[HN Gopher] Intermediate sci knowledge associated with overconfi...
___________________________________________________________________
Intermediate sci knowledge associated with overconfidence and
negative attitudes
Author : taylorbuley
Score : 203 points
Date : 2023-09-14 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Once the activation energy can be maintained (basic skill and
| consistency) the learning curve is the steepest at the beginning
| of any given field; the setbacks are still rare and surmountable
| (and just mostly add to the confidence). But the human mind is
| only able to suffer a finite amount of beating and at one point
| your perceived competence level will collapse dramatically,
| overcorrecting in the opposite direction.
|
| However, the reward structure of overconfidence can be used to
| maintain the momentum and once you hit the hard wall of
| insurmountable incompetence congratulate yourself that you
| actually walked the path of knowing _practically_ nothing.
|
| It's the hardest thing to fully admit one's own ignorance and
| easy to see all around you, it's only when the giant
| rationalization machine buzzing inside is finally fully
| exhausted; for a brief moment the crushing vastness of the
| unknown pours in.
|
| So in a way overconfidence is just unused fuel. Use it wisely.
| not_enoch_wise wrote:
| Exactly why I developed advanced sci knowledge, so my
| narcissistic confidence and anti-social attitude can be defended!
| davidktr wrote:
| full paper here: // deleted. Looks like my choice of an anonymous
| file hoster was inappropriate.
| bagels wrote:
| researchgate has it:
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362183387_Knowledge...
|
| You can click on "Read Full Text"
|
| Also here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo0038
| malf wrote:
| This page tries to send expensive SMS messages.
| bagels wrote:
| Site doesn't look legitimate. Risky click.
| xamuel wrote:
| I feel like this has been part of the latent background memetic
| knowledgebase for many years now:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit/photos/
| maxwell wrote:
| Alexander Pope was right.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm 100% guilty of this. I try not to be, but hey.
|
| There's different levels:
|
| 1. The guy who reads the title of the journal article.
|
| 2. The guy who reads the abstract of the journal article.
|
| 3. The guy who reads the text of the article.
|
| 4. The guy who's read all the other significant research in the
| field and can put it in context alongside their own personal
| experience as a practitioner.
|
| I'm #2, and I strive to be #3. It's really hard to be #4,
| especially for more than one domain.
| not_enoch_wise wrote:
| That's why I skip even reading the title, and get right to
| mocking other commenters.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| #2.5 someone who lets Karpathy explain it all :-)
| naniwaduni wrote:
| 0.5. The guy who reads the press release for the journal
| article!
|
| (0.2. The guy who reads the title of the news article for the
| journal article on HN and proceeds straight to the comment
| section...)
| riccardomc wrote:
| You claim you're a #2.5 which is intermediate. So according to
| the article you might very well be an overconfident #1,
| instead...
|
| You should probably add a "5. don't know" option and check that
| one...
| jrflowers wrote:
| #3.5: The guy who skims the text of the article with just
| enough effort and time to be proven correct about their opinion
| of the article's title
|
| This is an incredibly common guy
| antisthenes wrote:
| #3 is pretty orthogonal.
|
| There's a reason abstracts exist, and they usually provide
| enough information as to whether the paper discovered any
| significant findings, so whether it's worth reading at all.
|
| If you are #1, #2 and in #2 you include reading not just the
| paper but the meta-analysis papers of the field, that already
| puts you ahead of 95% of the general public.
|
| Not even scientists themselves are full #3 people. It's just
| impossible, considering the amount of work that exists in the
| field, and considering that most studies just confirm existing
| findings from 10-20-50 years ago.
| biomcgary wrote:
| As a scientist, I've seen lots of people who are overconfident in
| both themselves and overconfident in science. IMO, a good PhD
| science program helps students master a discipline, but also to
| recognize the limits of the discipline.
|
| For example, 23andMe thought they would revolutionize drug
| development with a huge genetics dataset. In practice, genetic
| information _alone_ is not sufficient to treat the majority of
| diseases that affect individuals and society. There is too much
| environmental variation affecting human biology for purely
| genetic approaches.
|
| Understanding the real limits of knowledge is vital to pushing
| knowledge forward where we can. As a biologist, one of the things
| I most appreciate about Sabine Hossenfelder (a physicist) is that
| she highlights the limits of knowledge in her (and adjacent)
| fields. She gets a lot of push back (and is sometimes wrong), but
| having the discussion is vital to science.
|
| Acknowledging the limits of science is not a negative attitude
| about science, but a positive one. A clear idea of the current
| limits of science (both theoretically and practically) is
| instrumental to pushing through them. For example, the scholarly
| papers highlighting the replication crisis
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) are actually
| very useful to maintaining the health of science as a human
| endeavor, not a critique of science. Scientists need a clear
| understanding of the scientific foundations that they are
| building on.
| eh_why_not wrote:
| > As a scientist, I've seen lots of people who are
| overconfident in both themselves and overconfident in science.
|
| I feel that I've never had the first problem, but have
| definitely had the second.
|
| On one hand, there is the natural limitation of Science itself
| in terms of the type of questions (that are amenable to the
| scientific method) it can answer. On the other hand, it is
| still the best way of generating knowledge that we have.
