Sometimes, when you want to do something, someone always questions your background, experience, and ability. It’s fine. ‘I don’t know how to solve this problem yet, but I’ll figure it out.’
The following content is generated by LLMs and may contain inaccuracies.
Context
This note addresses a very common situation: you want to do something, and others question your background, experience, and ability. The response the note offers is just one sentence:
“I don’t know how to solve this problem yet, but I’ll figure it out.”
This sentence has two layers. The first half honestly admits that you can’t do it yet. The second half commits you to working it out. It separates two questions: “Can this problem be solved?” and “Do I currently know how to solve it?” Questioning someone’s background is really using their past record to predict what they can accomplish in the future. This sentence doesn’t argue about the record. It redirects attention to what to do next.
This is worth thinking about more today. Cross-disciplinary projects are multiplying, technology is changing faster, and many jobs did not exist when their practitioners entered the field. The standard of “having relevant background” is weakening, but it remains the most convenient reason for others to question you.
Key Insights
1. “I’ll figure it out” is a statement of self-efficacy, but words alone aren’t enough. It has to be backed by accomplishment.
Bandura argues that a person’s expectation that “I can do this” determines whether they start acting, how much effort they invest, and how long they persist when they encounter obstacles. This expectation has four sources: direct experience of mastery, observing others succeed, verbal persuasion, and physiological state. The more reliable the source, the greater the change in self-efficacy. There is also a further point: persisting in activities that feel threatening subjectively but are relatively safe in reality can, through the experience of mastering skills, strengthen self-efficacy in return (Bandura, Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change, 1977).
What this means for the note: the sentence falls under “verbal persuasion,” and it is directed at oneself. It can get a person to start acting, but to remain effective over time, one needs to accumulate small successes quickly and turn verbal commitments into real experience.
2. Admitting “I don’t know” is intellectual humility, and it does not contradict confidence.
Leary et al. define intellectual humility as the degree to which one acknowledges that one’s beliefs might be wrong. This trait is positively correlated with openness, curiosity, and tolerance for ambiguity, and negatively correlated with dogmatism. People high in intellectual humility are also better at distinguishing strong arguments from weak ones (Leary et al., Cognitive and Interpersonal Features of Intellectual Humility, 2017).
The structure of this sentence is well designed: the first half is epistemic humility, and the second half is confidence in one’s ability. Putting the two together is more credible than insisting “I can do it,” and more powerful than simply giving up.
3. Not knowing how to do something can sometimes be a good thing.
Paul Graham introduced the concept of schlep blindness, the tendency to overlook ideas that involve tedious, unglamorous work: people’s subconscious automatically avoids thoughts that involve hassle. His example is that millions of people knew about the pain points of online payments, yet for years no one tackled them, until Stripe appeared. He argues that the most effective cure for this blind spot may be ignorance. Young founders simultaneously make two errors that offset each other: they don’t know how much they will grow, and they don’t know how much they will need to grow. Older founders only make the first error. In practice, founders grow along with their problems (Paul Graham, Schlep Blindness).
Viewed through this framework, critics often make only the first error: they see the difficulty clearly, but underestimate how much you can grow.
4. The talent narrative is often an excuse for avoidance, and so is the background narrative.
Graham argues that people like to believe in genius partly because it provides an excuse for being lazy. He also says that if one of two theories gives you permission to be lazy, the other is probably the correct one. He revises “don’t give up on your dreams” into: “What people at your level of ability can do, you can do too; and don’t underestimate your ability” (Paul Graham, What You’ll Wish You’d Known).
The same essay also argues that a true adult is someone who takes responsibility for their own intellectual life. Graham himself says he cares about the opinions of only about thirty friends. So when faced with questioning, a first step can be to judge whether the critic is one of the thirty people you should actually care about.
5. The counterargument: some questions are genuinely valid.
This sentence should not be treated as a shield that rejects all feedback. Questions roughly fall into two categories:
- Threshold questions: for example, “You don’t have a degree or credentials.” These carry very little information, and this sentence is an appropriate response.
- Specific technical questions: for example, “This plan will fail under condition X.” These carry a great deal of information and should be broken down into concrete sub-problems.
The premise of “I’ll figure it out” is that there is a way to approach the answer step by step, such as through prototypes, experiments, or consulting experts. Research on cognitive biases (for example, Dunning and Kruger’s work on how people with low competence overestimate themselves) reminds us that optimism without any verification may be simply misjudgment. Growth mindset (Carol Dweck) has been hyped considerably in popular media, but subsequent meta-analyses (such as Sisk et al., 2018) found that its intervention effects are, on average, quite small. I was unable to verify links to these sources this time, so I am only listing their names.
6. This sentence is also a communication strategy.
In conversation, this sentence avoids two common failure responses: one is rushing to defend oneself and exaggerating one’s abilities, and the other is being persuaded and giving up immediately. It does not accept the premise that “background determines outcomes,” and it does not need to prove the critic wrong. Whether to continue is left to be answered by facts in the end.
Open Questions
- Under what circumstances does “I’ll figure it out” turn into self-deception? Can we find an actionable criterion for judging this? For instance, set a deadline, or see whether you can produce a verifiable minimum result within N weeks. If you fail to deliver by then, admit that the judgment was wrong.
- Can criticism itself be treated as a resource? Critics usually see the difficulties but not your room for growth. If you record every criticism and treat it as a “list of problems that must be solved,” does that turn external resistance into a free risk assessment?
