How to sound like you know what you’re talking about (even when you don’t)

We can't all be human encyclopedias, and once in a while, you're bound to stumble upon a conversation on a topic you know absolutely nothing about. To avoid being left out or seeming ignorant, here are a few tips for "tricking" people into thinking you're well informed.

These aren't instructions on how to win an argument or how to one up a troll on the internet. It's merely a guide to "getting by" in a conversation where you feel a little lost, or where you aren't as informed as the other participants. When in doubt, you're better off not saying anything rather than running off at the mouth, but these tips should get you through a conversation without looking like you're just zoning out.

Also note that feigning intelligence it isn't always the best course of action. When it's an option, it's okay to just ask questions (in fact, smart people often do). You're not going to learn anything by always pretending you know what you're talking about. But there are scenarios in which putting up a bit of a front can mean the difference between, say, getting that dream job or not, and sometimes your best bet is to "fake it 'til you make it".

Project Confidence

One of the most important things you can do is appear confident. If you act like you know what you're talking about, it's a lot more likely you'll be perceived as knowing what you're talking about. This means avoiding "blank words" such as "like", "um", etc. It's okay to pause and think when you have to, and if you accidentally say one of these blank words, don't freak out, but overall it's a good idea to try to strike them from your vocabulary. Talk slowly, calmly, and think about what you're going to say before you speak, and you'll already have a huge head start.

Know When to Speak

Don't jump at the chance to be the first to speak. Don't try and take over the conversation, either, especially if it's an argument. The last thing you want is to be called out on your knowledge gaps, and the more heated it gets, the more likely the loud people are the ones looking like idiots. Sit back, think about what you do know on the topic, and wait for a chance to jump in with that (don't just yell it out needlessly). Marketing weblog Tribal Seduction makes a good point: true experts don't just blab; they're very careful about what they say:

[Experts] know that people are paying attention to them, and that has two consequences. First of all, they know that their reputation is on the line every time they open their mouth—that everything they say will be subject to scrutiny. Secondly, they also know that people will put a lot of weight into what they say and probably act upon it, so they feel a strong sense of responsibility to provide good information.

Make sure you're not spouting off needless information just to be part of the discussion. Even if you aren't an expert, you'll sound a heck of a lot more like one if you're careful about what comes out of your mouth. If you can't form a coherent thought, then you're better off keeping quiet altogether. Just sit back with a smug grin, like you're silently laughing at the buffoons arguing over such trivialities.

Emphasize What You Know

Over at weblog Nerd Fighters, they recommend you over exaggerate what you do know to make it seem more important, and to learn from the discussion whenever possible:

In certain cases, you can take what you've already said and apply personal opinion to it to add on to your statement. You can also make inferences from what the other(s) have already said. Agree or disagree with the person in cases where you will not need to present a reason why. Certain things that others say will sometimes fill in pieces of what you know, and that's probably your best chance at gaining knowledge to present.

If you can learn and synthesize information as the discussion is going on, you can jump in with points and act like you've had them forever, even though you formulated them mere seconds ago.

Don't Worry About Proving Others Wrong

You're a lot less likely to come off as intelligent when you get in an argument and someone's poking holes in everything you say. If the group is arguing, you can take a side, but try to stress agreement with one side rather than disagreement with the other, if that makes sense. That way, you don't get stuck having to present evidence you don't have, but you're still taking part in the discussion and sharing your opinion (which, hopefully, you can present in an intelligent way using the other tips here).

This tip really comes into play when you can make a point that people may not agree with, or may not have thought about, but can easily understand. Weblog Less Wrong explains this idea best:

At another point in the discussion, a man spoke of some benefit X of death, I don't recall exactly what. And I said: "You know, given human nature, if people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing. But if you took someone who wasn't being hit on the head with a baseball bat, and you asked them if they wanted it, they would say no. I think that if you took someone who was immortal, and asked them if they wanted to die for benefit X, they would say no."

. . . [It was crucial] that my listeners could see immediately that my reply made sense. They might or might not have agreed with the thought, but it was not a complete non-sequitur unto them. . . If you want to sound deep, you can never say anything that is more than a single step of inferential distance away from your listener's current mental state. That's just the way it is.

The thinking applies to "appearing deep", but you can use it in a number of different types of conversations. The more common ground you can find—even in a heated argument—the more the other person is inclined to find you wise, intelligent, and respect you—and, often, stop the argument right there. And if you don't know what you're talking about, you probably don't have a strong opinion on the subject, so finding common ground with everyone should be pretty easy.