|
| My overconfidence was that scientists, as individuals and as a
| community, would always do the right thing, driven by, and
| honestly following, the scientific method. But in the past few
| years I've had to revisit this assumption several times and be
| reminded to always retain some healthy skepticism.
|
| Most recent example is this climate scientist who just
| published in Nature, and then went ahead afterwards and penned
| an op-ed [0] saying he actually misrepresented the actual
| factors in order to get published.
|
| [0] https://www.thefp.com/p/i-overhyped-climate-change-to-get-
| pu...
| perfect-blue wrote:
| > My overconfidence was that scientists, as individuals and
| as a community, would always do the right thing...
|
| This is a great point. I'm shocked by how often I end up
| working on a project with a colleague who is taking the path
| of least resistance. In my field, this usually results in
| using decades old statistical methods than have been proven
| time and time again to be unsatisfactory. They just don't
| want to learn new methods or their technical expertise aren't
| good enough to learn how to implement the new approaches. So
| they just coast. I'm not sure what to do in these situations
| other than just try and set a positive example.
| dekhn wrote:
| 23&Me failed in drug development because they started from a
| mistaken premise- that the data they collected (very
| specifically, genotype arrays) would produce data that was
| correlated with human health closely enough to identify targets
| (proteins or pathways to disrupt/modify). They have a huge
| genetics dataset, they don't have a huge genomics dataset, and
| the underlying relationship between the genome and phenotypes
| (especially complex disease phenotypes) is a highly nonlinear
| function.
|
| Environment is important but we could still have huge
| improvements in medical care using genomics. It's easy to
| obtain and still has a very strong relationship to disease, and
| is a problem best solved by deep learning. I've watched people
| tilt against this windmill for 25+ years and it's kind of funny
| just how bad our labelling of diseases is.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Excellent point. I work at a biotech startup where one major
| focus is "how do we fix the disease labels?". I call it the
| pyrite problem (your gold standard data contains fools gold),
| but it is known more prosaically as the mislabeling problem.
| crabmusket wrote:
| > Acknowledging the limits of science is not a negative
| attitude about science, but a positive one. A clear idea of the
| current limits of science (both theoretically and practically)
| is instrumental to pushing through them.
|
| "The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, all things to us,
| but in the course of time through seeking we may learn and know
| things better. But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
| nor shall he know it, neither of the gods Nor yet of all the
| things of which I speak. For even if by chance he were to utter
| the final truth, he would himself not know it: for all is but a
| woven web of guesses"
|
| Xenophanes
| f1shy wrote:
| The most over confident in theirselves and science people I
| know are PhD. With egos and arrogance greater than the solar
| system. People that go early to the industry and see the "real
| world" tend to have a more tamed expectative of what they could
| achieve and science can offer.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Ironically, you are taking this study at face value. This study
| reminds me of the "Republicans tend to be sociopaths more
| often" study. That ended up being completely refuted.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I find that coloquially we use the term "science" in several
| distinct meanings, two of which are:
|
| 1. Science as the body of knowledge
|
| 2. Science as a method / approach
|
| I also find that mixing the meanings/perspectives/intent up in
| a single conversation is common, sometimes accidentally
| sometimes intentionally.
|
| In my ignorance (ComSci major, so not a real science :), I
| would describe myself as extremely positive / confident to
| "Science, the approach/method" and, _through_ that approach,
| pragmatic about the "Science the current body of knowledge".
|
| In other words:
|
| Yes, there are very much limits to what we currently know, and
| some of what we think we know will turn out to be wrong, subtly
| or catastrophically. There are definitely huge limits and
| uncertainties to Science the body of knowledge!
|
| But, acknowledging it is kinda the point, and the best way to
| figure it out that we are currently aware of is through
| scientific approach. (I've just realized I might even have
| become a zealot that you describe, because I can't even figure
| out what a _plausible & feasible_ alternative method is, if
| your goals are to actually figure things out. To that point, I
| find humility and skepticism about your current science body of
| knowledge a crucial part of science the method, something which
| most other methods lack).
|
| I find distinction is crucial especially in political and
| religious discussion frameworks. Otherwise, I never know if I
| agree or disagree with statements regarding "limits of science"
| etc.
|
| (This is all further mixed up by zillion of daily popular
| articles where "Science says that [...]!!!" or "[...],
| scientists find", which... ugh, oversimplify at best and
| deceive more likely)
|
| What are your thoughts?
