Worth mentioning:
http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0023
and more on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
the report itself (PDF): http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
51–60 of 84 posts
Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#52Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't read the article, yet, but in response to your comment, I am reminded of how, often, people are encouraged to be and rewarded for being "certain". AKA "assertive". Frequently, when I qualify the knowledge I'm sharing with comments about my level of certainty in it and/or its sources, I'm criticized for being some combination of "too verbose", "uncertain", "confusing" (even though, when people actually pay a…
the pressure is not to ignore but to reduce that complexity. People who ask you questions expect that from you, the provider of information. They expect you to reduce that complexity, and if you are not doing your job, meaning you give them too much information, they will be unhappy. Its not that they don't want to know, but why do they need you if you cannot reduce the complexity for them, i guess this is what most…
There are times when someone else is making e.g. the design decisions, the schedule decisions, etc. Let's take schedule: They want to know when I'll be done with something. But I have 5, 8, however many dependencies, half of whom are not responding to my queries for information and several of whom are outside of my team and immediate reporting structure.
What do I need? Responses so that I can determine my own schedule. What do I get? "Just tell me when you'll be done."
Well, Mr/Ms project manager, what do you really need to be doing? Getting answers from the dependencies who are refusing to answer me. But that's difficult and frustrating and time consuming. So you just lean on me, because I'm on your team and at hand.
More frustrating than schedules are specifications. I'll do some QA work. In order to have some idea of the effort, I need to know the specifications. But those are still in (major) flux (despite being 2/3 of the way through the budgeted schedule). I attempt to explain this. I start describing detail because the person I'm talking to has no idea of the scope of impact this lack of definition creates, or perhaps even that there is still a lack of definition and what that is. But they just want a date, and/or a number of hours.
I'm delving into detail because they haven't done their job. But they don't want to understand the impact of their lapse. They just want "the solution".
Not that I don't make mistakes, myself, and sometimes fail to deliver. But I try not to blow people off because they are finding what they are tackling to be complex.
I guess my comment has ended up being very work focused. Similar things happen in personal life. I started to describe an example, but I think I've written enough.
Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#54Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#55Reminds me of the quote from Rumsfeld. Reformatted by http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/ The Unknown As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't know.
Cool, I had not heard that before, but that's too close for coincidence. I wonder now if maybe someone mentioned that quote to me in the past and it got lodged in my subconscious. Or maybe we independently came to the same conclusions... unlikely but it's happened many times before.
At any rate, I've added this reference to the article. Thank you very much for this.
Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#56Talking about shit don't know you don't know without referencing Rumsfeld's "The Unknown" almost feels like plagiarism.
See my other comment in this thread. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1123332
edit It is now referenced in the article.
Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#57For me, the most worrying thing about working in technology has been how as I keep working, I learn more and more about technology. And it gets easier to forget how large that 'shit you don't know that you don't know' category is, compared to when I was a snot-nosed high schooler and painfully aware that I didn't know pretty much anything... I'm still not sure how to go about maintaining that perspective. It would be…
One way I keep this perspective is to observe something random around me and think as deeply as I can as to how that thing came to be. Random example off the top of my head:
Have you ever noticed that when you have the intermittant windshield wipers on in your car, you can change the speed of the wipers to be either faster or slower. When you lower the speed, it re-starts the wiper interval with the swipe at the end of the interval, like this ....|....|....|
But when you quicken the speed, it re-starts the interval with the swipe at the beginning, like this |....|....|....
Some engineer actually realized that when you quicken the speed of the wipers, it's probably because you have an already built-up amount of water on your windshield and need a swipe right away. And when you lower the speed, it's probably because you're getting streaking.
This is pretty ingenious I think. Yet, how often do you appreciate how much thought and effort went into this otherwise unnoticeable feature of your everyday (rainy) life?
That's how I try to keep this perspective.
Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#58What a crock. The things we know amount to nothing compared to the things we don't, and education doesn't even move the needle on that dial. So what? What matters is what you need to know to accomplish some goal vs. what you know right now, and that's much more tractable. Focusing on the (incorrect) idea that no one else knows anything either so you're just fine the way you are is pabulum designed to boost self-estee…
I think you missed the point in the last section. I think a lot of people hesitate to seek out the answers for shame that they do not already know the answers. I'm not saying to be comfortable in your ignorance. I'm saying, don't be ashamed to ask questions.
And yes, as the rest of the article states, the third category is incredibly (even inconceivably large). In case I actually need to say it, those pie charts are for illustrative purposes only, i.e. not drawn to scale.
Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#59There is a meta-problem here: we can't really know how big that red slice of the pie - the "don't know what you don't know" slice - really is. I think he captured the essence of the learning process correctly though, the "know what you don't know" slice just keeps getting bigger as you get older, thus the oft-cited expression, "the older you get, the less you know".
You can make some good back of the envelope attempts at answering it. For example, you can look at how often the big red slice forcibly intrudes on your life to your detriment, and compare that to how often it happens to other humans with similar risk-taking habits to you. The more often, the bigger your personal red slice is.
But what about the example with the egotist? The fact that so many people can be so blatantly oblivious to their "unknown unknowns" makes me think I must have some of them too. I can be cautious and look out for them, which should certainly help me reduce them, but these things are almost by definition the things that you don't notice.
Re: No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
#60Reminds me of the quote from Rumsfeld. Reformatted by http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/ The Unknown As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't know.
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