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We Are All Confident Idiots

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Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#141

Post by jackpirate »

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…

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

I always read this quote by Yeats as a lamentation about the status of the world, similar to your Russel quote that's a bit more explicit. But the Socrates quote is clearly not in this vein...

It never occurred to me before that Yeats might be more in line with Socrates than with Russell. You can read him as praising the best for their lack of conviction and condemning the worst for their passion. I like that reading much better. (Of course, I've never read the source, just heard it quoted.)

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#142

Post by arielby »

Someone1234 wrote: post #81
obitoo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...we don't know how genomes hold on to experiences and then pass them along to our offspring. " Err they don't. That's Lamarckism theory, and I wasn't aware there was even a shred of evidence towards it. Sometimes when you don't know how something happens, its because it isn't actually happening

> Err they don't. That's Lamarckism theory, and I wasn't aware there was even a shred of evidence towards it. There is quite a bit from the last few years. Gene expression in particular is a field we continue to learn a lot about [0] and several studies have suggested Lamarckism might have some merit [1]. Saying there isn't a "shred of evidence" is just scientifically untrue. There is some legitimate evidence that li…

Macro-scale evolution does not go through epigenetics, but mostly "knob tweaks".

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#143

Post by marktangotango »

Bahamut wrote: post #94

This is anecdotal, but as far as I have seen in the Marine Corps, there is a bit of knowledge that is passed down that confidence makes you right, and that you need to be absolutely confident if you make an observation that goes against what a higher up is doing. Of course this is bad logic (and likely part of why Marines get a bad rep for often being stupid), but there is a bit of wisdom in there - confidence makes…

In there military you don't have to right, you just have to be less wrong than your peers to be successful.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#145

Post by marincounty »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #128
nkozyra wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this even necessarily a bad thing? Aside from the cover-your-ass aspect of it, I find this tends to spark healthy debate, even if someone's ego gets bruised in the mean time. The time it's bad is when nobody knows and just goes along with the blowhard. I've worked really hard in the past few years to say "I don't know" even when I'm supposed to project expertise. I haven't encountered any real resistance to it, th…

> The time it's bad is when nobody knows and just goes along with the blowhard. If I had a penny for every time I've seen that, I'd have a pretty big pile of coins.

I have found that 95% of the people will side with the person who has the most control of a situation. Many times that person is the Blowhard, but too many times that person or entity is the boss,wealthy parent, or teacher. When I was in school, I was surprised how few students would correct the teacher. I understood they were concerned about grades, but there's a point where I literally wanted to strangle a teacher, or boss. I came close, and my grades suffered. As to bosses, I would quit, or hurt them "the old faschioned way". Right now, my biggest gripe with people who "just go along with" is our current treatment of the Homeless. I don't understand how people can debate on what to do, or turn a blind eye when cops try to fix the problem with the "fix the crack in the window" theory.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#146

Post by StandardFuture »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #126
leeber wrote: post #119

I think if you're truly (1) confident about your knowledge or mastery of a particular topic and (2) actually are knowledgeable, you don't have trouble admitting things you don't know. Here's what I really hate though. When you are around multiple people who are the type to claim knowledge about things they truly have no idea about. For example in social situations or work situations and you have multiple of these typ…

> I think if you're truly (1) confident about your knowledge or mastery of a particular topic and (2) actually are knowledgeable, you don't have trouble admitting things you don't know. I don't think that's true in practice. For proof, just watch any academic debate, ever.

The parent comment is stating a premise as a conclusion. Not having trouble admitting when you don't know something or understand something very well is actually a third attribute (commonly called humility), not the result of the first two. If more people focused on having it as an attribute then the scenario that the parent comment mentioned (and similar scenarios -- such as disappointing YouTube comments?) would be much rarer in occurrence.

In fact, failing to have the third attribute affects the other two. Your confidence will quickly become overconfidence or pure hubris when faced with something you don't know much about. Also, in relationship to the second attribute, it is hard to convince yourself that you are not actually knowledgeable of something if you are not humble enough to consider that possibility.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#147

Post by tshaddox »

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…

I enjoy Asimov's tongue-in-cheek version:

> Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#148

Post by Someone1234 »

arielby wrote: post #142
Someone1234 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Err they don't. That's Lamarckism theory, and I wasn't aware there was even a shred of evidence towards it. There is quite a bit from the last few years. Gene expression in particular is a field we continue to learn a lot about [0] and several studies have suggested Lamarckism might have some merit [1]. Saying there isn't a "shred of evidence" is just scientifically untrue. There is some legitimate evidence that li…

Macro-scale evolution does not go through epigenetics, but mostly "knob tweaks".

Because, why? Why exactly can't large scale evolutionary change by powered by single mother-child genetic signals? That makes just as much or as little sense as claiming that evolution is powered primarily through a single random mutation.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#149

Post by billmalarky »

sliverstorm wrote: post #108
Bahamut wrote: post #94

This is anecdotal, but as far as I have seen in the Marine Corps, there is a bit of knowledge that is passed down that confidence makes you right, and that you need to be absolutely confident if you make an observation that goes against what a higher up is doing. Of course this is bad logic (and likely part of why Marines get a bad rep for often being stupid), but there is a bit of wisdom in there - confidence makes…

I imagine confidence & morale can, in their line of work, tip the scales and make something impossible, eminently possible. The small troupe of British soldiers who recently repelled a militant attack with only bayonets comes to mind. Outnumbered, outgunned, the subject of an ambush, it seems to me that a combination of resolve and confidence was the deciding factor.

Morale is incredibly important in any type of effort. Think about how productive you are working on something that excites you vs grinding for dollars.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots

#150

Post by Dylan16807 »

gwern wrote: post #124
Dylan16807 wrote: post #36

>whether his appearance as a judge on America’s Got Talent would damage his legacy. “No,” said one woman to this last question. “It will make him even more popular.” Will. As in, this person was not bluffing. They were not talking about a previously aired nonexistent show. They were speculating on a possible future. It doesn't matter if the questioner is trying to lie. (The 'lie' isn't even something that's disprovab…

'would' is ambiguous because the author is describing something in the past. For example, you would write 'would' regardless of whether the original question was "Ma'am, do you think Clinton's appearance yesterday on America's Got Talent will damage his legacy?" or if the question had actually been "Miss, do you think Clinton accepting his recent invitation to appear on AGT would damage his legacy?" But either way, t…

Still not bluffing, because they are only speculating on the self-contained scenario, not bringing in fake details.
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