Two Kinds of Brilliance (2)
ELIJAH’S POV:
In the car on the way to the fair, Andrew was quiet for most of it, which I did not try to fill. He was looking out the window with the expression he had when he was running through things internally, not anxiously, just methodically, the way a pilot might run through a checklist not because they expect problems but because thoroughness is the habit that prevents them.
About fifteen minutes in he said, “What if a judge asks me something I have not considered?”
“Then you tell them you have not considered it yet and you say what you think the answer might be based on what you know,” I said. “And you tell them you would want to investigate further before committing to a conclusion”
He thought about this. “That is what I told the judge this morning about the limitation of my dataset.”
“I know,” I said. “And it was the right answer.”
“It felt risky,” he said. “Acknowledging what I do not know.”
“The judges know what you do not know,” I said. “Acknowledging it yourself is what tells them you are being honest.”
He sat with this. Then he said, “Honesty about the limits of your knowledge is more credible than pretending you know more than you do.”
“Yes,” I said.
“That is a useful principle,” he said. “In general.”
“It is,” I said. “In general.”


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