The Wise Man Knows He Knows Nothing
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Eleven years after declaring independence from Britain the United States government was a mess.
An impotent and poorly funded central administration was failing to manage the squabble of independent states.
Everyone was desperate to find a better way.
But the solution was not clear.
How should the public be represented?
Should the representation be based on the distribution of voters?
The small states feared that they would be dominated by the bigger states.
Should each state get equal representation?
The large states feared they would have little say over the taxes and budgets that they would be disproportionally funding.
So 55 delegates were locked in a stuffy and sweltering room, where they spent the next four months arguing.
Eventually two delegates proposed a compromise.
It was a system of two houses; a Lower House determined by population size, and a Senate with equal representation for each state.
It was rejected by everyone.
But one of the men in that room was Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin was one man that everyone respected.
He was a polymath; a highly successful businessman, a leading scientist, and an accomplished diplomat.
At 81 he was the oldest man in the room.
He saw the value of the compromise and became its champion, helping to refine the initial idea saying, “When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint.”
The resulting idea was that the two houses would use two systems - the Lower House (population size) would manage taxes and budgets, and the Senate (equal by state) would determine the rights of the states.
But there were still a lot of people in the room who were committed to arguing for an outcome that would perfectly suit their individual desires.
Could they be convinced to support the idea?
Franklin made his final diplomatic plea on the day the decision had to be made.
“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.”
“I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”
That day the US Constitution was signed.
“Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” - George Bernard Shaw
Knowing Nothing
Benjamin Franklin was describing what psychologists now call intellectual humility.
It’s the willingness to revise your own viewpoint when better evidence is revealed and prioritising discovering the truth over being right.
Which is actually very hard, because we have a natural tendency to overestimate how much we know, so we think we are better or more correct than most other people.
And Franklin was a bit better and more correct than most people, yet he was able to challenge himself to be intellectually humble.
In his autobiography (which was one of the first popular business/leadership books) he says that he learned intellectual humility after reading about Socrates' trial.
He was drawn to Socrates’ ‘I know that I know nothing’ paradox: “although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him.”
Socrates saw true wisdom as the ability to recognise your limitations, and not claim absolute knowledge, so you can improve through continuous learning.
Intellectual humility is something you have to constantly challenge yourself with, which Franklin embraced.
“I find a frank acknowledgement of one’s ignorance is not only the easiest way to get rid of a difficulty, but the likeliest way to obtain information, and therefore I practice it,” he wrote in 1755, while discussing his confusion over a recent scientific result. “Those who affect to be thought to know everything, and so undertake to explain everything, often remain long ignorant of many things that others could and would instruct them in, if they appeared less conceited.”
He pursued this mindset for the rest of his life, “For these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me.”
And it was this ability that enabled him to grow into the man often called "The First American."
He was a highly successful businessman as a printer, author and publisher.
At the age of 42 he was in a position to retire to focus on study and growth.
He invented the lightning rod and bifocals.
He proved lightning is electricity and he both charted and named the Gulf Stream current.
He founded the first public library and volunteer fire department in America.
He had owned slaves, but he ultimately became the president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
He was the diplomat who secured the alliance with France during the revolutionary war, and negotiated the Treaty of Paris where U.S independence was agreed.
And he is the only person to sign all three foundational documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and finally the Constitution.
"The measure of intelligence is the ability to change." - Albert Einstein
Confident Humility
Intellectual humility is recognising that your beliefs or knowledge might be wrong.
Confident humility is believing in your capacity to succeed while remaining aware that you don't have all the answers.
It’s a term coined by the organisational psychologist Adam Grant.
Intellectual humility without confidence can paralyse people with doubt, leaving them unable to make decisions.
Confidence without intellectual humility produces charismatic people who can drive organisations off a cliff by refusing to listen to advice.
You can have one without the other, but having both is the aim, and Ben Franklin had both.
He had the confidence needed to advance new insights, while also being vigilant about his ignorance.
In his book Think Again, Adam Grant wrote, “Confident humility doesn’t just open our minds to rethinking - it improves the quality of our rethinking. In college and graduate school, students who are willing to revise their beliefs get higher grades than their peers. In high school, students who admit when they don’t know something are rated by teachers as learning more effectively and by peers as contributing more to their teams. At the end of the academic year, they have significantly higher math grades than their more self-assured peers.”
“You should be what I call open-minded and assertive at the same time - you should hold and explore conflicting possibilities in your mind while moving fluidly toward whatever is likely to be true based on what you learn.” - Ray Dalio
Over-Confident Humility
In some circumstances you can’t take the confidence far enough.
Studies of 206 CEOs and 1,163 managers have shown that the most innovative teams were run by leaders who were both narcissistic and humble.
These are people with a heightened sense of self-importance and a craving for affirming recognition, who were also paradoxically humble enough to listen and learn.
CEOs who were both narcissistic and humble performed best.
Then it was people who were low in narcissism and low in humility.
Then those with low narcissism and high humility - a lack of confidence does not inspire others.
And last came the CEOs who were narcissistic and had low humility.
And similar studies have shown that humble narcissists are also seen as the most effective leaders by their team and drive the best performance.
Which all goes some way to explain the success of leaders like Steve Jobs.
The Movers
It doesn't have to be this extreme.
The key thing is that the best performers need that mix of confidence and humility.
It is crucial for critical thinking, productive debate and continuous learning.
“The best people I know act like they're still catching up.” - Shane Parish
It’s also interesting to note that psychologists have found that people with higher scores for wise reasoning (intellectual humility) were more content, less likely to suffer from depression, happier with their close relationships and less likely to die in the five-year follow-up period.
I’ll leave the final thought to the brilliant educationalist Sir Ken Robinson:
“There’s a wonderful quote by Benjamin Franklin. ‘There are three kinds of people: those that are immovable (people who don’t get it and they don’t want to get it), those that are movable (people who see the need for change and are prepared to listen to it) and those who move (people who make things happen).’ And if we can encourage more people that will be a movement, and if the movement is strong enough that’s, in the best sense of a word, a revolution. And that’s what we need.”
Ben Franklin was a mover.
We should all be more Ben Franklin.
Letter from Benjamin Franklin to John Lining, 18 March 1775, US National Archives
Farrand, M., “The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787”, Yale University Press (1937)
Franklin, B., “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”, Collier & Son (1909)
Robson, D., “The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions”, Hodder & Stoughton (2019)
Jowett, B., “Plato’s The Apology of Socrates” (1891)
Grant, A., “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know”, WH Allen (2023)
Zhang, H., Ou, A. Y., Tsui, A. S., & Wang, H., “CEO humility, narcissism and firm innovation: A paradox perspective on CEO traits”, The Leadership Quarterly (2017)
Owens, B. P., Johnson, M. D., Mitchell, T. R., “Leader Narcissism and Follower Outcomes: The Counterbalancing Effect of Leader Humility”, Journal of Applied Psychology (2015)
Grossmann, I., Na, J., Varnum, M.E.W., Kitayama, S. and Nisbett, R.E., “A Route to Well-Being: Intelligence vs. Wise Reasoning”, Journal of Experimental Psychology (2013)
Robinson, K., “How to escape education's death valley”, TED (2013)
Dalio, R., "Principles: Life and Work", Simon & Schuster (2017)
