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We Are All Confident Idiots

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Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#61

Post by pixl97 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #48
adwf wrote: post #39

I usually accredit the evolution attribution problem to the phrase "survival of the fittest". It's a catchy line, it implies that the better you are the more likely you are to survive, which is kinda true, but leads to the mistaken agency issue. It has the additional benefit of aligning with the ethic of hard work (ie. do better to survive) that we also try to teach kids, which I think is one of the reasons it persis…

No, the correct way to phrase it is "survival of the fit ". It's very common for limiting factors (water, calories, vitamins, etc) to have a plateau. In the range from starvation to 'enough', more ability to find food is an advantage. In the range from 'enough' to 'excess', there's no payoff. So what evolution creates is a population of surviving individuals who are each 'enough' on all their success parameters, but…

I've stated it as 'survival of the fit enough' for a while now.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#62

Post by mistermann »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #22
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.

I agree. Canadians love watching "the dumb Americans" on shows like this but you could get the exact same results going out onto Canadian streets. Many Canadians see themselves as intellectually superior to Americans because of our greater knowledge of their country, 80%+ of which knowledge I expect is from watching TV and movies.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#63

Post by iconjack »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #52
lucio wrote: post #14

In the curved-tube image, clearly the ball will exit with a clockwise spinning, because it'll be rolling on the external wall of the tube (based on the "Newtonian principle" of inertia). I'll bet if you try it as a experiment (inside the atmosphere) the ball will follow "C"... Am I a confident idiot?

That's a standard fallacy I often run into: over estimating second order effects. Yes, unless the ball is perfectly smooth or in a vacuum you will get slight curvature. But it would be so slight that it would look like B.

Try it with a ping-pong ball (a natural choice). The curvature coming out of the tube will not be slight.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#64

Post by PavlovsCat »

gjm11 wrote: post #27
robert_tweed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

Erich Fried wrote a poem called "Angst und Zweifel", it goes roughly like this:

    do not doubt the one
    who says he is afraid
    but be afraid of the one
    who says he knows no doubt

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#65

Post by pixl97 »

enobrev wrote: post #51
adwf wrote: post #39

I usually accredit the evolution attribution problem to the phrase "survival of the fittest". It's a catchy line, it implies that the better you are the more likely you are to survive, which is kinda true, but leads to the mistaken agency issue. It has the additional benefit of aligning with the ethic of hard work (ie. do better to survive) that we also try to teach kids, which I think is one of the reasons it persis…

There's also a matter of motivation. "Survival of the fittest" comes along with the connotation that it's better to aim for the top [let's say 10]% in order to continue to exist. "Death to the weakest" heeds a similar connotation meaning rise above the bottom [let's stick with 10]%. So, just don't slack as terribly as the very worst slackers in your group and you'll do just fine. All in all, that's not necessarily fa…

The problem here is '10%' is a human measuring stick. The only measuring stick evolution has is human retrospect. You only get to see which 10% you were in after the outcome is known.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#66

Post by mgkimsal »

xhedley wrote: post #40
emotionalcode wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Knowing about the Dunning Kruger effect makes me more inclined to ask other people how good I am at something instead of relying on my own opinion. Which I think would make my evaluation more accurate.

or it might make you more selective about who you ask for feedback?

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#67

Post by adwf »

lucio wrote: post #58
adwf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is spin, but not just spin. "Survive" often implies some sort of agency, that there is some sort of struggle that was overcome and the organism is still alive. We teach survival skills. Whereas if you drop some antibiotics on a bacteria culture, there is no struggle, the bacteria that aren't already resistant just die. That's why I think the inverted phrasing is clearer in meaning (although yes I meant "weakes…

There isnt a struggle?. Do the non-resistant bacteria "try" to survive and fail, then die? or it "just die"? The inverted phrase will be a PR disaster for Darwin ;)

My point was that the resistant bacteria didn't suddenly evolve the resistance because the antibiotics were placed in the tray, they were already resistant to begin with. Therefore they didn't "struggle" to become anything, they already had the fit attributes for the situation. Hence why I say survival is a poor word choice as it implies struggle. Death of the non-fit on the other hand, has no such implication.

Obviously this is all very black and white edge cases and most of the time we're not talking about absolute death or survival, but decline or success of certain attributes within a given environment.

And yes, it probably is a terrible way of phrasing evolution from a PR standpoint ;)

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#68

Post by JulianMorrison »

adwf wrote: post #55
JulianMorrison wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the correct way to phrase it is "survival of the fit ". It's very common for limiting factors (water, calories, vitamins, etc) to have a plateau. In the range from starvation to 'enough', more ability to find food is an advantage. In the range from 'enough' to 'excess', there's no payoff. So what evolution creates is a population of surviving individuals who are each 'enough' on all their success parameters, but…

Yeah, my issue wasn't with the mechanism of evolution, more with the phrasing. The word "survive" implies some sort of agency, the inverted phrasing does not. I could alter it to "decline of the weakest attributes as they are less successful and thus less likely to breed and pass their genetics on", but that's quite a mouthful for a tagline to teach schoolkids! ;) PS: And yes I know there are plenty of situations whe…

Except, a stable population (not currently coping with a change from their evolved circumstances) doesn't really contain "weak" individuals beyond the normal lossage to infection, harmful mutation, violence and old age.

It may well contain groups that biologists project human cultural ideas on and call weak. But the continued presence of those groups shows them to be a useful part of the species diversity.

(I strongly recommend "The Genial Gene" and "Evolution's Rainbow", both by Joan Roughgarden, for further reading.)

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#69

Post by ska »

adwf wrote: post #39

I usually accredit the evolution attribution problem to the phrase "survival of the fittest". It's a catchy line, it implies that the better you are the more likely you are to survive, which is kinda true, but leads to the mistaken agency issue. It has the additional benefit of aligning with the ethic of hard work (ie. do better to survive) that we also try to teach kids, which I think is one of the reasons it persis…

"survival of the fittest" only really applies in a population sense anyway, which is often part of the confusion I suspect.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#70

Post by itchyouch »

byEngineer wrote: post #53
tomp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't like to think. Well, that's a mostly empty statement, as it's unfalsifiable - even people who think, and see this happening, what can they do? Is there any way to profit from the mispricing of assets, when everything is overvalued? Well, you could short stuff, but that's a huge risk (since the central banks have an incentive to keep the bubble from bursting, so they can ramp the asset prices even highe…

Hypothetical scenario: US Treasuries go south, the bubble bursts. The next day Chinese announce they start selling their Treasuries on the open market. So instead of keeping your money with the most indebted Government on the face of the planet, you keep it with the biggest creditor in the world. Doesn't sound as a bad deal, huh? And as an extra bonus just to make sure everyone drops US Treasuries ASAP to buy the Chi…

Except, isn't China working hard to keep the valuation of their currency as low as they possibly can?
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