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.

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Wednesday, June 28. 2017

QQQ

‘Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.’


Charles Darwin, via an Aeon piece on the Dunning-Kruger Effect (how poorly-informed people tend to over-estimate their competence, while the best-informed tend to doubt themselves)



Interestingly, really smart people also fail to accurately self-assess their abilities. As much as D- and F-grade students overestimate their abilities, A-grade students underestimate theirs. In their classic study, Dunning and Kruger found that high-performing students, whose cognitive scores were in the top quartile, underestimated their relative competence. 


Moral: Self-doubt is always a rational position, and a good foundation for a realistic self-confidence. Maggie's Farmers tend towards wholesome skepticism about everything, including oneself. 
Posted by Bird Dog in Quotidian Quotable Quote (QQQ) at 17:21 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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The footnotes in the Dunning and Kruger paper are fascinating. The underperforming, incompetent student population consisted of one student counted 17 times, three times as female, 12 as male and twice as unknown. Labeled only as "Zachriel."
#1 mike m on 2017-06-28 19:55 (Reply)
The larger the circle of my knowledge is, the larger is my perimeter of ignorance.

And the unknown unknowns spread far beyond that.
#2 James the lesser (Link) on 2017-06-28 22:15 (Reply)
Exactly, the more you know, the more you realize what you don't know or can't know.
#2.1 Exasperated on 2017-06-29 07:03 (Reply)
You have to admit though that knowledge is fun!
#2.1.1 Dorf on 2017-06-29 09:24 (Reply)
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. Socrates
#3 treefroggy on 2017-06-29 09:46 (Reply)
I wonder how much of today's conventional wisdom on psychological matters is based solely on observation (I won't call this stuff research) of college students, as if those immature boneheads represent all of mankind?
#4 BillH on 2017-06-29 10:07 (Reply)
The great advantage of knowing nothing is the life-time of learn it leads to.
#5 Estoy Listo on 2017-06-29 10:28 (Reply)

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