有时候，当你想做某件事情的时候，总是会有人质疑你的背景、经验和能力。没事儿，“我不知道这个问题怎么解决，不过会想明白的。”
以下内容由 LLM 生成，可能包含不准确之处。
Context
这条笔记讲的是一个很常见的处境：你想做一件事，别人质疑你的背景、经验和能力。笔记给出的回应只有一句：
“我不知道这个问题怎么解决，不过会想明白的。”
这句话有两层意思。前半句坦白自己目前还不会，后半句承诺自己会去弄明白。它把两个问题分开了：“这个问题能不能解决”和“我现在知不知道怎么解决”。质疑背景，其实是在用过去的履历推断未来能做成什么。这句话不去争论履历，而是把注意力引到接下来怎么做上。
这件事放在今天更值得想。跨领域的项目越来越多，技术变化也越来越快，很多工作在当事人入行时根本还不存在。“有没有相关背景”这个标准在变弱，但它仍然是别人质疑你时最顺手的理由。
Key Insights
1. “会想明白的”是一种自我效能的说法，但光说不够，得靠做成事来撑住
Bandura 认为，人对“我能做到”的预期，决定了他会不会开始行动、肯花多少力气、遇到阻碍能坚持多久。这种预期有四个来源：亲身做成过的经历、看到别人做成、言语上的说服、身体状态。来源越可靠，自我效能的变化越大。还有一点：在主观上觉得有威胁、实际上相对安全的活动里坚持下去，掌握技能的经历会反过来增强自我效能（Bandura, Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change, 1977）。
对这条笔记的意思是：这句话属于“言语说服”，而且是自己说给自己听。它能让人先开始行动，但要长期有效，就需要尽快积累小的成功，把口头承诺变成真实经历。
2. 承认“不知道”是一种智识谦逊，它和自信并不矛盾
Leary 等人把智识谦逊（intellectual humility）定义为“承认自己的信念可能是错的”的程度。这种特质与开放性、好奇心、对模糊的容忍度正相关，与教条程度负相关。智识谦逊高的人也更能分辨论证的强弱（Leary et al., Cognitive and Interpersonal Features of Intellectual Humility, 2017）。
笔记里这句话的结构很好：前半句是认知上的谦逊，后半句是对能力的信心。把两者放在一起，比硬说“我会”更可信，也比直接认输更有力量。
3. 不知道难度，有时候反而是好事
Paul Graham 提出过 schlep blindness（对繁琐苦差事的视而不见）：人的潜意识会自动回避那些涉及麻烦苦差事的想法。他举的例子是：在线支付的痛点成千上万的人都知道，却多年没人去做，直到 Stripe 出现。他认为，治这种盲区最有效的办法可能就是“无知”。年轻创始人同时犯了两个能互相抵消的错误：他们不知道自己能成长多少，也不知道自己需要成长多少。年长的创始人只犯了前一个错误。实际情况是，创始人会随着问题一起成长（Paul Graham, Schlep Blindness）。
用这个框架看，质疑者往往只犯了前一个错误：他们看清了困难，却低估了你能长多少。
4. 天才论常常是逃避的借口，背景论也一样
Graham 认为，人们喜欢相信天才，部分原因是这给偷懒提供了借口。他还说，如果两种理论里有一种让你可以偷懒，那另一种多半是对的。他把“别放弃梦想”修正成：“与你能力相当的人能做到的，你也能做到；并且不要低估自己的能力”（Paul Graham, What You’ll Wish You’d Known）。
同一篇文章还提出：真正的成人，是开始为自己的智识负责的人。他自己只在意大约三十个朋友的看法。所以面对质疑，第一步可以先判断质疑者是不是你应该在意的那三十个人之一。
5. 反方观点：有些质疑确实有道理
这句话不能当成拒绝一切反馈的挡箭牌。质疑大致分两类：
- 门槛型质疑：比如“你没有学位或资历”。这类质疑的信息量很低，可以用这句话回应。
- 具体技术质疑：比如“这个方案在 X 条件下会失败”。这类质疑信息量很高，应该把它拆成具体的子问题。
“会想明白”的前提是有办法逐步逼近答案，比如原型、实验、找专家请教。认知偏差研究（例如 Dunning 与 Kruger 关于能力不足者高估自己的研究）提醒我们，完全没有验证的乐观可能就是误判。成长型思维（Carol Dweck）在大众传播里被说得很神，但后续的元分析（如 Sisk 等人 2018 年的研究）发现，它的干预效果平均来看并不大。我这次没能核实这些文献的链接，所以只列出名称。
6. 这句话也是一种沟通策略
在对话里，这句话避开了两个常见的失败反应：一是急着辩护、夸大自己的能力，二是被说服后直接放弃。它不接受“背景决定结果”这个前提，也不需要证明质疑者错了。要不要继续，最后交给事实来回答。
Open Questions
- “会想明白的”在什么情况下会变成自我欺骗？ 能不能找到一个可操作的判断标准？比如设定一个时间期限，或者看能不能在 N 周内拿出一个可验证的最小成果。到点做不到，就承认这次判断错了。
- 质疑本身能不能被当成资源？ 质疑者通常看得到困难，看不到你的成长空间。如果把每一条质疑都记下来，当作“必须解决的问题清单”，是不是就把外界的阻力变成了一份免费的风险评估？