must have, I'm learning from them. They must have something good to speak about if they have the courage to speak out. And when you listen to your international peers and you realize they don't have anything always better to share and you're perfectly fine.
well good enough to share your opinion if your English is proficient enough and sometimes asking questions and or even disagreeing with one argument is not necessarily a strong gesture of showing disrespect I think a lot of young people needs to realize that the very fine line of you know just telling the difference of all that yeah well it
Admitting we might be wrong feels simple in theory, but why is it so hard for us to admit when, yeah, we got something wrong? I know it's really hard to do, right? And this kind of transcends culture. I think this is just a human nature thing and it's just your ego talking at
that time no one likes to look silly no one likes to feel like a failure and and admitting that you're wrong can feel like you failed instead of feeling like an opportunity to learn something from your own mistake and that resistance it makes us feel and act in a defensive way it
closes our minds to even to clear evidence, right? Sometimes the evidence is right in front of us that we are wrong, but we will not admit that we are wrong.
One doctor from a university called Curtin University, her name is Catherine Modeki. She said it's about having that little bit of doubt, that willingness to say, I might be wrong about this. And if you're able to, then you are intellectually intelligent with your humility, if I said that okay. It's hard to say no because you're looking at confirmation bias there, right? Confirmation bias makes us challenge ourselves.
Makes us challenging our own beliefs hard to do. It's a habit, by the way, confirmation bias. It's where you look for people with the same information as you or the same opinions as you. You'll search on the Internet for opinions that you already agree with and you're reinforcing those beliefs. And when we see people or see things that don't kind of go along with what we do,
then we tend to avoid those things. And a lot of times it happens in a conversation, right? And I would assume that everybody, including myself, even though I tend to be humble all the time, that everybody would just fear or at least don't want to be looked at as if we're weak
or that we're held back because this seems to be an unspoken rule to have to be confident all the time, especially at work, in school, in public life, among friends or whoever, even if we are unsure of
what we just said or the status that we're in. So the fear of judgment, it makes people hesitant to say that I am not sure or that I've changed my mind and all of that is kind of lowering our credibility somehow and we're just trying to avoid that at all costs. - And also can I circle back to what you just said, Steve, about confirmation bias?
This is hugely relevant here and hugely sort of present in our daily lives in the sense that we all go on social media apps and we know that our feeds are dictated by smart or smarter people.
And the key of the algorithm is to get you hooked and constantly feed you with information or posts or content that it thinks you will enjoy or hate. However, it is the engagement time that these apps are relying on. And therefore, that whole social media system is...
is based on, to a certain extent, confirmation bias. In a sense. And then confirmation bias can lead to something called the false consensus effect. Have you ever heard of this before? That's a cognitive bias where people overestimate how much others believe that they believe. So shared opinions, behaviors, things like that, right? So what that means, simply speaking, is I have my set of beliefs about things and
So other people must also believe that other people must also think that too, right? Because I'm probably right. No, no, not I'm probably right. I'm right about my beliefs. So you must agree with that, right? He must see the world the way I see the world. That's that false consensus effect. You just assume everybody else has the same opinions you do.
And that confirmation bias can lead to this. So yeah, you're right. You go on the internet, you see stories and opinions, you say, yep, see, other people think like that. And it makes me feel better about myself. Yes. But also I think given this day and age, because we've all been marinated in this social media cis pool for long enough,
Maybe, yes, I'd be able to find similar minded people, however biased or not, but just believes in what I believe in. But you must know that there's there must be this invisible army of other people out there who don't believe in what you guys believe in, because otherwise, how do these online sort of like argument war start? But you think you think they're wrong?
Right? You see them as being wrong. We're enemies. If they don't agree with you. And if you think about your friends, right, your group of friends, probably they share similar thoughts and opinions and views of the world, right? Or they'll comply after you said yours. Yeah, echoism, right?
Right. That ties in maybe. We could go down a rabbit hole here. But your friends are often, you know, shared opinion holders. Right. And and that's why they become your friends. Right. You might have one friend out there who you always, you know, if you have a coffee together, you'll debate about this and you never see things the same way. But that's not all your friends, I'm guessing. Right. Usually you have shared opinions about things. Right.
But going back to the point, intellectual humility is saying at least let me hear other people's opinions because they might be right. Maybe my opinions need to be adjusted a little bit. It's one thing to value humility, personality. How does intellectual humility actually help us get along better with people and improve ourselves?
our relationships let's explore how this mindset changes the way we communicate and relate and build bridges instead of walls I think one thing that I feel so deeply encouraged to do right now is to yeah of course practice this
In the meantime, realizing the fact that in the conversation when both parties are willing to do this, whether it's between colleagues, someone who is of a relatively equal status, or between teachers, elders, and younger generations,
Somehow, once you do this, you practice intellectual humility, it brings everybody in the conversation back to an equal status with the same rights to question or be questioned. That's something that I found really charming. You know, it's
kind of like bringing or building a stronger, even a friendship of sort and deeper understanding between the two parties. So that's something to enhance interpersonal relationship than dividing, like you said, He Yang, like how people are doing online these days. Yeah, and I think that applies to friendships and family relationships, but also in the workplace, right? Particularly if you think about two different styles of bosses, yeah? The first boss says...