Steer the Discussion to Related Topics

In the end, you'll probably exhaust your cache of knowledge pretty quickly, and won't have much else to say in the discussion. Unless it's a very heated argument, it's likely the topic itself isn't that important to those involved, so you can get out of it pretty quickly. Take part in what you can, then try to steer the discussion toward something related. If your friends are talking about a sport you don't know, move away to a sport you do know. If they're talking about politics of which you have no knowledge, try to find a jumping off point into something you do know. It isn't always the most effective, but if the discussion isn't too heated, it can get you out of a jam nicely.

Get In a Good Last Word

As things start to dial down in a given discussion, you have a good opportunity to be remembered and sound like you know what you're talking about. Weblog Productivity 501 explains the value of getting the last word:

If you have the final word and simply summarize the good points made by everyone else, people will remember your contribution more than the people who really came up with the idea. I'm not suggesting that you steal others ideas, but restating the best ideas (even when giving others credit) will make you look smarter.

Of course, if you've been silent for the rest of the conversation, this will look out of place and it'll probably be pretty obvious what you're trying to do. But if you've followed the above tips—sharing what you do know, learning and responding throughout the conversation, and finding that common ground, this can be a nice finishing move.

Final Thoughts: When Possible, Learn the Material

Of course, all this is great in the heat of the moment, but it wouldn't kill you to actually learn some things beforehand. If you find yourself in this situation a lot, it's likely you get stuck in a discussion about the same topics—perhaps a talked-about political issue, or a a particular interest many of your friends share. If that's true, do some research on those subjects—even a bit of casual Wikipedia browsing—to boost your knowledge. This also allows you to do a lot of your thinking ahead of time, so you have well-formed opinions and know exactly how to present them.

Lots of people recommend accumulating random knowledge, and that can get you somewhere too, though only if done right. Memorizing the questions and answers in Trivial Pursuit is just going to make you seem like a weird cache of knowledge, which, while that can be humorous, can also just make you sound like you're trying to appear smart, which is not what you want. Instead, get out of your comfort zone and read things you wouldn't otherwise read. I personally love the previously mentioned web service Send Me a Story—it'll automatically send random long-form nonfiction articles from magazines like the New Yorker, The Atlantic, and other outlets that you otherwise wouldn't have found for yourself.

Remember: in the end, it isn't about sounding like the smartest person in the room. You don't want to come off as arrogant; the goal is just to make it look like you're not the least informed person in the room. With a bit of practice, you should be able to handle most conversations with little difficulty. Got any of your own tips for sounding smarter than you are? Share them with us in the comments.

Source: lifehacker.com

Are you reading too much?

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

~ Albert Einstein

Father of C and UNIX, Dennis Ritchie, passes away at age 70

After a long illness, Dennis Ritchie, father of Unix and an esteemed computer scientist, died last weekend at the age of 70.

Ritchie, also known as “dmr”, is best know for creating the C programming language as well as being instrumental in the development of UNIX along with Ken Thompson. Ritchie spent most of his career at Bell Labs, which at the time of his joining in 1967, was one of the largest phone providers in the U.S. and had one of the most well-known research labs in operation.

Working alongside Thompson (who had written B) at Bell in the late sixties, the two men set out to develop a more efficient operating system for the up-and-coming minicomputer, resulting in the release of Unix (running on a DEC PDP-7) in 1971.

Though Unix was cheap and compatible with just about any machine, allowing users to install a variety of software systems, the OS was written in machine (or assembly) language, meaning that it had a small vocabulary and suffered in relation to memory.

By 1973, Ritchie and Thompson had rewritten Unix in C, developing its syntax, functionality, and beyond to give the language the ability to program an operating system. The kernel was published in the same year.

Today, C remains the second most popular programming language in the world (or at least the language in which the second most lines of code have been written), and ushered in C++ and Java; while the pair’s work on Unix led to, among other things, Linus Torvalds’ Linux. The work has without a doubt made Ritchie one of the most important, if not under-recognized, engineers of the modern era.

His work, specifically in relation to UNIX, led to him becoming a joint recipient of the Turing Award with Ken Thompson in 1983, as well as a recipient of the National Medal of Technology in 1998 from then-president Bill Clinton.

