I don't trust people who won't admit when they don't know things
Okay, maybe this is a hot take, but I don’t trust people who refuse to admit when they don’t know things.
I don’t think pretending to know things is a great long-term strategy for trying to appear competent. The minute I catch you spewing bullshit in one area, I start to question whether you’re spewing bullshit in other areas that I’m just not experienced enough to catch. And you will inevitably be caught and be side-eyed a lot more than if you just admitted not to know the thing.
I guess maybe this isn’t super practical advice (don’t listen to me, I make bad choices), but I will say that one positive side effect of my willingness to be very clear about the limitations of my knowledge (or frequent lack thereof) is that if I do happen to claim to know something, I’m usually pretty credible.
Next time you’re in class, listen to your profs speak. Research profs are quite literally professional experts! These are people who know things for a living, yet the good ones I’ve had were usually very comfortable with answering questions with “I don’t know” or “I’m not familiar with that”.
It never made me respect them any less. Being terrifyingly knowledgeable is cool! But no one can know everything, or even everything about a single subfield. The world is way too complex for that nowadays.