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| "" > I would describe myself as extremely positive /
| confident to "Science, the >approach/method ""
|
| But what does that actually mean? How do you manifest this in
| your daily life and in your decisions?
|
| My grandmother told me God told me I heard on the news
|
| Well, that does not seem scientific nor following the tenants
| of science. But how can you evaluate information you receive
| that is called science and in so far as you know from a
| source of a scientist. Esp. these days in the US everything
| is incredibly politicized.
|
| There is no way to dig deep enough into every tidbit of
| knowledge we are exposed to. A lot of scientific fields these
| days are so complicated that you need a degree to start
| understanding what is going on or to evaluate data.
|
| If we are lucky we know a few people in different fields whom
| we trust. We trust the people to we trust what the say, since
| they are scientists. We all walk around and -believe- in
| various things we hear and elect not to believe in others.
| Then we claim that we believe in this or that "because of
| science". and because of the scientific method. But we dont
| know that for a fact because we dont know and probably could
| not understand all the steps from beginning to end needed to
| ensure that the scientific model had been applied
| appropriately at all stages.
|
| I dont think real science should state "THIS IS TRUTH BECAUSE
| THIS IS SCIENCE" it should be "This is our best understanding
| right now, and there are some other theories out there that
| may also be valid."
| cowpig wrote:
| I think the parent comment specifically means coming up
| with a falsifiable hypothesis and testing it, as opposed to
| the "body of knowledge" part you are talking about.
| biomcgary wrote:
| I think your distinction between 1 and 2 is very important
| (but, as a computational biologist, I disagree about CompSci
| not being science :-).
|
| Along these lines, I think the role of consensus in science
| has been overly dramatized by those with various policies to
| push. Max Planck's principle is famous in the short form
| "Science progresses one funeral at a time". One of the
| professors I worked with as a graduate student had a sign on
| his desk, "First They Ignore You, Then They Laugh at You,
| Then They Attack You, Then You Win".
|
| These two quotes captures an important tension in the
| practice of science: consensus both retards the progress of
| science and captures it for others to build on.
| mcguire wrote:
| Retarding the progress of science is sometimes (often?) a
| good thing.
|
| Many people regard Einstein's later career as fruitless,
| but by attacking quantum mechanics, he improved its
| foundations as well as making it much more acceptable.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| There is also:
|
| 3. Science the institution.
|
| As in "What Science says about X" as if there was a single
| authoritative, coherent entity we could call Science.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| It is frequently used that way, and I suppose I didn't
| include it because I feel it's an incorrect usage... but
| I'd have to agree with you that it might even be the most
| common :-/
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This is often what is meant when the lay person uses
| "science" or "scientists" in a (usually) derogatory way.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| The science of computing is a real science.
| seanr88 wrote:
| I'd agree with this although I understand where the idea
| comes from. It is difficult for people to understand what
| is and is not a science and it is easy to think that
| computer science is not a science even when you study it.
|
| The way we learn and study topics is divorced from the
| original method of discovering those topics. The way people
| learn Computer Science is generally by absorbing the
| information, not by doing the experiments. So it is
| difficult for people to understand that the way we have
| this knowledge is through hypothesis forming and
| experimentation i.e. Science.
| Ankaios wrote:
| Not much of "computer science" is actual science. Some of
| CS is mathematics, some is engineering, and some is arts
| and crafts.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I think there is a third definition of "science":
|
| 3. What is actually happening in academia
|
| I think most people exposed to science#3 from the inside can
| agree that science#2 works - and indeed works surprisingly
| well - _despite_ science#3, not _because of it_.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Agreed; I have a few friends who quit academia, and few who
| stayed. Some of their experiences are hope-inspiring, some
| are depressing. Same for those in government employ.
|
| But I don't think as academia as the only, or even
| _necessarily_ the most important place that science is
| happening in the world today.
| jltsiren wrote:
| I often trust science as a social process more than the
| scientific method.
|
| The scientific method works best in fields such as physics
| and chemistry, where you have an established model of
| reality. The model has been extensively tested and
| validated, and you can use it to design experiments that
| will likely test what they are supposed to, taking all
| relevant factors into account.
|
| Other fields, particularly those that are most affected by
| the replication crisis, study phenomena that are too
| complex for such comprehensive models. Instead of testing
| established mechanisms, such fields often use the
| scientific method to investigate black boxes. Designing
| experiments is harder, because it's not clear if you are
| measuring the right things in the right way, or which
| factors could plausibly affect the results. You may not
| even be sure if the mechanisms the experiments rely on
| actually exist and if they are properly understood.
|
| I like to think that the replication crisis is the social
| process trying to deal with the issues resulting from
| overreliance on the scientific method. When you can't rely
| on an established body of knowledge, a focus on the method
| takes your attention away from questioning your assumptions
| and understanding them.
| tivert wrote:
| > I think there is a third definition of "science":
|
| > 3. What is actually happening in academia
|
| While we're enumerating, I think there's a fourth
| definition:
|
| 4. "Science" as a belief system rather than as a
| tool/technology. I think in this respect, there's often an
| unacknowledged (or denied) blurring between science and
| science fiction (the more traditional "spaceship books"
| kind, as well as overconfident speculation). There's also a
| tendency to claim the prestige and authority of science for
| one's own personal opinions and preferences.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I think the word "Scientism" (also) covers that one ?
| mcpackieh wrote:
| According to wiktionary, 'scientism' has these meanings:
|
| _1. The belief that the scientific method and the
| assumptions and research methods of the physical sciences
| are applicable to all other disciplines (such as the
| humanities and social sciences), or that those other
| disciplines are not as valuable._
|
| _2. The belief that all truth is exclusively discovered
| through science._
|
| Maybe the second definition kind of fits if you stretch
| it. I think 'futurism', not in the sense of the artistic
| movement, is a closer fit; _' 2. The study and prediction
| of possible futures.'_
| mistermann wrote:
| Believe it or not, I have had more than one person tell
| me with sincerity that observing the contents of a box is
| "doing science", I imagine because they believe that
| science is actually the only way to acquire knowledge.