Source: techcrunch.com

Pioneering computer scientist Dennis Ritchie passed away yesterday at age 70 after battling a long running illness. Ritchie was better known as a co-creator of Unix, but he also invented the C programming language back in 1971.

Jeong Kim, President of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs confirmed his passing earlier today. "Dennis was well loved by his colleagues at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, and will be greatly missed. He was truly an inspiration to all of us, not just for his many accomplishments, but because of who he was as a friend, an inventor, and a humble and gracious man. We would like to express our deepest sympathies to the Ritchie family, and to all who have been touched in some way by Dennis."

Ritchie grew up in New Jersey where his father worked as a switching systems engineer for Bell Labs. He went to Harvard University and graduated with a degree in Physics in 1963. It was during this time that Ritchie saw his first computer, which captured his imagination and sparked what became a lifelong passion. He then moved to MIT, before taking up employment with Bell Labs in 1967, where he remained until his retirement in 2007.

At Bell Labs, Ritchie got involved in the Multics project before moving onto design the first versions of Unix with co-inventors. By the early seventies, Unix had spread across Bell Labs and was announced to the entire world.

The mid-seventies was a period of great experimentation in computer hardware design, making life for software programmers very hard with the cumbersome languages of the day. Ritchie responded by creating a new language named C -- the idea being that if the language followed set rules, and the computer could run C, than it could be moved between different hardware with little or no modification.

Along with co-inventors, he also re-wrote Unix from the ground up in his new programming language so it could benefit from the easier to use programming code. To this day, a vast amount of Unix software and programming languages depend on the foundations he and other programmers built with Unix and C in the earlier days of computing.

Tim Bray, a Google programmer said in a blog post that it was "impossible to overstate the debt his profession owes Dennis Ritchie." He further commented, "I've been living in a world he helped invent for over thirty years."

His accomplishments and influence to computing as a whole were officially noticed in 1999 when he was awarded the US Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor for technologists.

Source: techspot.com

Làm người thứ ba

Em bảo em có người yêu rồi, người yêu em ở xa, anh bảo, anh biết.

Anh biết, vậy tại sao anh vẫn đến đưa đón em đi học, đi dạy... đều hơn cả người yêu em. Anh biết, vậy tại sao anh vẫn lo cho em từ cái áo đi mưa, từ viên thuốc uống, từ cái bánh mì...

Em độc ác với anh: Anh đừng làm người thứ ba, chỉ nhận được cái thừa của thiên hạ. Độc ác là vậy nhưng em vẫn đồng ý đi chơi với anh, vẫn nhắm mắt để anh hôn. Anh hỏi: Em có người yêu rồi sao lại còn để anh hôn? Em không cảm thấy tự ái chút nào bởi cả anh và em đều biết rằng nụ hôn ấy giá trị biết nhường nào giữa cuộc sống đầy bụi đường này.

Anh chở em đi dọc con đường làng hai bên là một loài hoa tím biếc, em đố anh đấy là hoa gì, anh trả lời: hoa bèo. Em bảo gọi là hoa lục bình, nghe lãng mạn hơn nhiều. Lời anh nhẹ quá nên em chỉ nghe loáng thoáng: Ừ, lãng mạn lắm, nhưng để làm gì? Anh nói với anh hay nói với em, em không nghe rõ hay em cố tình vô tâm để nó trôi tuột đi. Em tự hỏi nếu là người yêu em, anh ấy sẽ nói gì nhỉ?

Em gọi cho anh bảo đến đón em nhé, anh cuống cuồng xếp công việc để lao đến với em bởi đã bao giờ anh có được cái ân huệ này đâu. Em hiện ra trước mắt anh như một con ngan tội nghiệp lướt thướt trong nước mưa, anh chùm cái áo mưa lên trên người em: Mình về đi, không em ốm mất. Em nhìn anh, kính anh mờ quá tại nước mưa, chắc anh chẳng thấy em khóc nên em yên tâm lắm. Em bảo anh: Chúng em chia tay rồi. Cái áo mưa rơi xuống đất, chẳng đứa nào cúi xuống nhặt. Anh tần ngần một lúc rồi nhắc lại: Mình về đi, không em ốm mất.

Bốn tuần sau, anh đến nhà thấy người yêu em ở đấy. Em nhẹ nhàng: em xin lỗi. Em cá rằng chắc anh cũng chỉ nghe loáng thoáng bởi thật khó mở miệng nói ra những gì mà người ta không muốn. Em đi chơi với người yêu để anh lại một mình, chỉ mang theo ánh mắt của anh.

