We Are All Confident Idiots (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#111

Post by mapcars » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

bookofjoe wrote: post #105

mapcars wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>those who tend to be more realistic in their self expectations are more prone to depression. No, depression comes when you are only applying logic to life and essentially seeing that there is no meaning to it. Logic can not live without meaning, but life is tremendously bigger that our limited logic, regardless how fanciful we make it. >False confidence may be the route to happiness or at least optimism. No, this co…

"Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't exist."—Jacques Lacan Generalizable to: Life has no meaning, but we can give it a meaning.

With this I agree, the problem comes when we forget we give meaning and we become too serious about something we made up.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#112

Post by J-dawg » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

romwell wrote: post #50

ggm wrote: post #20

Hey, I built a 40 year career on 'fake it until you have to leave or learn how to make it' -So don't knock this. And, all you young whippersnappers remember that its only old fools like me messing up in the code which gives you meaningful jobs fixing bugs in the future.

>Hey, I built a 40 year career on 'fake it until you have to leave or learn how to make it' -So don't knock this This comments illustrates the article, which has nothing to do with "fake it till you make it", and is all about how people often think they know something, when, in fact, they have little knowledge on the subject (in this case, the subject being the article in question). To clarify: "fake it till you make…

To be fair to the grandparent comment, some of the examples in the article could be interpreted as 'faking it 'til you make it'.

What's most interesting is the nuance of what 'faking it' really means. The woman making up a whole narrative about 'Tonya and the Hardings' - was she thinking 'shit, I know nothing about this band but I like the idea of being on TV so I'm going to make up some lies and hope the conversation moves on to something else'. Or did she genuinely in that moment believe that she knew of this band?

Both seem sort of unlikely, yet one of them has to be true (or a combination of them - as long as you discount the possibility of her being a shill or realising it's a joke and playing along for fun).

There's also some interesting self-selection bias going on - by standing on a street with a microphone you're only going to get people who are more extroverted. Perhaps that's linked with willingness to 'fake it'.

I just find this stuff fascinating.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#113

Post by ukj » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

intarga wrote: post #102

ukj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfect example of faking it! The very thing this thread is about. Instead of figuring out how to make the hard choice between Urgent Important in the first place, you've drawn a distinction which lets you kick the can down the road. Choosing between Unurgent-Important Urgent-Unimportant is exactly the same problem as choosing between Urgent Important. You have two tasks: A or B. Which one should you work o…

Perhaps its my stupidity, but I don't see what this has to do with faking? The point was that importance is not the same thing as urgency, which the parent comment didn't seem to understand. >Choosing between Unurgent-Important Urgent-Unimportant is exactly the same problem as choosing between Urgent Important. Sure, in the other formulation you simply make the assumption that the important task is unurgent, and the…

Your argument is A != B.

My argument is that your argument is not useful when having to choose between A and B.

If A != B is true, then go ahead and evaluate A > B.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#114

Post by intarga » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

ukj wrote: post #109

intarga wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps its my stupidity, but I don't see what this has to do with faking? The point was that importance is not the same thing as urgency, which the parent comment didn't seem to understand. >Choosing between Unurgent-Important Urgent-Unimportant is exactly the same problem as choosing between Urgent Important. Sure, in the other formulation you simply make the assumption that the important task is unurgent, and the…

>The point was that importance is not the same thing as urgency, which the parent comment didn't seem to understand. There is nothing to understand about that point. It's a linguistic distinction which makes no practical difference. The prioritisation problem is like this: When forced to choose which task do you schedule first? The Urgent one or the Important one? If you always lean towards Urgent things, you will ne…

>There is nothing to understand about that point. It's a linguistic distinction which makes no practical difference.

It does make a practical difference. Important tasks are higher priority under tighter time constraints and vice versa. I fail to see how this isn't a practical distinction.

>If you always lean towards Urgent things, you will neglect the Important. If you always lean towards Important things, you will neglect the Urgent.

If you do this you failed. The point is lean important when time constrained, urgent when not.

>Conversely: if you have a way to decide which task to schedule first, then (to you) they clearly have different priorities.

They have different priorities IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS. One is higher when time constrained, the other higher when not. It is clear from reading your comments that you have not understood this.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#115

Post by ukj » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

intarga wrote: post #114

ukj wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The point was that importance is not the same thing as urgency, which the parent comment didn't seem to understand. There is nothing to understand about that point. It's a linguistic distinction which makes no practical difference. The prioritisation problem is like this: When forced to choose which task do you schedule first? The Urgent one or the Important one? If you always lean towards Urgent things, you will ne…

>There is nothing to understand about that point. It's a linguistic distinction which makes no practical difference. It does make a practical difference. Important tasks are higher priority under tighter time constraints and vice versa. I fail to see how this isn't a practical distinction. >If you always lean towards Urgent things, you will neglect the Important. If you always lean towards Important things, you will…

In what universe do you live in that you operate under different time contexts/constraints to the rest of us?

The very fact that you are forced to make a choice between Urgent and Important indicates that you ARE time-constrained within your context.

