Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#41

Post by Tuna-Fish » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

Note: The reason this is reposted now is that he used it as a leading post in a sequence on the subject. The next post in sequence is "Book review: The Secret of Our Success"

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#42

Post by paultopia » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 11:37 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #20

Happy to see this here again. I suspect that argument from authority, like "goto considered harmful" and Moore's Law, have entered the public consciousness in a warped popular form that barely resembles the original. In topics in which I am not a subject matter expert, I can and should defer to the actual subject matter experts, absent very compelling evidence to the contrary. I'm not perfect at this, but I first rea…

It seems to me that another name for this vice is something like the Dunning-Kroeger effect, or, equivalently, simple laziness. Sure, I might think that I've found a mistake in general relativity or something. But I also know, or I should know, that physicists have put in years and years of work to understand those arguments and I just haven't.

So the failure to exercise an appropriate degree of epistemic learned helplessness might also be interpreted as a failure to recognize, or a lazy unwillingness to accept, that acquiring subject-specific knowledge---as well as subject-specific metacognitive knowledge to indicate to one that one lacks substantive knowledge, takes actual work which one has not put in.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#43

Post by paultopia » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 11:39 PM UTC

maxerbubba wrote: post #15

abakker wrote: post #8

There is a connection in his last paragraph to entrepreneurship - I can't place a finger on the exact phasing but I've seen before on HN an essay about the need for an entrepreneur to be "all in" and genuinely swayed by their own arguments. I've definitely observed that in successful business people around me, and observed that I can't seem to do that to myself. While I'm not an entrepreneur, I've often thought to st…

See also: FYRE Festival, Elizabeth Holmes

But also see Steve Jobs's reality distortion field?

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#44

Post by mistermann » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:01 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #20

Happy to see this here again. I suspect that argument from authority, like "goto considered harmful" and Moore's Law, have entered the public consciousness in a warped popular form that barely resembles the original. In topics in which I am not a subject matter expert, I can and should defer to the actual subject matter experts, absent very compelling evidence to the contrary. I'm not perfect at this, but I first rea…

> any time I start thinking an expert might be wrong in their area of expertise

But on the other hand....

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#45

Post by motohagiography » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:08 AM UTC

ppeetteerr wrote: post #5

> I don’t think I’m overselling myself too much to expect that I could argue circles around the average uneducated person. Everyone thinks they are better than average ;)

Fun Ask HN thread would be, "at what thing or what about you is below average?" It's one thing to admit you suck at something, but quite another to recognize that you are below the mean, or worse, the median.

It's too easy to fall into the trap of inverting a positive trait and say, "I'm probably less un-awesome than average," or to exaggerate false humility.

Sample bias comes in as well, since among my rich friends, I am below average net worth, but still above the 75th percentile nationally. It's like that stupid job interview question, "what is your greatest weakness?[0]"

It's an interesting exercise anyway.

([0]Apparently one wrong answer is, "suffering fools gladly.")

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#46

Post by thrower123 » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

abakker wrote: post #8

There is a connection in his last paragraph to entrepreneurship - I can't place a finger on the exact phasing but I've seen before on HN an essay about the need for an entrepreneur to be "all in" and genuinely swayed by their own arguments. I've definitely observed that in successful business people around me, and observed that I can't seem to do that to myself. While I'm not an entrepreneur, I've often thought to st…

Just about everyone who ever did anything significant or groundbreaking had a whole passel of people nay-saying and saying they were crazy, trying to drag them back like crabs clutching at each other. Of course, there's survivor bias there, where the cranks who are right are remembered, but the legions of cranks who are wrong largely fade into oblivion.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#47

Post by thrower123 » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #27

I'd take his argument even further. I am pretty good at programming. When I have written a program, I believe it's right. I always test, before moving to production. Always. Even if it seems trivial to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, by argument, that this code is correct. Always test, before moving to production.

It always amazes me the amount of code I encounter that it is clear no one has ever tried to execute. People will have a week of checkins building some API out, and it maybe compiles, but as soon as you try to just hit it with Postman with a real request, it blows up like a grenade going off in a glass shop.

I just don't know how people do it. I have to iterate and poke at things constantly as I go.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#48

Post by taurath » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:59 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #20

Happy to see this here again. I suspect that argument from authority, like "goto considered harmful" and Moore's Law, have entered the public consciousness in a warped popular form that barely resembles the original. In topics in which I am not a subject matter expert, I can and should defer to the actual subject matter experts, absent very compelling evidence to the contrary. I'm not perfect at this, but I first rea…

I also like to think of it as a lack of imagination in how deep knowledge in an area can go, in terms of people with advanced degrees in a given field. Its either that knowledge for them is shallow, or that the principles that apply to their knowledge area apply elsewhere. At the same time, people with advanced degrees in an area are the only people who are constantly contending with what humanity DOESN'T know about a subject, so they are less likely to position themselves as authoritative. Experts saying they're making calculated guesses which in reality have a 5 9s chance of being true can wither to the bystander from an argument from someone who speaks with absolute ignorant conviction.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#49

Post by abecedarius » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #27

I'd take his argument even further. I am pretty good at programming. When I have written a program, I believe it's right. I always test, before moving to production. Always. Even if it seems trivial to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, by argument, that this code is correct. Always test, before moving to production.

We programmers get our noses rubbed in our own mistakes many times a day. Once in a while we get to find out that code we were sure of for years was embarrassingly wrong. You would expect people with so much experience of fallibility to become especially aware of it, especially ready to have their minds changed by argument, when it comes to unrelated even-more-complicated topics like politics and economics... if you were an alien unexposed to human nature.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

#50

Post by abecedarius » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:59 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #44

thaumaturgy wrote: post #20

Happy to see this here again. I suspect that argument from authority, like "goto considered harmful" and Moore's Law, have entered the public consciousness in a warped popular form that barely resembles the original. In topics in which I am not a subject matter expert, I can and should defer to the actual subject matter experts, absent very compelling evidence to the contrary. I'm not perfect at this, but I first rea…

> any time I start thinking an expert might be wrong in their area of expertise But on the other hand.... Why Most Published Research Findings Are False https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/

Yeah. A well-functioning civilization would be epistemically like an efficient market. In ours, it's relatively hard to get rewarded to improve the consensus estimate about most things: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/scientis...