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We Are All Confident Idiots

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Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#21

Post by DanielBMarkham »

"An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. "

Yes, and an informed mind is the same, only all the junk is "lined" up to agree with whatever the prevailing wisdom is.

People don't operate on facts. They operate on feelings, flimsly allegories, metaphors, and half-baked truths. This isn't a bug; it's a feature. It allows us to walk into a room we've never visited before, use a chair, and order from a menu without having to spend time verifying a lot of details. The brain is emotional and always wildly guessing and generalizing about things, no matter who we are or what we do.

People wonder why prejudice and stereotyping hasn't gone away in society. Well heck, it's never going away until you replace people with robots. I was attacked by a clown as a kid, I hate and fear clowns. You saw your mom shrink from a tall person, you are afraid of tall people. That's how the brain works, and it's how we're able to function.

At best we learn to deliberately struggle with this. It's never going to go away -- at least while we're still human.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#22

Post by Cthulhu_ »

kevinwang wrote: post #4

I'm pretty sure that for the Kimmel segments, they ask the interviewees different questions and later edit in a different question that makes the original answer seem funny.

I don't know about that, what I am pretty sure of is that for every funny answer, they have at least ten other boring "That person doesn't even exist" or "I don't know" replies.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#23

Post by atmosx »

Swizec wrote: post #15
atmosx wrote: post #3

"As You Like It" by William Shakespeare Act 5, Scene 1: [...]The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool[...] I try to keep that quote in mind at all times. I believe it holds a great deal of wisdom, especially for me. For I am loud and opinionated. But I still fail when I need it most, at times when I am surrounded by (people who IMHO are extreme) idiots.

This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect[1], the cognitive bias that unskilled individuals overestimate their ability and skilled individuals underestimate it. "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias manifesting in two principal ways: unskilled individuals tend to suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate, while highly skilled individuals tend to rate thei…

I quoted Shakespeare because I admire him deeply and felt that my thoughts on the matter were relevant.

But the two statements are fundamentally different IMHO:

- Shakespeare writes of wisdom which comes in form of doubt. Only the wise men allow doubt into the conversation, hence their stance towards other parties is not aggressive and absolute, but rather flexible.

- The Dunning-Kruger effect, refers to personal biases of two categories.

However, I might be a little over-pedantic here, because comparing a study with a theatrical play can not be done in a straight way :-)

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#24

Post by Swizec »

atmosx wrote: post #23
Swizec wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect[1], the cognitive bias that unskilled individuals overestimate their ability and skilled individuals underestimate it. "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias manifesting in two principal ways: unskilled individuals tend to suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate, while highly skilled individuals tend to rate thei…

I quoted Shakespeare because I admire him deeply and felt that my thoughts on the matter were relevant. But the two statements are fundamentally different IMHO: - Shakespeare writes of wisdom which comes in form of doubt . Only the wise men allow doubt into the conversation, hence their stance towards other parties is not aggressive and absolute, but rather flexible. - The Dunning-Kruger effect, refers to personal bi…

> However, I might be a little over-pedantic here, because comparing a study with a theatrical play can not be done in a straight way :-)

Don't worry, this is HackerNews, discussion among nerds of the highest form. Pedantry is what we do.

I think that while Shakespeare said it more poetically, he is essentially talking about the same thing. Perhaps Dunning-Kruger is more to the point and matter of fact, but it is the same thing. The expert speaks with doubt (because they know that there's so much more to know about a subject), and the fool speaks with certainty (because they do not know).

So maybe Shakespeare is describing half of Dunning-Kruger?

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#25

Post by century19 »

> "Often, our theories are good enough to get us through the day, or at least to an age when we can procreate."

This is a fantastic line. I guess getting to the age where we can procreate is all that's needed by our genes !

