Love this. I have also come to distrust people who try to "educate" their way out of a need for common sense. Or who try to encourage others to do so. The world was built on common sense, and it worked quite well. And ever since everyone became educated and started arguing over the definitions of words, there are many things that have only gotten worse.
I had to reread that "bear with me" sentence 4 times, but I think I finally understand it. If our thinking was hideously and ineffectively irrational, we would have evolved out of it by now. Because it would be ineffective, ill adaptive. So, by definition, it isn't. In other words, we have intuition and common sense because they are useful across time. Because we must. The proof is that we're alive, in a world filled with more information than we can possibly contemplate.
"None of this implies there is anything fundamentally wrong with the way we perceive. It only implies that perception always takes place at different levels of resolution."
I think this is a great way to frame the real issue with perception. A bias is a weight that keeps you from moving straight. Referring to cognitive "biases" gives the impression that if we just removed them we would move steadily along the true path. That's not right. We don't come into the world with "bias" but rather low resolution. Growing in understanding is better conatrued as seeing things at higher and lower scales.
However, intuition can in fact be taught intellectually and there’s no other way to learn it if you didn’t come out with it to begin with - sorry but people still gotta learn stuff! I know it hurts the old noggin.
In order to develop intuition, I had to go through the unlikely and painful process of having a spiritual awakening, and then integrating the higher power as my source of all things. Now, the correct idea is flow into my head effortlessly.. but it definitely was not always this way. My unthinking intuition almost led me to ruin in the past.. perhaps you do not know what it is like to be betrayed by your own intuition, because you blindly place way too much faith in it. If you had been burned like me, you would be way smarter .
Or perhaps you were simply born with good intuition in which case congratulations but don’t think everybody is the same as you. Maybe that’s the first place Your intuition has failed.
Oh good catch. I always talked about the Dunning Kruger Effect but only adapted this graph recently. Funny how these memes spread like gossip. But it does ring true.
It touches on another phenomena Icall the mass spirit. The masses always get reduced to their lowest common denominator. Lots of commentary in sports or society is teinted by great pride. And overestimation of one's own merit.
Thank you, James, for bringing this topic back to our consciousness today.
The term Dunning-Kruger lends a scientific name and explanation to a problem that many people immediately recognize—that fools are blind to their own foolishness. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. As Charles Darwin wrote in his book The Descent of Man, "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."To say that the “average” American is not self-aware would be a legendary understatement.
Fed daily on a diet of lies by our government, social media, and the hoi polloi, most are simply too numbed in their overconfidence of what they believe. In fact, if one attempts to ever point out to an individual that most of what they believe is false, they are immediately labeled as a racist, conspiracy theorist, lunatic, or worse.
Being “stupid” in our society today is clearly an adaptive survival mechanism. Most simply want to “get by”.
I prefer to view this potential motivation (or lack thereof) as “cognitive inattentiveness.” That is, people dislike thinking more than they have to. It may stem from laziness, not paying attention, or not wanting to take the time to learn more. Whatever the case, they favor the quick-and-easy decision — even if they would have acted sensibly or altruistically had they been informed upfront.
If a person doesn’t know the consequences of their willful ignorance, the internal logic goes, then they still can consider themselves a morally upstanding individual even if they decide to act selfishly. Willful ignorance serves to protect their self-image.
And, as we all come to realize, everything is about the protection of the ego.
“Hoi polloi” means the common people you’re describing, not the elite misguiding them. Your point still stands.
One of the greatest evils of our time is the abuse of the good will of the “hoi polloi” who form the bedrock of functioning society by doing the dirty work. “To whom much is given, much is required.”
Love this. I have also come to distrust people who try to "educate" their way out of a need for common sense. Or who try to encourage others to do so. The world was built on common sense, and it worked quite well. And ever since everyone became educated and started arguing over the definitions of words, there are many things that have only gotten worse.
I had to reread that "bear with me" sentence 4 times, but I think I finally understand it. If our thinking was hideously and ineffectively irrational, we would have evolved out of it by now. Because it would be ineffective, ill adaptive. So, by definition, it isn't. In other words, we have intuition and common sense because they are useful across time. Because we must. The proof is that we're alive, in a world filled with more information than we can possibly contemplate.
"None of this implies there is anything fundamentally wrong with the way we perceive. It only implies that perception always takes place at different levels of resolution."
I think this is a great way to frame the real issue with perception. A bias is a weight that keeps you from moving straight. Referring to cognitive "biases" gives the impression that if we just removed them we would move steadily along the true path. That's not right. We don't come into the world with "bias" but rather low resolution. Growing in understanding is better conatrued as seeing things at higher and lower scales.
However, intuition can in fact be taught intellectually and there’s no other way to learn it if you didn’t come out with it to begin with - sorry but people still gotta learn stuff! I know it hurts the old noggin.
In order to develop intuition, I had to go through the unlikely and painful process of having a spiritual awakening, and then integrating the higher power as my source of all things. Now, the correct idea is flow into my head effortlessly.. but it definitely was not always this way. My unthinking intuition almost led me to ruin in the past.. perhaps you do not know what it is like to be betrayed by your own intuition, because you blindly place way too much faith in it. If you had been burned like me, you would be way smarter .
Or perhaps you were simply born with good intuition in which case congratulations but don’t think everybody is the same as you. Maybe that’s the first place Your intuition has failed.
Oh good catch. I always talked about the Dunning Kruger Effect but only adapted this graph recently. Funny how these memes spread like gossip. But it does ring true.
It touches on another phenomena Icall the mass spirit. The masses always get reduced to their lowest common denominator. Lots of commentary in sports or society is teinted by great pride. And overestimation of one's own merit.
Thank you, James, for bringing this topic back to our consciousness today.
The term Dunning-Kruger lends a scientific name and explanation to a problem that many people immediately recognize—that fools are blind to their own foolishness. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. As Charles Darwin wrote in his book The Descent of Man, "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."To say that the “average” American is not self-aware would be a legendary understatement.
Fed daily on a diet of lies by our government, social media, and the hoi polloi, most are simply too numbed in their overconfidence of what they believe. In fact, if one attempts to ever point out to an individual that most of what they believe is false, they are immediately labeled as a racist, conspiracy theorist, lunatic, or worse.
Being “stupid” in our society today is clearly an adaptive survival mechanism. Most simply want to “get by”.
I prefer to view this potential motivation (or lack thereof) as “cognitive inattentiveness.” That is, people dislike thinking more than they have to. It may stem from laziness, not paying attention, or not wanting to take the time to learn more. Whatever the case, they favor the quick-and-easy decision — even if they would have acted sensibly or altruistically had they been informed upfront.
If a person doesn’t know the consequences of their willful ignorance, the internal logic goes, then they still can consider themselves a morally upstanding individual even if they decide to act selfishly. Willful ignorance serves to protect their self-image.
And, as we all come to realize, everything is about the protection of the ego.
“Hoi polloi” means the common people you’re describing, not the elite misguiding them. Your point still stands.
One of the greatest evils of our time is the abuse of the good will of the “hoi polloi” who form the bedrock of functioning society by doing the dirty work. “To whom much is given, much is required.”