Intellectual Humility

Have you ever stopped to think about how much smarter and how much more you know now than, say, 20 years ago? You might congratulate yourself on learning some stuff, but what about if we turned that question on its head- think about how dumb you are now compared to what you will know 20 years in the future. That may be due to our lack of intellectual humility, the idea that we may not know everything, or that we may be wrong about something or other. While we may understand the concept of the Dunning-Kruger effect, we don't see it in ourselves. And we all suffer from it at some time, in some ways, although we may never be aware of it.

Intellectual humility is the mindset that tells us we always have more to learn, as long as we are open to the possibility, and are willing to other viewpoints may be valuable. It could be the one trait that allows us to get smarter than we are. (via Digg)