|
| Meanwhile, these people mock the religious [in their
| imagination] for "being" insular/fundamentalist.
| T-A wrote:
| _"When you break an egg and scramble it you are doing
| cosmology," said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the
| California Institute of Technology._
|
| [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15brain.html
| mathematicaster wrote:
| Top comment.
|
| My adjacent refrain is "Science is not the same as people
| trying to do science".
| mistermann wrote:
| Scientists trying to do science _is a component of_ broad
| science, is it not?
| [deleted]
| biomcgary wrote:
| The work of philosophers and sociologists of science,
| Kuhn and Feyerabend in particular, support this
| perspective.
| mistermann wrote:
| I would add:
|
| 3. Science, _the mass psychological phenomenenon_.
|
| Like many ideologies it behaves a lot like a religion, and
| online discussions are chock full of artifacts.
|
| In my case, I have a negative view of "science" because of
| this phenomenological aspect of it, which I consider
| dangerous because it results in irrational, tribal thinking
| (see: covid, climate change, etc)...and it ain't only the
| "deniers" who are guilty.
|
| > Yes, there are very much limits to what we currently know,
| and some of what we think we know will turn out to be wrong,
| subtly or catastrophically. There are definitely huge limits
| and uncertainties to Science the body of knowledge!
|
| > But, acknowledging it is kinda the point, _and the best way
| to figure it out that we are currently aware of is through
| scientific approach._
|
| Pro-science people absolutely love this meme, I encounter it
| several times a day in the online spaces I frequent.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| What's important is not what you think. More important is
| what other people think, even though their observations are
| at fault no differently than your own. What's most important
| is how you measure compared to other people, as everything
| else is a biased faulty guess.
|
| Younger people are more at risk of getting this wrong because
| their scope of knowledge and experience are shallower.
| Introspection grows with age, but when introspection is not
| deliberate older people are more catastrophically at risk of
| getting this wrong.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Scientific hubris is foundational marketing for what is
| necessarily random results.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFTyJDjfjG0
|
| =)
| threeseed wrote:
| I can imagine it's not just restricted to scientific knowledge.
|
| And having met many of these types of people they all seem to
| share one trait: definitiveness.
|
| Everything is black/white and there is always a "right" answer or
| approach where as people with little knowledge and those who are
| experts tend to be nuanced and flexible.
| gobdovan wrote:
| Maybe that's why all the major materials on climate change I find
| are sociological, focusing on people's perception on it and on
| agreement between experts rather than the actual subject -
|
| It's so I don't get intermediate knowledge and become skeptical
| to my own dismay.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I blame Carl Sagan[1]. Carl Sagan was the Martin Luther of
| science communication. He showed us how you could figure out the
| size of the Earth just by measuring shadows at noon. He showed a
| vessel full of gases creating the precursors of life with just a
| little electricity. He reduced the history of the universe to a 1
| hour PBS show. In short, he made science understandable to
| anyone.
|
| But just as the Reformation led to faith-healing and megachurch
| preachers, Sagan's teachings made it seem as if anyone could be a
| scientist. As long as a chain of reasoning made sense to you,
| then it was true!
|
| Take something like whether the earth goes around the sun. Sagan
| showed how Mars sometimes moves backwards in the sky, and he
| implies that this can only happen in a heliocentric model. In
| reality, of course, you need much more evidence to come up with
| the correct model. It wasn't until Newton could predict orbits
| from simple equations that there was no longer any doubt.
|
| But watching Sagan you get the idea that if you can just come up
| with ONE piece of evidence for whatever you believe, then that's
| enough to prove it! This is why flat-earthers rely on meme-like
| "evidence" that takes effort to refute.
|
| In the end, it's a trade-off. Do you want people to just trust
| authority or do you want people to think for themselves? If we
| want the latter (which I think we do) then we have to put up with
| those who are wrong.
|
| -----
|
| [1] I love Carl Sagan. He was a huge influence on me, and I think
| he benefited society, even if I think his teachings also
| (ironically) stoked some pseudoscience.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Lol, this is a great comment.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It makes me think of the Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia
| episode where Dennis hypocritically appeals to authority in an
| effort to disprove creationism. The valuable point the skit
| makes is that there is a sort of "cult of science" where people
| mistake faith for reason and you have a bunch of science
| "believers" who dont realize it. Of course this is not what
| science really is.
|
| Personally, I have always been irked by phrases like "Science
| say" as if science itself is a centralized institution rather
| than a collection of people applying the scientific method.
|
| In a similar vein, I sometimes see posts of some natural
| phenomena (like ants changing colors after drinking dyed water)
| with captions like "Isnt science cool?" Im still trying to
| figure out why this irks me but its weird to imply science
| somehow caused this.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| I was just mentioning to a friend of mine, a lady in her late
| 60s early 70s about spiders using electrostatics to travel.
|
| https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.102.0.
| ..
