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People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

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Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#91
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most people I also dislike being wrong. I’m also game for disagreements, which means I’m wrong a lot, easily the most on my team at work. I’d hesitate to say that makes me more “enjoyable” to my teammates. More likely people find me difficult to take seriously because I’ll passionately argue for something I don’t necessarily have the best evidence for and then immediately give up and say I’m wrong when someone g…

Fun counter intuitive social trick :) There's a thing called.. hmm .. positive negotiation ? when you interact with someone by always aiming at finding a middleground/compromise, rather than arguing for the sake of it. Your point reminds me of something that I'm seeing (IIUC). A lot of the time people will assert more than they know (I do that sometimes too[0]) and the discussion will stop. By insisting even at the r…

> By insisting even at the risk at being wrong, you force everybody to show their hand and sometimes they'll realize that they may be wrong or off point and that they need to reevaluate the situation

If this was more common, I think the world would start to become a much better place surprisingly quickly, at a cost of people suffering a little minor intellectual humiliation until they started to be more disciplined about their beliefs.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#92
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note how I said ‘after enough conversing‘. I do give the benefit of the doubt for as long as I can. I admit to understanding positions that are premised on different values. I have a hard time when once I understand the values, inaccurate steps are taken to reach a false conclusion. What I’m talking about is more akin to talking with someone making a mistake in a proof, being pointed out the mistake, but still diggin…

Actually, you likely do. You appear to expect rational self consistency. Not all humans present that. They have reasons, some of which may just be their nature.

> Actually, you likely do.

Well sure everyone does, to some degree. But I thought dyarosla's clarification was quite sound, particularly this part: I admit to understanding positions that are premised on different values.

In my experience, a lot of people are completely ignorant of this important idea, that values (or axioms) are a crucially important part of disagreements, that someone may be approaching the same general topic from a very different perspective than you. Not only do some people not know/appreciate this, I've encountered several people who completely reject this idea if you point it out to them.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#93
Sometimes people can be acting passive aggressive in the name of humility. It's hard to understand yourself to find out if you truly are willing to find out or just trying to prove another person wrong. I think I have lived in both spectrum in different phase of my life so I can vaguely relate.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#94
Actually had an option to make something like this a teaching moment to my kids yesterday. I'd been reading articles about the bridge between Abell 0399 and Abell 0401. There was a Forbes article that said this provided supporting evidence for dark matter. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/06/06/scie...

Dark matter bothers my sense of cosmic aesthetics. I'm not a physicist, I just like reading about how the universe works, so please don't attack my ignorance; there's only so much I can read. I'm painting with very broad strokes here.

Going back to the Forbes article, it provided some good arguments that this was supporting evidence. I had to concede that the blocks making up the argument seemed sound, so I started rearranging mental furniture.

Then there was the correction at the end of the article, and I'm at the position where I can understand how you can provide a situation that can at least provide supporting evidence to support dark matter.

---

However, that's not the main point, it's just the foundation for where I'm going.

I used it to show my kids that you can understand/believe something that seems right or is "known" to be true. But when you come across evidence that shows you're wrong, or presents valid evidence to support a differing point of view, then you have to consider it outside of what you desire to be true. Mind, after examining it, poke at holes that exist and shred it if it's garbage, but if it's not susceptible to that, you need to change your world view.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#95
The article title is clickbait nonsense:

“The findings in relation to knowledge acquisition were mixed. While an online study involving 604 adults (and using the more comprehensive measure of intellectual humility) found the aforementioned link between greater intellectual humility and superior general knowledge, another involving college students (and the briefer intellectual humility questionnaire) found that those higher in intellectual humility achieved poorer grades.”

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#96
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you likely do. You appear to expect rational self consistency. Not all humans present that. They have reasons, some of which may just be their nature.

> Actually, you likely do. Well sure everyone does, to some degree. But I thought dyarosla's clarification was quite sound, particularly this part: I admit to understanding positions that are premised on different values. In my experience, a lot of people are completely ignorant of this important idea, that values (or axioms) are a crucially important part of disagreements, that someone may be approaching the same ge…

I am not judging on "sound", just pointing out that self consistency is the core exception.

That statement on "values", coupled with the other ones, all support strong self consistency.

How people evaluate things can, does, will vary from a highly rational POV.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#97

Makes sense. Well educated people have educational credentials that protect their self-esteem. They can afford to be intellectually humble. Admitting to mistakes or ignorance doesn't hurt as much.

Some of them are just intelligent enough to understand that they don't know everything.

Intelligence can't transform the unknown unknowns into known unknowns. Awareness of one's own ignorance has to be taught.

Re: People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge

#100

The article title is clickbait nonsense: “The findings in relation to knowledge acquisition were mixed. While an online study involving 604 adults (and using the more comprehensive measure of intellectual humility) found the aforementioned link between greater intellectual humility and superior general knowledge, another involving college students (and the briefer intellectual humility questionnaire) found that those…

I'm not seeing the contradiction.
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