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#26

Post by Dewie »

Swizec wrote: post #15
atmosx wrote: post #3

"As You Like It" by William Shakespeare Act 5, Scene 1: [...]The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool[...] I try to keep that quote in mind at all times. I believe it holds a great deal of wisdom, especially for me. For I am loud and opinionated. But I still fail when I need it most, at times when I am surrounded by (people who IMHO are extreme) idiots.

This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect[1], the cognitive bias that unskilled individuals overestimate their ability and skilled individuals underestimate it. "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias manifesting in two principal ways: unskilled individuals tend to suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate, while highly skilled individuals tend to rate thei…

I swear this is HN's favourite bias to bring up on any topic relating to intelligence and aptitude.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#27

Post by gjm11 »

robert_tweed wrote: post #7
atmosx wrote: post #3

"As You Like It" by William Shakespeare Act 5, Scene 1: [...]The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool[...] I try to keep that quote in mind at all times. I believe it holds a great deal of wisdom, especially for me. For I am loud and opinionated. But I still fail when I need it most, at times when I am surrounded by (people who IMHO are extreme) idiots.

That certainly borrows from Socrates: " I know one thing: that I know nothing. "

It's an idea that recurs throughout history. We've got Socrates and Shakespeare already mentioned in the thread, to which I'll add:

W B Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, and the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."

Bertrand Russell: "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

Charles Darwin: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

the Tao Te Ching: "To know that you do not know is highest. To not know but think you know is flawed. ... The sages are without fault, because they recognize the fault as a fault".

(Semi-interestingly, I can't find anything very close to this idea in the biblical books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes -- the former sees certainty as something to aspire to, and the latter is just equally down on everyone, wise and foolish alike.)

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#28

Post by emotionalcode »

Dewie wrote: post #26
Swizec wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect[1], the cognitive bias that unskilled individuals overestimate their ability and skilled individuals underestimate it. "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias manifesting in two principal ways: unskilled individuals tend to suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate, while highly skilled individuals tend to rate thei…

I swear this is HN's favourite bias to bring up on any topic relating to intelligence and aptitude.

I think the Dunning Kruger effect has been a meme/cultural/conceptual construct long enough (like the measurement of intelligence) that we need to test for a Reverse Dunning Kruger effect, where knowledge of the Dunning Kruger Effect correlates with bias in self evaluation.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#29

Post by narag »

byEngineer wrote: post #20
lucio wrote: post #12

"epic housing bubble stoked by the machinations of financiers and the ignorance of consumers" Isn't he being prey of his own effect? So the "epic housing bubble"(consecuence) was caused by "the machinations of financiers(cause 1) and the ignorance of consumers (cause 2)" If this is true, why 2008? Clearly cause 1 & 2 were present waaay before 2008. So maybe the bubble have other causes?

The FED artificially kept low interest rates since 2001 till 2008. All that money had to go somewhere. It went to housing. Cause and effect, plain and simple. The same currently nobody seems to understand that we have even lower interest rates today. From 2008 till 2014. And all this money goes to (primarily) US Treasuries. US Treasuries are currently the most expensive in its 300 year history. Mortgage APR fixed for…

We're living in the final stages of the final bubble, mother of all bubbles in the mankind history.

Wait to see space bubble. Space mining will need huge amounts of capital that will be invested in space ships and stations that for many years will give no positive returns.

Still they'll be obviously valuable for the future, so we will have Internet-kind bubble thousands fold.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#30

Post by protonfish »

lucio wrote: post #12

"epic housing bubble stoked by the machinations of financiers and the ignorance of consumers" Isn't he being prey of his own effect? So the "epic housing bubble"(consecuence) was caused by "the machinations of financiers(cause 1) and the ignorance of consumers (cause 2)" If this is true, why 2008? Clearly cause 1 & 2 were present waaay before 2008. So maybe the bubble have other causes?

From the ground in 2008, it looked like the match was fuel prices. (Gasoline was around $4.50/gal in my recollection.) There were all these families barely squeaking by that could only tolerate a significant price hike in gas and electricity for so long until something had to give.
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