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Confirmation bias
  • brianlbrianl

    Vitaliy talks about this a lot, our desire to fulfill a particular narrative. Thisis a decent summary for any interested. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/lessons-from-dunning-kruger/

    In 1999 psychologist David Dunning and his graduate student Justin Kruger published a paper in which they describe what has come to be known (appropriately) as the Dunning-Kruger effect. In a recent article discussing his now famous paper, Dunning summarizes the effect as:

    “…incompetent people do not recognize—scratch that, cannot recognize—just how incompetent they are,”

    He further explains:

  • 16 Replies sorted by
  • bwhitzbwhitz

    Interesting, and very real... yet pragmatically irrelevant. Since it's always the "others" who have confirmation bias, never yourself.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    image

    Chart from older post from raw topic.

  • karlkarl

    Does "No nothing" mean "something" or "everything"? :-)

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    No nothing means fucking idiot.

  • johnnymossvillejohnnymossville

    I think when you get into the middle of this curve, you can definitely see where others are on the curve compared to yourself. You see a lot of recent college graduates on the far left of this graph and most people are somewhere in the middle. Politicians generally hover over there on the left. :)

  • goannagoanna

    Does "No nothing" mean "something" or "everything"? :-)

    Typo. Or possibly dictation error. It should probably write, " Know nothing"

  • goannagoanna

    Topic title , "Confirmation Bias" is misleading.

  • brianlbrianl

    presumably it should say "Know nothing" Love that chart btw. The smartest docs I've know, and I've know some of the best, often answer science questions with a shrug. They know that they don't know.

  • markussenmarkussen

    "overeducated non-skilled"
    a skill need time and practise to devellop, develloping the skill will make you respect the effort the skilled people invested to become skilled. just knowledge will lead you into chaos, bureacracy, complexity +++++ Dont make simple things complicated! "the more you know, the more you realice how little you know!"

  • DouglasHornDouglasHorn

    The Dunning-Kruger effect has rocked my confidence in all things. I constantly wonder if I'm actually any good at something (that I think I'm good at) or just exuberantly overconfident due to the Dunning-Kruger effect. I find myself ever in search of outside validation because my belief in myself could just be the damning proof that I actually don't have a clue.

    That said, I'm pretty sure that this is different than confirmation bias which pertains to interpreting ambiguous data preferentially toward confirming an existing belief. Right?

  • brianlbrianl

    DouglasHorn, yes I didn't give this thread the best title. But for me, there is connective tissue between DK and CB because people instinctively look for narrative in all things random. Dunning Krueger is a good example of a narrative with substantial gravitational pull that we're inclined to accept regardless of the truth of the situation.

  • DouglasHornDouglasHorn

    I think of DK as due to "You don't know what you don't know." Beginners with limited exposure tend to oversimplify a subject and therefore come to the conclusion that they know all they need to (and are awesome). As people are exposed to more, they realize the depth of their ignorance. At some point they realize just how much there still is to learn and their confidence reaches its nadir. Eventually they learn more, see others behind them on the curve, have some success, etc and their confidence increases.

    I think to explain this via CB, you're talking about a person opening up with the irrational assumption that they must be good at something and then looking at every piece of data not totally to the contrary as confirmation of this. That doesn't really match my observations of the DK effect.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Beginners with limited exposure tend to oversimplify a subject and therefore come to the conclusion that they know all they need to (and are awesome). As people are exposed to more, they realize the depth of their ignorance.

    Beginners are not the main issue. Main issue is people who are exposed long time to very limited amount of information and who make such stupid statements without understanding their limitations that you want to kill yourself.

  • brianlbrianl

    DouglasHorn I might be biased from reading too much stuff on the internet. So many people argue from these rigid ideological models. It's scary how so many are in lock step with each other. One reason I appreciate VK is his views typically don't fit the familiar paradigms that have choked sensible discussions on the internet. I do agree with the article though about the connection between CB and DK, though there's plenty of space here for your view that it's not about pre existing paradigms. Probably a mix of the two.

    What I think Dunning is describing above, a conclusion with which I completely agree, are the various components of confirmation bias. As we try to make sense of the world we work with our existing knowledge and paradigms, we formulate ideas and then systematically seek out information that confirms those ideas. We dismiss contrary information as exceptions. We interpret ambiguous experiences in line with our theories. We remember and then our memories tweak any experience that seems to confirm what we believe.

  • DouglasHornDouglasHorn

    @brianl - Sure. I can't argue with that. I think there's plenty of room for both to be true.

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev - Yes, I've seen that as well. I think people like that are still beginners, they've just allowed themselves to stagnate at the starting line for a LONG time. (Probably due to confirmation bias. ...see what I did there?)

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Important note:

    Every learning course for unqualified staff must set as main goal to let them understand themselves how unqualified they are. Without it any other progress is impossible. But such understanding itself is not enough for real progress, they also usually need kick in the ass.

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