Confidence is not competence.

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This blog is not related to romance but gives a good example on how competence is far more important than confidence.

https://pedley-smith.uk/2017/11/29/comp ... ice-versa/

Confidence is often a cliché (very stupid) dating advice thrown often at men (in heterosexual context at least) ie. “Just be confident and go talk to her!”. Entire medias praise confidence too much and often associate it with “masculine traits”; to the point that it sounds as if Confidence solves all dating struggles that a man may be having.

But that’s not f*** true at all. Confidence must be the result of Competence and NEVER vice versa. I emphasize on the word never because I often heard things like “fake it till you make it”. Which is also a false premise.

Countless of singing contestants with terrible voice appeared on public auditions like the Voice program.
They showed up ok stage with full confidence and ended up making a total embrassement of themselves, some of the jury would butcher them even in public.
No amount of Confidence can fix terrible singing.

A professional swimmer would be confident in their swimming skills because they earned medals; but shouldn’t be confident in solving a quantum physics exam if they’ve never learned it.

This should be common sense, yet for some reason it is not when it comes to “bro dating advice”; back to the cliché advice “go talk to her” - if the man applying this advise lacks conversational skills or have a lack in understanding some social rules or body language, (ie. such as knowing how to approach, when to approach, and when NOT to approach) will just make an entire fool of himself, if not worse.
Like for example, if the man totally knows how to assess that the woman he is trying to approach had never showed zero sign of interest; then the right move would be NOT to go talk to her.


This confidence BS has to stop, really. Confidence in something is earned by proving of being good at it.

I agree, but... there are areas in which confidence, even without competence, is completely the required skill. Salesmen and salseswomen for instance. Their whole strategy in getting people to buy what they're selling is to act as if the customer clearly needs it and would be a fool not to have it, and to look like they totally believe it. This is sleazy, in my view, and I'm not recommending this in life. But there's a kernel of that that applies to friendships and romantic encounters: to act as if the person you are approaching should be and is happy to meet you and would be foolish to discount you and your interest in them. This is obnoxious if it's applied heavy-handedly, but a little sprinkle of it is like magic dust.

I don't think so, if you perceive them as confident in their product that means they're competent salepersons.

Sales is a skill; it has nothing to do with their confidence. Acting confident in the product is part of their sales strategy; and the more competent the saleperson is there more they would sound confident in whatever they're selling.

Many people misunderstand what confidence is.

Confidence is not the total absence of anxiety.

Confidence is when you have some anxiety, but you persist anyway.

Confidence isn't the belief that won't get rejected. It's the belief that even if you get a rejection, you'll still be okay and there's still lots of hope.

Confidence alone isn't enough. There needs to be attraction, shared interests/values, etc. But confidence is great when paired through those other things.

To use your social skills, be humorous, witty and present yourself in a postive way, and read the situation right - is the person you want to interact with interested in you or not? what is the right move at this point? etc - you have to be relaxed and confident. For most people with average social skills I think confidence and some practice makes you competent enough for normal dating situations. Unless you want to be some manipulative pick-up artist.

You are saying completely the opposite of the OP's purpose.

You are saying like that in order to be a good Mathemetician, you need to be confident and relaxed, but we all know that you need to study Math hard in order to become a Mathemetician; getting confident in Math skills comes in as a result afterward.

For most NTs, the "average social skills" you are talking about is innate in their brains, which is something that many autistics lack (a f*****g mutation); so the average autistics need to practice to acquire them in a way that most NTs don't need to.

Autism = Significant lack of innate social skills + other symptoms.

Note: Please let's not get into PUA, this has nothing to do with the above. Social skills =/= manipulative skills.

Friendly reminder that there's no such thing as "innate social skills" - not even for NTs

If one lacks even the confidence to believe they can improve, without having improved yet, they won't even bother to get off their lazy arse and try to begin with. Your mathematician needs some degree of confidence in their ability to learn the math in the first place, or they'll just sit on their arse and whine about what they wish they could have, but "can't" - so they claim. Success can add to confidence - but some level of confidence is necessary for the individual to even bother to try in the first place.

If your mathematician just threw up their hands and claimed to have a mUtAnT bRaIn! that biologically prohibited them from learning math, they're not even gonna try to learn - they'll just keep blaming stuff, instead of actually trying. Same goes for rubbish about magical NTs and their "innate social skills" that don't actually exist.

Solving mathematical problems is much closer to rocket science than dating is. That makes it a lot easier for a stupid or socially incompetent person to be succesful with the opposite sex than being a good mathematician. As an autistic person with less than great social skills I know this from experience.

I think there’s also a different type of confidence which is to say “I know I’m not very good at this, but I accept this and I am ok with who I am anyway”

I know a few people who have fairly limited social skills, but are very comfortable with who they are and are aware of their limitations. This kind of inner security gives them a certain level of attractiveness I find.

I do agree that faking confidence and skills is not the way to go, because people can generally see straight through that.

Then Autism doesn’t even exist if what you are saying is true.

Regarding the mathematician, it is strongly evident that some people have genetic predisposition in being good at math (like any talent actually).
It’s not enough to just be confident or to study hard; otherwise everyone would take A+ at it in school. Gifted people in certain areas do exist.

