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We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

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Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#121

Post by ukj »

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…

>They have different priorities IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS.

That's precisely your error in reasoning! You are violating the ceteris paribus principle by inventing multiple contexts.

We don't exist in multiple contexts. We exist in a single context. The one in which we schedule work - The Universe.

Ceteris Paribus either:

We are in a time-unconstrained Universe in which priority(Urgent) > priority(Important). In such a Universe we would schedule Urgent tasks first.

OR

We are in a time-constrained Universe in which priority(Important) > priority(Urgent). In such a Universe we would schedule Important task first.

So which Universe are we in?

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#122

Post by freddex »

blobs wrote: post #93
verinus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But tbh our school system just teaches a baseline of abilities we think our youths should know. I honestly don't believe pupils are expected to know everything besides what was agreed on...

> But tbh our school system just teaches a baseline of abilities we think our youths should know. Just teaches? You mean forces upon children maybe? So what about being punished for not reaching that baseline? What do we learn from that? We learn so much more than the stuff in the textbooks. Our schools and surroundings teach us to be stupid about so many things, it's completely overlooked. If the result of schools w…

While school can and should be improved in many countries, I think it's not really fair to make it out as the root of all evil. That assumes school is an all powerful tool to mold children's minds, when there are so many environmental and genetic factors influencing behavior. As for the societal issues you mention: I think they all have massively complex root causes I couldn't do justice just in a HN comment. But in short: Can world peace be achieved through education? I don't see how.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#123

Post by AnimalMuppet »

newshorts wrote: post #95
77pt77 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Document, and shut up. > Document every time they say something false - time and date and medium, and exact words. Facts don't matter.

Right? Isn’t this a basic premise of the article? The person will resist the documented facts because they don’t align with their deeply held beliefs.

Their manager might care, though.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#124

Post by drawkbox »

mapcars wrote: post #80
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…

>Ego is needed to make you think you are better than others at something, eventhough initially you may not be. No, ego creates a sense of separation, competition you create on your own. >Without ego, people would be Marvin The Paranoid Android but depressed because we didn't have the capabilities or opportunities to compete No, without ego people would do fantastically great. At least they would not do silly competit…

I'd argue all your 'no' and corrections are directly from your ego competing.

The end part of my rant is how you use ego to separate yourself from self constructed walls and competition, and to not rely on motivation but rely on professionalism and discipline, the Stephen King quote exemplifies this.

> The rest is too messy to comment about :)

There is that ego again. You've got all the answers and I got it all wrong. You are right, competition you create on your own.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#125

Post by denton-scratch »

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.

Actually, I think the essence of the article is that ignorance is not an absence of mental contents, but a surplus of (wrong) mental contents (he repeatedly refers to 'clutter').

I found particularly interesting his evidence that the effect of education and training can be to increase your confidence in your wrong opinions, rather than reduce the prevalence of those opinions.

Once upon a time, I thought it would improve my driving to take advanced driving classes, and maybe do some practice in a skid-pan (it looks like fun). Now I realise that I'm just not wired to be a skillful driver; I'm not sufficiently risk-averse. Lessons would just make me more confident, and I would take bigger risks. Nowadays I cycle most places, and let my wife drive me to most other places.

I like Dunning's writing; he seems to be a funny man.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#126

Post by drawkbox »

playing_colours wrote: post #116
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?

Agreed. I am a traveler and we are all connected, everything has beauty.

Ego death from psychedelics is realizing ego is a tool, that it isn't truly you, just a tool or armor you use to navigate reality. We live in a self-interested world, people must have an ego or you get steamrolled by the machine and divided by walls. Ego can help you tear down the walls or ignore them entirely as they are the ego of the real world and others. It helps you realize the world is nothing, unless you make it something, unless you create it for yourself.

Ego is "a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance" and "the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity".

Awareness of ego is key, psychedelics help you recognize it is an abstraction to you.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#127

Post by dropit_sphere »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #119
heavenlyblue wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 meanin…

baller comment, just wanted to say

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#128

Post by platoscubicle »

playing_colours wrote: post #116
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?

It's called ego death and it can also be terrifying. I've tripped with people who thought they were dying because their subjective self identify was dissolving.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#129

Post by drawkbox »

blobs wrote: post #99
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. This far? You mean on the road to our complete extinction due to our incomparable stupidity? I sometimes feel truly ashamed to be a human. It's the ego that ruins it all, we could have been so much further. People should learn to be more humble and reject the desire for authority.

> People should learn to be more humble and reject the desire for authority.

Authoritarianism is a horrible force in the world. But it does not mean that ego does not exist, even in fighting against authority. Ego tells you to fight.

One needs an ego to know that authoritarians should be pushed back, walls should be torn down not constructed.

Awareness of ego is the first step in rejecting authority telling you what to do. Authoritarians have their ego tightly coupled to self, and don't realize it is an abstraction of self.

Authority should always be questioned and never trusted because the world operates on self-interest, that is the nature of the game.

Re: We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

#130

Post by heavenlyblue »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #119
heavenlyblue wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 meanin…

Well, if you know that every time you've built a mental model and it didn't work, isn't that logical to assume that _any_ mental model you can imagine isn't perfect and thus you can't empirically assume it will work all the time?

I hear your opinion of "logic" as "I have a passion for being right, and it makes me unhappy when I am not". Is that logical?

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