|
| And she remarked, "isn't evolution amazing! It figured out so
| many things"
|
| When someone says "Isn't science cool?", they are saying lots
| of things
|
| * I appreciate facts/truth
|
| * Knowing things is fun
|
| * Figuring things out is fun
|
| * There is so much we don't know about the universe
|
| I think you are putting to much semantic meaning into the
| grammar they are using to express their sentiments. Same goes
| for, "science says". It isn't enjoyable to discuss things and
| at the same time qualify every single statement.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Its non sensical. Not minor. Electrostatics exists without
| science. The point is science is a tool for learning the
| truth, not the cause, nor the phenomena itself. It would
| make more sense to say "nature is cool."
|
| Its like looking at a painting and saying "vision is so
| cool." Except worse because at least in that example you
| are actually using the lens (vision) to look at the
| phenomena.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Science is the tool that allowed us to know these truths.
|
| Your comment is damn rude.
| mistermann wrote:
| > The valuable point the skit makes is that there is a sort
| of "cult of science" where people mistake faith for reason
| and you have a bunch of science "believers" who dont realize
| it. Of course this is not what science really is.
|
| Whereas with religions, the shortcomings of it's delusional
| followers are attributed to it.
|
| Science has got to have the shrewdest marketing department in
| the history of religion.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Lol--that's a great reference.
| [deleted]
| aschearer wrote:
| > But just as the Reformation led to faith-healing and
| megachurch preachers
|
| Quite a leap. Break that one down...
|
| > Sagan's teachings made it seem as if anyone could be a
| scientist. As long as a chain of reasoning made sense to you,
| then it was true!
|
| How does Sagan give this impression? Namely that "as long as it
| makes sense to you, then it must be true."
|
| And why is this analogous to the Reformation? Seems like a non-
| sequiter.
| paulddraper wrote:
| >> But just as the Reformation led to faith-healing and
| megachurch preachers
|
| > Quite a leap. Break that one down...
|
| Prior to the Reformation, you needed not just Truth but
| Authority as well. There was an actual hierarchy, and you
| respected that hierarchy.
|
| Luther said that any man could connect to God, be a spiritual
| leader, assemble a congregation. And so the number of
| religious sects increased from 1 to much more than 1,
| including for example faith healers and megachurches.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| There's no doubt that the Reformation resulted in a
| proliferation of Christian sects, but attributing
| megachurchs and faith healing to that seems bizarre to
| somebody who is not a Christian. The Christian bible says
| that Jesus himself was a faith healer. Innumerable Catholic
| saints have been faith healers, and faith healing in the
| form of Exorcism is still taught as real by the Roman
| Catholic Church to this day. And megachurchs? No Christian
| church is more 'mega' than the RCC. They share all the
| defining characteristics: Huge gaudy megastructures? Yes,
| Cathedrals. Money flowing up through the organization? The
| Vatican is decked in gold. Hierarchical with the preacher
| at top living opulently? This describes the Roman Catholic
| Church to a T. And Jesus himself is said to have preached
| to crowds of hundreds or thousands.
|
| The Reformation certainly lead to a splintering of
| Christian sects, but did not introduce faith healing and
| megachurches. These were already ancient, arguably
| _originating_ characteristics of Christianity.
| passion__desire wrote:
| People trust "authority" because they don't have time,
| resources, training to build the body of knowledge themselves.
| It is not feasable neither desirable for everyone to know about
| everything. Societies build chain of trust and that's why
| institutions are important. Think of authority as a function
| call in a big framework which provides an answer with reasoning
| for that answer. In my previous function calls, the authority
| provided answers properly. If I get a wrong answer, there is a
| "bug" somewhere in the system.
| itronitron wrote:
| Why call it pseudoscience? It's just science done poorly by
| someone doing science. We don't call a bad haircut a pseudo-
| haircut.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Same as psuedostatistics. There are fundamental, objective
| principals. [1]
|
| Violate those, and it's not what it claims to be.
|
| A bad haircut doesn't claim to be something that it's not,
| and its goodness is subjective.
|
| [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pseudostatistical
| itronitron wrote:
| Dude, the reference you provide does not support your claim
| that "There are fundamental, objective principals." Not
| sure if you are trying to be subversive or just lazy (or
| both).
| paulddraper wrote:
| Neither. Reference should have followed the word
| pseudostatistics
| cycomanic wrote:
| I am not sure why we have all these comments about
| confidence/overconfidence of scientists and the limits of
| science.
|
| The article has some very different findings. The crucial
| paragraph from the abstract is:
|
| >We find a nonlinear relationship between knowledge and
| confidence, with overconfidence (the confidence gap) peaking at
| intermediate levels of actual scientific knowledge. These high-
| confidence/intermediate-knowledge groups also display the least
| positive attitudes towards science.
|
| It seems to that it is essentially a refinement of the Dunning-
| Kruger effect. It also matches some previous study I remember
| which found that science sceptisim and many conspiracy theories
| around science are most prevalent with certain engineering
| disciplines (I can't find the study right now, but will update
| with a link once I do).
