Estimating the virtue of others relative to your own

Humility is required to correctly compare yourself to others. Without accurate comparison to others, you will miss out on examples of those who demonstrate the possibility of and path to something better, as well as important warnings to protect you from harm from them.

Amazing people rarely know they are amazing. While this is sometimes because they do not accurately identify or appreciate their virtues, it can also be because they falsely assume that others share their virtues. Good people often assume everyone is at least as good as they are in the same way bad people often assume everyone is at least as bad as they are. The best way to discover this potential disparity is to treat others as you would like them to treat you.¹ Those with exceptional virtues will find it easy to treat others well, but will quickly notice that they are under-appreciated or taken advantage of. Everyone else will see the experiment as having too high a cost to even begin.

Many miss out on opportunities for improvement by incorrectly assuming they know or are better than others when they are not. Do you presume that there is always something more you could know or be better at? Do you demonstrate this presumption through searching for improvement and recognizing it when you find it? How often do you assume that you are more knowledgable than someone else at something?² How often do you begin conversations with the assumption that you know less than the other person?³ When conversing with someone who obviously knows more than you, do you listen more than you speak, and ask questions more often than making statements? Do you ever pretend that you’ve always known something even when you only just learned it from the person you are speaking to? Do you exude more confidence than you should given the evidence that you have? Are you quick to criticize an alternative point of view, or do you provide ample opportunity to better understand its merits?⁴