If you could do both in parallel it wouldn't be a prioritisation problem.

There is only one time context. It's called The Universe. For each worker (human!) Time is a finite resource. It is clear form your comments that you do not understand this.

Having 'different time contexts' means having multiple workers. Multi-threading.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#116

Post by playing_colours » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

drawkbox wrote: post #41

We are all confident idiots and this is why the ego was created in evolution. Ego is needed to make you think you are better than others at something, eventhough initially you may not be. Without ego, people would be Marvin The Paranoid Android but depressed because we didn't have the capabilities or opportunities to compete with all the smarter people around or in history. People that are laser focused and don't lis…

> Without ego humanity may not have made it this far.

Not sure. Many teachings, religions are addressing removing ego from your thoughts. I heard that if you take LSD you can actually feel your ego gone with the feeling of being the one with the universe. Might be a great experience?

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#117

Post by tootie » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

ggm wrote: post #48

tootie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have grown in confidence over 20 years not by building capabilities but realizing that everyone else is guessing just as much as I am. And I'm at least an above-average guesser in my field of "expertise".

Knowing how to ask intelligent questions is the hallmark of a successful bluffer. Out your comrades lack of knowledge by exposing your own as a very clever question

Oh yeah, fearless question asking is so much more valuable than knowing everything.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#118

Post by afishisafish » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

mapcars wrote: post #72

CPAhem wrote: post #3

Interestingly those who tend to be more realistic in their self expectations are more prone to depression. False confidence may be the route to happiness or at least optimism.

>those who tend to be more realistic in their self expectations are more prone to depression. No, depression comes when you are only applying logic to life and essentially seeing that there is no meaning to it. Logic can not live without meaning, but life is tremendously bigger that our limited logic, regardless how fanciful we make it. >False confidence may be the route to happiness or at least optimism. No, this co…

to quote Bill Hicks

>The world is like a ride in an amusement park

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/494647-the-world-is-like-a-...

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#119

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

heavenlyblue wrote: post #84

mapcars wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>those who tend to be more realistic in their self expectations are more prone to depression. No, depression comes when you are only applying logic to life and essentially seeing that there is no meaning to it. Logic can not live without meaning, but life is tremendously bigger that our limited logic, regardless how fanciful we make it. >False confidence may be the route to happiness or at least optimism. No, this co…

>> depression comes when you are only applying logic to life and essentially seeing that there is no meaning to it. Depression is not a question of philosophy of your life. Philosophy may help you approach the depression, but you can’t get depressed because life is too logical - you may get sad, on the other hand.

> Depression is not a question of philosophy of your life.

Oh I strongly disagree with this assessment. I am not a psychologist, but have suffered from depression on and off my whole life, and I assert that depression is indeed a philosophical problem.

Depression, I think, is the experience of one's mind realizing that its model of reality (philosophy) is too flawed or incomplete to see a concrete path towards meaningful change in one's life, and attempting to build a better model.

This is evidenced by:

1) depressive realism. the mind is being careful to make more accurate assessments.

2) a preference towards inaction. The mind does not trust its model of reality, and is reluctant to take actions with unpredictable results.

3) similar behavior in children undergoing cognitive schema shifts.

Further, I assert that part of the reason society is unable to effect meaningful treatment (for lack of a better word) of many cases of depression is that society's baseline philosophy (empiricism) is part of the model known by the subject to be flawed, and so it has no pre-existing better model to guide the individual towards (though I contend such models do exist if actively sought).

Depression, in my experience, is overcome in only 2 ways:

1) The mind gives up and returns to its previous, known flawed, philosophy and simply rejects the information that highlighted the flaws. This is an unstable state prone to relapse for obvious reasons. In the worst cases, the subject seeks to actively destroy the source of such information. This, I suspect, is essentially the cause of religious or ideological violence.

2) The mind constructs a better model that allows it to once again place confidence in its prediction of the outcomes of its actions. This is more stable, but the new model may still have significant flaws that will ultimate result in a new round of depression.

Needless to say for anyone who has actually been through severe depression, the experience is intensely unpleasant. If a mind is unable to resolve the dissonance between its current model and reality, it may take desperate action to relieve this suffering.

Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is that if my hypothesis is accurate then you can indeed become depressed from trying to apply logic to your life and discovering that logic (empirical logic anyway) alone is not sufficient.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#120

Post by forgottenpass » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #69

CPAhem wrote: post #3

Interestingly those who tend to be more realistic in their self expectations are more prone to depression. False confidence may be the route to happiness or at least optimism.

This is a widespread meme on the Internet, but it's far from an established fact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

That wikipedia page is unintentionally hilarious

>This theory remains very controversial, as it brings into question the theory underlying cognitive behavioral therapy, which posits that the depressed individual is negatively biased in their perceptions

CBT is simply a way of coaching the depressed into normative thoughts. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that. But CBT fancies the whole thing up with a thin veneer of science-sounding words as a confidence trick. The theory is a tool for congestive dissonance where you don't have to face the fact mental disorders are defined by severe inabilities to function within contemporary norms.