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Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

themultidisciplinarian.com

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Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be smart, intelligent, and educated without being wise. In fact, it’s the norm.

I agree. I would say intelligence is what you have naturally, education is what you acquire in school, and wisdom is what you acquire through experience. These are not interchangeable.

I like to think that intelligence is the set of questions you can solve. Wisdom is the capability to pick the right questions.

Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#32

I think anyone who has inhabited planet earth for more than 25-30 years or so starts to realize that most of people are either: 1. “Geniuses” of speculation and every topic under the sun (overconfident braggarts that make sweeping claims that are difficult to criticize because they are so general; such dreamers talk big but really have little expertise) 2. People that actually are “deep-knowledge” experts, but only i…

There are also a lot of people who know nothing and struggle to understand anything new and don't either brag about it or have any deeper field on understand. They can also usually tie their shoelace.

Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#33

I think anyone who has inhabited planet earth for more than 25-30 years or so starts to realize that most of people are either: 1. “Geniuses” of speculation and every topic under the sun (overconfident braggarts that make sweeping claims that are difficult to criticize because they are so general; such dreamers talk big but really have little expertise) 2. People that actually are “deep-knowledge” experts, but only i…

I'm skeptical of any sorting of things into two bins, people or otherwise.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-12-28

You do have a point though (why I recall decade old comics as conversation pieces and not people's names... sigh) There are a lot of people on "mount stupid", in fact the chance that someone talking about a subject is trapped in the overconfidence of mount stupid is very high. In other words, most of the people you'll hear talking about something are entirely full of shit. (this is a large source of problems in our time)

There are people who don't know anything and realize it, then there are a whole lot of people who know enough to be aware that their knowledge is limited and don't want to try to talk over the overconfident folks (refuting someone sure of themselves is a lot more difficult than jabbering about your own feelings)

The people who really do know a whole lot and have the confidence to match are rare.

One thing that sticks out on HN are long discussions about things that folks have not much of an idea about. Non-computer-related engineering and farming threads are usually a shitshow of overconfident nonsense. Something to notice about computer people is they have the confidence that they can figure anything out (generally good) but frequently lack the wisdom to be aware of their knowledge (generally bad).

Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#34

I have doubts about this study. It could be that participants are thinking about the questions differently than the author anticipates. For example, one could argue that a stop sign has ten sides and not eight because it is a physical object with a front and back. And if it has circular bolt holes for mounting to a post then you could also say it has many more sides than ten.

This is fair to be part of the study although could be varied a bit more. The error that participants make in assumptions is surprise that the market does price.

Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#36

I have doubts about this study. It could be that participants are thinking about the questions differently than the author anticipates. For example, one could argue that a stop sign has ten sides and not eight because it is a physical object with a front and back. And if it has circular bolt holes for mounting to a post then you could also say it has many more sides than ten.

The study asserts assumption to the participants that the stop sign is 2D object

"sides" usually is a term describing 2d objects,

3d objects are described by faces, edges, and vertices

Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#37
The math behind this is wrong. It’s taking a naive average of your confidence scores so that if your average confidence level is 95% then you must think you got 9.5 of 10 correct.

No, if I answered 95% confidence on all 10 then my estimate of the probability I got at least one wrong is 1 - .95^10 = 40%. Whereas if I answered 100% confidence on 9 and 50% confidence on one, then i am predicting 50% probability that I got 9, and 50% probability I got all 10.

I assume the paper is riddled with similar mathematical errors. You can’t just average probabilities together like that.

Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#38
post #30

I think anyone who has inhabited planet earth for more than 25-30 years or so starts to realize that most of people are either: 1. “Geniuses” of speculation and every topic under the sun (overconfident braggarts that make sweeping claims that are difficult to criticize because they are so general; such dreamers talk big but really have little expertise) 2. People that actually are “deep-knowledge” experts, but only i…

There's a subset of 1 who are good at making wild guesses while leaving open the possibility they're wrong so 2 has an opportunity to share what they know.

I don't have actual expert knowledge in anything but a bit of knowledge of a broad range of things. So there's certainly a spectrum of "1" where you have all levels of actual knowledge.

It reads like someone is just grumpy dividing it up like that.

Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#39

I think anyone who has inhabited planet earth for more than 25-30 years or so starts to realize that most of people are either: 1. “Geniuses” of speculation and every topic under the sun (overconfident braggarts that make sweeping claims that are difficult to criticize because they are so general; such dreamers talk big but really have little expertise) 2. People that actually are “deep-knowledge” experts, but only i…

I'm skeptical of any sorting of things into two bins, people or otherwise. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-12-28 You do have a point though (why I recall decade old comics as conversation pieces and not people's names... sigh) There are a lot of people on "mount stupid", in fact the chance that someone talking about a subject is trapped in the overconfidence of mount stupid is very high. In other words, most o…

> I'm skeptical of any sorting of things into two bins, people or otherwise.

Reminds me of the saying that there are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Re: Smart Folk Often Full of Crap, Study Finds

#40
post #8

The book 'How to measure anything' talks about how to improve your own calibration. From what I recall (it's been a while since I read it), the author recommended testing yourself to estimate a bunch of questions with numerical answers. For example: what's the height of the empire state building? You write down a range for each answer, trying to make the range narrow enough that you're just about 80% confident that t…

Job applicants for junior trading (market making) roles are often given similar questions. An example question might be: "Make me a market on the height of the empire state building." By this the interviewer means: what price would you buy at and what price would you sell at? So for example I might respond 1000/2000. which means I'm buying at 1000ft and selling at 2000ft. Presumably, I believe the true height is some…

Curious, does this confidence level factor into any sort of Kelly Criterion-type calculation for what percentage of a portfolio to risk during a given trade? What quantitative factors enable someone to calibrate their confidence level for a market making event?
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