|
| It is interesting that someone mentioned Sabine Hossenfelder as a
| positive example, because I find much of her recent content
| peddles to exactly the crowd who has intermediate knowledge of
| and very negative attitude toward science. In particular she
| often comments on topics where she herself has very little
| understanding (I know because I have seen it for topics where I
| am an expert) and just pushes a scepticism opinion without much
| understanding, but acting like she is an authority.
| mxmlnkn wrote:
| > The article has some very different findings. The crucial
| paragraph from the abstract is:
|
| It's kinda funny how only the abstract is referred to when
| trying to paraphrase the findings of the paper. I would say
| that the abstract by itself is more like an opinion. The real
| hard data backing up the abstract, should be in the article.
| But, it can't even be faulted because this "science" is behind
| a pretty hefty paywall with 40$ for the full PDF and 10$ for a
| 48h rent. It's basically the same price as a full movie.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The abstract is not an opinion, it is a summary of the key
| methods and findings written by the authors. It is the
| perfect place to get a short quote to outline the main
| results of the paper.
|
| Now if we wanted to investigate the methods and results in
| detail, we certainly would have to read the full paper,
| however the main findings will not differ from what is in the
| abstract. You might find that the methods (and hence results)
| are not valid, and can come up with a detailed rebuttal, for
| that you certainly would need to read the full paper.
| However, I assumed here that the findings are valid, because
| even though I have access to the paper, this is well outside
| my area of expertise so I am not well placed to investigate
| the claims in detail and rather refrain from that.
| bratgpttamer wrote:
| > We find a nonlinear relationship between knowledge and
| confidence, with overconfidence (the confidence gap) peaking at
| intermediate levels of actual scientific knowledge.
|
| Dunning-Kruger isn't real.
|
| Dunning-Kruger isn't real.
|
| Dunning-Kruger isn't real.
| [deleted]
| next_xibalba wrote:
| I am 100% guilty of this. I try to consistently remind myself
| that having read mostly pop-sci and the occasional abstract of a
| scientific paper does not in any way qualify me as either a
| scientist or even a knowledgeable non-scientist.
| koromak wrote:
| "They don't know I watched a 20 minute video on relativity"
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Meanwhile... everyone else aged 10000 years.
| bedobi wrote:
| This study basically describes 99% of people here, lol. Because
| you know how to write code, you're suddenly an expert not only at
| that but also at economics, medicine, international relations etc
| etc. Every field is ready for you to disrupt it. The hubris is
| astonishing.
| bratgpttamer wrote:
| Well, at least we're not physicists, amirite?
|
| https://xkcd.com/793/
| [deleted]
| tivert wrote:
| > This study basically describes 99% of people here, lol.
| Because you know how to write code, you're suddenly an expert
| not only at that but also at economics, medicine, international
| relations etc etc. Every field is ready for you to disrupt it.
| The hubris is astonishing.
|
| Aka "Engineer's disease." There's an overestimation of one's
| personal competence _and_ the effectiveness of the tools and
| mental models you 're most familiar with. Basically think
| asshole software engineer who tells everyone they're dumb and
| should just solve the problem like they're writing software.
| cududa wrote:
| One thing I've realized about this site are the insane amount
| of software engineers that have a disdain for the medical
| field. It comes up all the time deeper into comment threads
| where people say medical school entrance exams being so hard is
| a form of "gatekeeping" - which it is, on purpose, but they're
| using it as a pejorative to tell themselves "I could've been a
| doctor too if they didn't make it so purposefully hard."
|
| The other very very disturbing trend are the "makers" who
| denigrate medical devices as overly complex. One thread I'll
| never get over was on old pacemakers. The prevailing sentiment
| was they're designed for failure because "evil medical industry
| profit", not that, you know, they wear out.
|
| The other part felt like watching the theory of memetics
| demonstrate itself in real-time. One person commented that the
| single small mechanical component is rated to actuate 5,000,000
| times or something like that. Someone dismissively said "Well
| yeah but Adafruit keyboard switches are rated at 2-3 million
| presses, they mass-produce them, thus it can't be that hard"
| (adafruit's data sheet says 1,000,000 btw). Very quickly,
| people picked up that line and repeated that the actuator in a
| pacemaker isn't "actually that complicated", citing the 2-3
| million keycap example. I still see that keycap "argument" pop
| up all the time.
|
| BTW: Pacemakers are actually rated for about 100,000,000
| stimuli cycles.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| I wanted to write a very similar comment, except about
| cosmology instead of medicine. The amount of people with high
| school level physics knowledge who think they know better
| than almost all luminaries of the field combined just because
| their gut feeling is telling them something about dark matter
| is astonishing.
| cududa wrote:
| I mean I _barely_ know about pacemakers. Just that I have a
| congenital heart condition and will need one in a decade or
| so, and have taken a hobbyists interest in learning about
| them / following the field. Just the level of arrogance and
| just completely wrong "facts" astonished me. The bit that
| moves is a few strands of hair thick. In what world does "I
| built my own keyboard" translate to "I built my own
| keyboard so how much different could a pacemaker be?"
| simpleuser27 wrote:
| Seriously. Folks in tech like to complain about MBAs, but it's
| a toss up in my book for "most egregiously overconfident".
|
| Doctors get a good shout as well.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Why doesn't _____ just ______? I've thought about this for only
| 2 minutes and it's already obvious.
