You Are Not So Smart

[snousle]

Very interesting blog concerning misconceptions about cognition. Nothing terribly new to me, but the writing style is great, and there's lots of links to illustrative studies. Some sharp quotables, too. To wit:


The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Misconception: The more talented you are, the more confident you become.

The Truth: The more experience you gain, the more modest and humble you become, but the less skill you have in a certain field, the more you will overestimate your expertise....

...Have you ever wondered why people with advanced degrees in climate science or biology don’t get online and debate global warming or evolution, yet mouth breathing dipshits will write 30 paragraphs about the real age of the Earth?

The less you know about a subject, the less you believe there is to know in total. Only once you have some experience do you start to recognize the breadth and depth you have yet to plunder.


The sentence in bold is something I've been noticing quite a lot lately, and it's what is behind a lot of bad decision-making by amateurs. The reason it is so easy for the media to sway public opinion is because many complicated subjects become represented in their entirety by very small facets of that subject; its totality is never exposed.

(What happened to the rest of that Gaza aid flotilla, anyway? Doesn't a flotilla normally contain more than one boat?)

Comments

How can you reply to this?!?

[h0gwash.livejournal.com]

This is one reason I use h0gwash as a screen name. Anything I say is stripped of pretense and exists on its own merit. Besides, I make a pretty good humble pie, so I don't mind eating it.

Re: How can you reply to this?!?

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when you focus on facts rather than opinions, and serving people rather than telling them things, most of these issues go away.

What is interesting is that the blowhard persona has gained so much power in this country. Hard to know what to think about that, it seems to me that media these days is more about stroking people's egos in this particular way than it is about actually informing them. Keep 'em dumb and happy.

Re: How can you reply to this?!?

[h0gwash.livejournal.com]

IMHO, there are topics where facts are less important than imagination. Here you're always susceptible to ridicule, but if you accept it, you can still possibly have a meaningful conversation. Art and religion come to mind.

[zbear20.livejournal.com]

It is a missing part of the story. Everything I read said there were six shops in the flotilla and one was attacked. No mention of the other five though after you mentioned this I've only done a cursory search. I'm sure the answer is out there, unlike the truth from the Israeli government. That, I fear, we will never find.

[gloeden.livejournal.com]

So very true. That's why I generally don't discuss economics. Well, that and the fact that almost nobody wants to discuss it. Which is fine with me.
Because it seems like either people treat it like it's bullshit meant to confuse and trick, or that it's easily understood by anyone with "common sense".
On the internet, this is especially the case. I can't tell you how many people, seemingly intelligent or mouth-breather, that economics is as dynamic as human beings because it is so much about social interactions and societal beliefs as it is about transferring money. It's easy to pronounce a prescriptive for "solving" inflation or recessions. But you can't "prove" that this or that will work. You can only ever guess and hope. But god forbid anybody actually understands that.

[kevynjacobs.livejournal.com]

(What happened to the rest of that Gaza aid flotilla, anyway? Doesn't a flotilla normally contain more than one boat?)

Uhhhh... the story I got (from Democracy Now!) is that all of the boats in the floatilla were boarded, but fatalities only occurred on one. One boat even tried to flee, but was overtaken anyway.

[jstregyr.livejournal.com]

snousel writes: "The more experience you gain, the more modest and humble you become..."

So true. It's why I don't even debate points of molecular biology online unless I'm really sure of my facts (or check them out offline). Fortunately, I'm wise enough to recognize this w.r.t. other fields of study so I never shoot my mouth off in those arguements, either. Of course, this means I almost never post/debate online for anything.

Your bringing up the DK Effect reminds me of this bit of dialogue in the very bad SF movie Armageddon:

General Kimsey: "Why don't we just send up a hundred and fifty nuclear warheads and blast that rock apart?"
Dr Quincy: "Terrible idea."
General Kimsey: "Was I talkin' to you?"
Truman [with a sardonic drawl]: "This is Dr. Ronald Quincy from Research. Pretty much the smartest man on the planet. You might wanna listen to him."

[danthered.livejournal.com]

A(r)⁵gh, the Gaza thing. Great example of this effect you are describing. I look askance at the fervor with which people over here rush to take a side on this over-there issue based on their prejudice and bias (and the 3rd-, 4th-, and higher-order-hand reports that filter out of the region), then back and fill to shrilly support their positions with selectively perceived and assembled facts and anecdotes.

Then there is this kind of smug, proudly ignorant drivel, which is a hideously common variety of the effect. It is the stock in trade of Limbaugh, Beck, Bush, Palin, and the whole of the tea party crowd.

[dhpbear.livejournal.com]

Wow! This asshat actually misspells "'cus" as "cuss" :)

[danthered.livejournal.com]

A misspelling of a misspelling, how excellent is that?