I'm right, you're wrong, next. The second boss says, okay, I've heard your opinion. Let me think on that a little bit and I'll get back to you. Which person
What characteristic do you enjoy more, just on a human level? The intellectual humility aspect, as opposed to "I'm always right and you're always wrong." I once saw a video about this. It's a video of a teacher giving a lecture. I'm not sure which country she's from. And the student asked something, and she just shrugged for a few moments and said,
as a matter of fact, I do not have the answer at this point, but please allow me to go back and research on it so that next lecture at the same time next week I'm going to be able to provide you with a more thorough answer. And everybody was just commenting so positively underneath that video saying that if all the teachers can be like this, there is no class that students would hate to participate in. Yeah. And just as my final point, you know,
Becoming a good listener, listening to other people share their opinions. It doesn't mean that you have to agree with what they say. That's not intellectual humility. It's the openness to having their opinion heard and thinking to yourself, maybe I can rewire how I think about things a little bit.
bit. It's the openness that's the important part. Yes, it is. And as a radio host, I'm hyper aware that everything we say can be interpreted a million different ways. It's like Hamlet or
Picasso, everyone views it differently, so to speak, in China, where humility is already deeply valued, as we've talked about it from the beginning of this discussion. Is there such a thing as being too humble is what I've been thinking about ever since Steve presented this very interesting topic to us. And I look back.
back to when I was a young woman, just joining the workforce, genuinely asking for feedback and advice, because that's what we've been
taught. But not everyone gives it from a good place. That's what I realized after being in the workforce for more than a decade. Some people just want to tear you down. Unfortunately, some have poor judgment or have no place to give advice. So when you're still establishing yourself, how can we tell the difference between
constructive feedback and unhelpful criticism and when is it wiser just to tune out the noise. Experience would help a lot with that because you have to meet the bad people before you know who the good people are, I think. Wow, that's so deep. Right? And my opinion, there's something to be learned from everyone.
And that includes the bad people. What can you learn from the bad people who give bad advice, who say, I'm right all the time, you're wrong, be quiet, I'm the leader? Well, what can you learn from them? How not to behave. You learn that when someone asks you a question, oh gosh, don't answer like that, because when they answered like that to me, I hated that. I hated how I felt. That's not a good way to be. You can learn a lot from wise, smart people.
intellectually humble people but you can learn a lot from people who might not be serving your best interest too you just have to pay attention for those types of things yes and for a lot of Chinese young people we are always taught to believe that the elder the more experienced are the right like they are
always right. But there's always this fine line between are they just simply tossing their own expectations of themselves onto you or they're really for your own benefit trying to
just say something to encourage you or make you better. There's always such very, very nuanced statements that we need to learn to distinguish as we grow. And yes, I do agree with you, Steve. Experience does help. I'm sure He Yang nowadays will be more critically faced on whatever criticism or say comments you get nowadays than a few years ago. So of course, perhaps
perhaps we just need to experience and then tell the difference and then become better. It's the power in choosing when to listen deeply and when to filter out the noise. Humility doesn't mean accepting every opinion as truth. And I think we just gave you some pretty good tips to differentiate just maybe 30 seconds for each of you. Um,
What do you think is maybe a practical step one to take if one wants to engage in intellectual humility? Improve your listening skills. Yeah, because not everyone is a great listener. And if you're not a great listener, then self-aware. Start there. Okay, I'm not very good at listening. Let me start there and really pay attention when people talk to me and I value their opinion. You start there. If you don't hear other people,
it's hard to kind of have a look at yourself too. Mine will be self-questioning. It's not falling into the swirl of self-doubting. That's way too negative. But rather to just constantly question your longstanding beliefs. The more deeply rooted you are, the better to question just whether you can bring a fresher aspect of it from time to time. So yeah, that's one way of self-growth.
When we embrace intellectual humility, we don't just open up our minds. We open our lives to transformation. This mindset softens the
or blurs the boundaries between us and them, fuels lifelong learning, and builds bridges over the divides of misunderstanding. The humility to say, I might be wrong, isn't a step back. It's a leap forward toward wisdom, empathy, and perhaps a more thoughtful world. Coming up next, Motivational Monday. Motivational Monday. Motivational Monday.
You, Shan, you have something...
awesome for us. Not really awesome, more of a calming kind of practice that I do encourage everybody to try every once in a while. That is on the busiest days, especially work days, try to have this 10 minutes, 15 minutes morning routine that you think is going to be helpful to you. I just follow the course of trying to do meditation every morning during the weekdays and
It lasts for like two weeks or a little bit more than that. And instead of seeing a huge difference, I just realized that my morning time is so much more calmed down in a way that even preparing for a roundtable or going on different tasks,
I can feel more, say, structured instead of arriving here, getting the assignment and yeah, just try to navigate my path out of all the things I need to do. So I think meditation or something even more simple like physical exercise, walking, a short yoga session that you can get a tutorial on your phone, that can all help to boost your mood, your energy levels and
Yeah, you see that kind of advertisement for different types of apps all the time. And sometimes they actually work.
that would be mine uh i would say i've seen this advice so many times from x not your advice from experts saying the first thing a lot of people do in the morning is open their phone right and start you know scrolling and there's so much negativity and the experts say it's a bad way to start your day with negative energy right immediately putting you into that
train of thought so yeah and wake up and and find a routine that makes you feel good about your morning that's great advice yeah especially during the week when from Monday to Friday when we're so busy I think having that routine actually takes some effort and making that effort by what um you
Yushan has shared sounds to be very much worthwhile. And also, I think we can just be so much healthier with our phone use as well. Depends on, you know, everybody's different. Some people are less addictive, I suppose, or less addicted to the apps. And then, you know, or maybe just...
Well, I don't know if this is also just creating my own echo chamber. I sort of block all the people. I don't think I like what they say. But it makes me happy. And I have the energy for the show. And that's it for today's roundtable. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.