Lúc em muốn về, người yêu dày vò: Hay em nhớ thằng buôn gỗ (chỉ anh)?
Em im lặng, im lặng có nghĩa là đồng ý. Em đọc ở đâu đó câu: Ở bên một người mà nghĩ về người khác thì thật khốn nạn.

Sau buổi tối hôm đó em không gặp anh nữa, lần cuối cùng em gặp anh ở phòng vé máy bay, mình đã hẹn nhau nói chuyện.
Em hỏi:

- Anh yêu em nhiều lắm hả?
- Ừ, nhiều lắm.
- Nhiều là bao nhiêu?
- Anh không biết nữa.

Em thấy mấy câu hỏi này quen quen, hình như hôm qua em cũng hỏi người yêu em như vậy. Và em ra đi để lại hai người đàn ông yêu em nhiều lắm, nhiều bao nhiêu em cũng không biết, hai người ấy cũng không biết.

Bây giờ anh đã có vợ, em đã có chồng. Chồng em không phải là anh cũng không phải là người yêu em. Chồng em là người mà khi ở bên người ấy em không thấy mình là kẻ khốn nạn.

Source: vietdongtam

Learning languages makes you smarter

New research has shown that learning a language may subtly change, and possibly improve, the way we think.

Academics from Newcastle and York universities say that Education Secretary Michael Gove’s statement that learning languages makes people smarter has a sound scientific basis.

The language we speak represents the world in a certain way. For instance, the English language teaches us that pink is not the same colour as red, and grey is not the same as black, whereas blue is just one colour, regardless of its lightness.

But different languages represent the world differently. For instance, in Italian there are two colours corresponding to the English blue: celeste is light (literally: sky-coloured) blue, and blu is dark blue, similar to the distinction between pink and red. So when an English speaker learns Italian he must learn to think about colours differently in order to use the correct word.

Professor Vivian Cook, Newcastle University (pictured), and Dr Benedetta Bassetti, University of York, are editors of Language and Bilingual Cognition (Psychology Press, 2011) and have spent several years investigating the benefits of knowing two languages.

“We already knew that learning another language improves our knowledge of our mother tongue, and thanks to the work of Professor Ellen Bialystok and others, we also knew that bilingualism has positive effects on the brain at both ends of life,” said Professor Cook.

“Young children develop theory of mind earlier if they know two languages, and in older people, bilingualism can postpone the onset of dementia.”

However, the researchers wanted to take this a step further to see if knowing two specific languages could actually be a form of ‘mind-training’, and discovered that much research shows that being bilingual did literally change the way people see the world.

Early last century linguist Benjamin Whorf was the first to say that western languages make us see reality in a set way, and therefore learning other languages could be beneficial because it would free our minds from such linguistic constraints.

The positive effects of bilingualism are largely due to the fact that learning a new language involves embracing new concepts that are not represented in our own mother tongue, or are different in the two languages. “If I ask you to think of ‘lunch’, you’ll probably think about a sandwich with crisps,” explained Dr Bassetti. “If I ask an Italian to think of pranzo - Italian for ‘lunch’ - he’ll think of a dish of pasta followed by meat and vegetables.”

So what would you think if you were an English speaker and you learnt Italian? Probably something in-between, such as a dish of pasta with some crisps.

“There is a lot of evidence that bilinguals think ‘in-between’ monolingual speakers of their two languages, somehow merging the two views of the world represented in their two languages,” added Professor Cook. “But sometimes they also create new concepts that do not come from either of their languages such as pasta with a cup of tea, which neither an English nor an Italian speaker would think of.”

Just minimal exposure to another language can change the way people think, even about time. In the 1970s, researchers discovered that for English-speaking children, time goes from left to right. By contrast, Arab children think in the opposite way, and those just learning English represented time in both directions.

And the positive effects are not limited to children. “It is a common preconception that languages should be learnt early in life, as early as possible,” said Dr Bassetti. “But research shows that learning a language can change the way people think at any age.”

She found that Italian speakers consider foxes prettier and softer than German speakers, whereas Germans consider mice prettier and softer than Italian speakers. This happens because the fox is grammatically feminine in Italian and masculine in German, and the mouse is masculine in Italian and feminine in German. Those who knew both languages had no bias, as their perception was not based on grammar.

Published on: 5th October 2011

Source: ncl.ac.uk

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