Good mathematicians are often good at Math since they were in elementary school; hence why they would be confident at it (but not necessarily confident in everything; the same student who feels confident at math may not feel confident at playing basketball for instance).

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 18 Jun 2024, 5:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I think everyone has to learn social skills, but it comes much easier to some than to others.

“Confidence” is a tricky word because it means different things to different people.

A reminder how Confidence without competence sounds/looks like:




Terrible; they built up a fake confidence due to families filling their heads with lies and fantasies.

I am sure many of them aren’t confident with their singing ability anymore.

Since Confidence has so many definitions then claiming that is the source of success in something is pseudoscientific.

At least Competence is based on tangible things such as grades, scores, numbers, results, expert evaluations, public appraise… etc.

Uncommon in his post made it sound as if awkward/nonconfident people can never be successful at something; this is not true; so many musicians/programmers/engineers may have imposter syndrome and self doubt yet they prove to be competent with the work they do.

And oh, lack of confidence has nothing to do with laziness.

Donald Trump on the other hand is full of confidence but…

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 18 Jun 2024, 5:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Going back to the math example, I always thought I was bad at math. My family often said that boys were better at it than girls. I also struggled teaching myself math as a homeschooler, maybe because I lacked confidence and didn’t receive much encouragement. When I struggled with it, my family made it about gender instead of investing in better books, a tutor, or sending me to school. The problem, according to them, was that I wasn’t good at math.

When I went to college and had some amazing professors who encouraged my progress, I suddenly realized for the first time in my life that I was good at math. I was at the top of my class in the courses I took, even in one in which I was the only girl, and I became a math tutor. Weird.

Sometimes people use “confident” and “arrogant” almost interchangeably. Others associate confidence more with self-esteem and positivity. IMO, a person can be confident but still recognize that they need to improve and grow in certain areas. It can be hard to make any sort of progress when a person has a negative mindset.

I don’t think it’s typically an all or nothing thing. Confidence isn’t something you either have 100% of the time or not at all. It’s impossible to measure, especially when people define it in different ways.

Sometimes people are so lacking in confidence that they don’t try things at all - careers, hobbies, or whatever else. If I was more confident at the time, I would’ve taken a harder math class in college. Oh well.

Is it hard to grasp that nobody is born with social skills, but that NTs simply learn them faster, yet still have to learn them? Everyone has to learn social skills. Nobody has them innately. Autism exists cos we have a HARDER time LEARNING them - not cos we didn't come pre-programmed with them.

If there is such a thing as "natural talent", it may be a natural trait that allows the individual to pick something up faster - having better hearing allowing someone to learn music faster - and by strange coincidence, many people who have "natural talent" have also been exposed to a thing from a very early age - but the idea that anyone is just naturally pre-programmed with skills or abilities is nonsense.

People love the idea that people can just naturally do things, without having ever tried. But it's usually rubbish. And around here, it's used as an excuse to not have to try. That sounds like laziness to me. Gassing one's self up on the idea that OTHER people don't have to work at it, so you shouldn't have to either! Which, even if the former WAS true, and most people don't have to work for it, if you do, then you do. Fckin deal with it. So what if it's harder?

Y'all got confidence too entangled with success. Sure, a confidently bad singer is still a bad singer - the difference is, a confident bad singer who loses won't act like a little snot about being told they aren't a good singer, and won't give up and stop trying just cos they didn't win - whereas an insecure loser gets an attitude at the judges, blames this and that and the other, and gives up on singing entirely despite how much they claimed to love it previously.

True confidence is based on resilience, and can take criticism rejection and failure. Back to a dating context, confidence is knowing that no matter how many times you get told no, you may still someday get a yes, so you don't stop trying, and you don't get a weird attitude about it. As opposed to lacking any confidence, and telling yourself you'll never get a date, so now you don't even try - or if you do, you're already convinced you'll fail, and have a bad attitude about it from building resentment.

While I'm sure it felt clever at the time, pointing out that success and competence don't necessarily lead to confidence either (imposter syndrome), does that not completely undercut the initial argument that success is necessary for confidence? How can success lead to confidence if even imposter syndrome can nullify it? Or maybe confidence was important all along, to prevent imposter syndrome in the first place. Hmm...

Like, sure, doing well in grad school helped my confidence - but if I didn't have any confidence in the first place, I wouldn't have even applied to begin with, nor would my success have alleviated any insecurity, since imposter syndrome is a thing.

Donald trump ACTS confident - but it's easy to fake confidence when you're always in control, and even if you royally eff-up, everyone around you will still blow smoke up your arse and tell you how great you did - and when you can throw heaps of money at things to make them go away. But Trump crumbles like sand and refuses to play when he can't control things.

Did my post really make it sound that way? Or are you making it sound that way, by framing it that way yourself? All I said was, if you don't even have enough confidence to believe that the effort is even worth engaging in, you'll probably just give up without ever even really trying.

Oh, and it's not that confidence has so very many definitions - it just manifests itself in many ways. But it's always the same fundamental thing - belief in and knowledge of one's self. Not belief that one will succeed, but that one will survive and persist.