| svnt wrote:
| Clearly you're not in the field or you'd know that ______ is
| actually better understood as _______, which means your
| question doesn't even make sense.
| cutemonster wrote:
| At the same time, with "just" removed, those questions are
| often pretty good I think.
|
| It seems I would just remove just, and make the question
| great again
| nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
| I would simply _____.
| tekla wrote:
| I as an coder would ____
| mcguire wrote:
| _____, _____, land value tax.
| paulddraper wrote:
| UBI, _____, _____
| meepmorp wrote:
| And the closely related I could write _______ in _______
| days.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Is economics really a science?
|
| Economics is generally regarded as a social science, although
| some critics of the field argue that economics falls short of
| the definition of a science for a number of reasons, including
| a lack of testable hypotheses, lack of consensus, and inherent
| political overtones. Despite these arguments, economics shares
| the combination of qualitative and quantitative elements common
| to all social sciences [0]
|
| [0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030315/economics-
| sc...
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Whether it's a science or social science or research domain
| or discipline, how is that relevant to this discussion? It
| doesn't change GPs point.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Well is it possible that an Alan Sokal kind of trick be
| pulled off in economics if it is a social science.
|
| Relevant : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
| bedobi wrote:
| Yes, economics is science, and the people who don't
| understand that and love to point out how economists are
| never right in their predictions about the economy
| fundamentally have no idea what the field is even about.
|
| Economics is not about predicting the stock market or
| economy as a whole, nor is it about coming up with
| excuses for free market capitalism and neoliberal
| agendas. It's about studying things like market failures,
| tax incidence, deadweight losses etc etc etc and coming
| up with solutions.
| [deleted]
| nologic01 wrote:
| Indeed. Intelligence is just I/O and gradient descent. The
| Universe is code. etc.
|
| Coupled with an asocial, greed-driven and essentially anti-
| humanist agenda its just the worst possible moment (severe
| environmental stresses across the planet) to hijack whatever
| potential digital tech offers...
|
| Sigh.
| [deleted]
| nyrikki wrote:
| Unfortunately the lack of a definition of intelligence makes
| all claims unfalsifiable too.
|
| But Western reductionism/Laplacian determinism is still
| taught even at the PHD level as cannon and not as a target
| for practical models.
|
| Perhaps the rise of research into indecomposable continua and
| the discovery of Strange non-chaotic attractors in nature may
| help.
|
| Obviously math and computer science as taught today is
| insufficient.
|
| I particularly blame the way we teach things as absolute
| truth and then pull the rug out from under those previous
| supposed hard facts.
|
| But I am showing my own ignorance here because we do learn
| about the computable set etc...
|
| It doesn't seem to help with people making claims about
| universal quantifiers being a few quarters away.
| adasdasdas wrote:
| Cross field contamination a fantastic product of our
| interconnected world, but it's more fun to shit on people when
| they fail. I'm sure some folks here would've loved to tell
| davinci to stay in his lane.
| itronitron wrote:
| If they want the research to "help inform science communication
| strategies" then make the article freely available.
| izzydata wrote:
| Is this similar to the dunning-kruger effect?
| oldandtired wrote:
| It's obvious from the Abstract that they are not referring to
| the Dunning-Kruger Effect as it is NOT mentioned in the
| Abstract, which is the highlight of the paper.
|
| Actually who the hell knows when the paper is essentially
| behind a paywall. The Abstract gives nothing away about what
| they have found.
| xeonmc wrote:
| more like the "midwit distribution" memes.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Or "Ackchyually guy"[0].
|
| [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ackchyually-actually-guy
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit
|
| hard to find a good example that is funny while also not
| crass/political, but they generally go something like this:
| https://i.imgflip.com/5dh26p.jpg
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A good web-dev one I've seen has "use bootstrap" at the
| ends and "create standardized design system" in the middle.
| mrbungie wrote:
| Some good examples:
|
| - Related to the post at hand and some of its comments: htt
| ps://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/pe..
| .
|
| - Meta 1: https://programmerhumor.io/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/07/progra...
|
| - Meta 2: https://assets.website-
| files.com/611cc49abc685aa7e3817103/64...
|
| - The one I hope most people would follow in Data
| Science/Engineering: https://i.redd.it/s7olw2f01ra81.jpg
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| From my personal experience (thus does not have statistical
| significance), it's not the amount of knowledge, but the
| position. Teachers/professors are a group of people that I
| interact frequently with (both my parents and parents of my
| friends are university professors/lecturers), and it just happens
| that the ones that I know the most are all overconfidence.
|
| Basically they think they know everything, to the point of
| educating the doctors about medicines when they are in the
| hospital (as patients). I don't know what got them into this but
| I found the arrogance distasteful.
|
| Maybe it's in the culture though. Back in the day teachers were
| respected and the relationship between teachers and students are
| somewhat closer to father-children than customer-merchant. Now
| time changes but old habits stay hard.
| FactualOrion wrote:
| What do you mean by educating the doctors about medicines? I've
| seen people without degrees advocate for themselves as patients
| and be more knowledgeable about certain medications and
| treatments than doctors or nurses were.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| This is something that always kind of gets me, because when I
| have something wrong with me I will do a deep dive on it and
| read whatever studies, publications, and fellow patient
| accounts I can find.
|
| This often puts me in a position where I feel pretty
| confident that I have more fresh knowledge about it than the
| doctor before me. Someone who in all likely hood has a mild
| familiarity with it, and is filling in the blanks with rote
| medical intuition.
|
| What I really wish is that I could get doctors to drop the
| veil, and just openly admit what there depth of knowledge on
| the illness is. I would love it if they googled stuff right
| in front of me. I absolutely do not expect them to have a
| full medical encyclopedia in their head, and I am smart
| enough to be able to not be put off by "I don't know/I'm not
| sure".
