Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Saturday, January 2. 2016

Tolerance for ambiguity


I think tolerance for ambiguity, mixed feelings, skepticism, self-doubt, and uncertainty must be part of aging, perhaps part of wisdom.


What's your tolerance of ambiguity?  Tolerance For Ambiguity


My score was 79, but I don't know what that means. Is 100 high tolerance for ambiguity?



Posted by The News Junkie in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:43 | Comments (15) | Trackback (1)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

PingBack
Weblog: www.thepiratescove.us
Tracked: Jan 03, 09:31

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Right.

A high score is higher tolerance for ambiguity. I confirmed that by changing the answer for Q.2 and recalculating the score.
#1 APR on 2016-01-02 17:33 (Reply)
Great, the real test of tolerance of ambiguity was not letting the ambiguity over what the score meant bother you.
#1.1 JK Brown on 2016-01-02 19:18 (Reply)
You have to have a certain tolerance for ambiguity to answer some of those ambiguous questions. An expert who can't give you a definite answer probably doesn't know too much? Define "too much". Too much to give you a definite answer? And do you mean that literally or in the colloquial sense of "doesn't know very much"?

Is it possible to get more done working on small problems than large? Sure, I agree completely - but my strongly agreeing that it's possible does not necessarily mean I think it highly or even remotely probable.

Many of our big decisions are based on insufficient information? Insufficient for what? Making a decision? Obviously not. "Do you want what's in the box or what's behind the curtain" was sufficient information for the contestants on Let's Make A Deal for years. It wasn't sufficient information to make a good decision, but the question doesn't specify.

Half the questions in the survey are ambiguous if you make a game of nitpicking test questions as I do.
#2 Jerryskids on 2016-01-02 19:00 (Reply)
I wasn't tolerant of the questionnaire.
#3 Sam L. on 2016-01-02 21:24 (Reply)
Agreed. I stopped halfway through because the questions were so stupid. They aren't measuring what they think they are.
#3.1 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2016-01-02 22:03 (Reply)
Whatever the test is supposed to show, there's no doubt that an intolerance for ambiguity is at the very heart of every nutty conspiracy theory.

"Well, you see, that’s the difference between truth and fiction: fiction has to make sense."

- Armin Mueller-Stahl as the ex-Stasi colonel in The International
#4 JJM on 2016-01-03 08:38 (Reply)
Q 14 reminded me of the time I took an English 357 course (Shakespeare and Milton). The prof would assign essays thusly. "Write a five hundred word essay on the structure and texture of Act three, scene two of Macbeth." I welcomed the assignments but others complained loudly. We all know what kind of students they were? BTW, this was back in the sixties.
#5 Capt. Craig (Link) on 2016-01-03 10:15 (Reply)
"Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity".
- Sigmund Freud

But then, Freud wasn't an engineer. You Americans didn't put a man on the moon with abstract definitions, poorly written instructions, inaccurate information, and test results that were not quantifiable.
#6 Karl Horst (Germany) on 2016-01-03 10:54 (Reply)
You Americans didn't put a man on the moon with abstract definitions, poorly written instructions, inaccurate information, and test results that were not quantifiable.

Well, no. For example, a computer isn't a computer, it's an MDM -Multiplexer/De-multiplexer. Air conditioners are Common Cabin Air Assemblies (CCAA). LCA for example can mean Lab Cradle Assembly, Loop Crossover Assembly, or the Load Control Assembly.

Every organization has its own language that is indecipherable to somebody who is not with that system - like speaking French to somebody who only speaks Khoisan (click language). Sometimes its intentional in that a obfuscates - like calling a hammer a Small Object Injection Device or a screw a helical inclined plane wrapped around a solid core axis.
#6.1 Tom Francis on 2016-01-03 22:22 (Reply)
I scored a 55 but then I am just a backwards rube from flyover country.
#7 feeblemind on 2016-01-03 11:02 (Reply)
scored 43
who did worse
what does this make me
who cares its just stupid stuff so that some professor can keep his stupid job
sort of like a government job- worthless
#8 jake on 2016-01-03 11:23 (Reply)
"higher score indicates a greater intolerance for ambiguity." The various articles seem to indicate a consensus that the test is of no particular utility which didn't stop scads of people leaping to all sorts of unjustified conclusions. Par for the course.
#9 RP on 2016-01-03 14:18 (Reply)
No RP. If you were totally intolerant of ambiguity your best score would be 32.
#9.1 Capt. Craig (Link) on 2016-01-03 16:26 (Reply)
Since we are doing silly tests, here is one that checks your reaction time. I tried it maybe 6 times. My best time was my first and equated to a 30 year old. My worst equaled a 41 year old. 34 happened the most. Not too bad for a 60 year old I guess.

https://www.justpark.com/creative/reaction-time-test/
#10 feeblemind on 2016-01-03 16:47 (Reply)
Now you got me doing it. Got my best scores by looking off-screen and using my peripheral vison.
#10.1 Estoy Listo on 2016-01-05 22:25 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.