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| The old joke: "The difference between doctors and
| programmers is that programmers actually _admit_ to finding
| all their answers on the internet! '
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The flip side is imagine a project manager did this to a
| programmer or architect. The programmer would constantly
| need to explain why the blog post they read dated 2013
| about how hadoop makes everything faster is wrong, or how
| that AI paper is bullshit and designed to get someone grant
| money. Or how someone else's experience with Azure was
| great because they just shifted all their Windows stuff to
| it. So that could kind of stuff get frustrating for the
| expert.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| That's the promise of AI in medical care, that it can
| synthesize _all_ known data relevant to observed symptoms
| and, on average, make a more accurate diagnosis than human
| doctors.
|
| https://towardsdatascience.com/ai-diagnoses-disease-
| better-t...
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Like "you don't know as much as I do, I Googled a page and it
| says..." type. No they definitely know very little about the
| stuffs. And I personally heard and saw they tried to persuade
| OTHER patients, of different symptoms to listen to their
| "theories".
| slt2021 wrote:
| ALL patients with access to Internet are like that.
|
| now with chatGPT there will be more people like that
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Indeed, given the PE-driven profit motive of most (US)
| hospitals these days, people are increasingly less trusting
| of their diagnoses and prognoses, and more likely to take an
| active role in their own care and treatment.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I think with teachers and professors it can be a case of
| "habit".
|
| They're used to being the smartest person in the room and
| telling the people around them what's what. This can sometimes
| rub off on interactions outside work. Same kind of thing can
| happen with other professions, of course.
| archarios wrote:
| What does "intermediate knowledge" mean in this context?
| archarios wrote:
| Like I have a bachelors degree in engineering. Is that
| intermediate or advanced? I feel like saying my science
| knowledge is anything beyond intermediate is a bit of an
| overstatement personally.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have one in physics, but I have also taken a rather a lot
| (given the degree) in biology, chemistry, civil engineering,
| and electrical engineering. Went some places also not usual
| in math. And I've worked in IT since forever. There's a lot
| of stuff where I take a glance at it and realize I'm just
| looking at a single hull plate on a battleship.
|
| What I am getting at is that if you have just intermediate
| knowledge in a bunch of places, I think it lends itself to
| sensing that you're just a paramecium stuck to the side of
| some N-dimensional construct. There's _so much_. I had a
| professor who was the expert in the second excited state of
| Helium-3. That was his thing. Just a single needle in the
| whale-sized blowfish of physics.
| burnished wrote:
| I didnt find out what standard they use, but personally I'd
| say intermediate sounds about right. I also have an
| engineering degree and while I know more than the average
| bear in many scientific disciplines I couldn't say that any
| of it is advanced.
|
| I'm thinking of times where I went to the library to dig
| deeper on a topic and discovered a huge and complex topic
| just laying in wait.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > I feel like saying my science knowledge is anything beyond
| intermediate is a bit of an overstatement personally
|
| That's not overconfident, I'm lead to conclude that you have
| advanced science knowledge.
| f1shy wrote:
| Absolutely advance. No question. At least in this context.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Like I have a bachelors degree in engineering
|
| I do to and unquestionably I am beginner level.
|
| Each scientific field has specialised and become so dense
| with knowledge that even new graduates in that field would
| barely be classed as intermediate.
| [deleted]
| smcin wrote:
| Like high-school level, a very basic familiarity with terms,
| experiment design, inference. The authors cite and link to the
| five surveys used in the 'Data availability' section:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01677-8#data-avai...
|
| * Surveys EB, Pew and GSS are publicly available and data and
| details can be found in refs. [27],[28],[29], respectively.
| \* take the interactive Pew survey (11 questions) here:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/science/quiz/science-knowledge-
| quiz/
|
| * The Fernbach study was published in ref. [9] and the authors
| made the data available.
|
| * Lackner survey data are available at:
| https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7920776
|
| [27]: Bauer, M. W., Shukla, R. & Kakkar, P. Public
| Understanding of Science in Europe 1989-2005--A Eurobarometer
| Trend File (GESIS, 2012);
| https://www.gesis.org/en/eurobarometer-data-service/search-d...
|
| [28]: Smith, T. W., Davern, M., Freese, J. & Morgan, S. L.
| General Social Surveys, 1972-2018 (NORC, 2019);
| https://gss.norc.org/get-the-data
|
| [29]: Funk, C., Kennedy, B., Johnson, C., Hefferon, M. &
| Thigpen, C. L. American Trends Panel Wave 42 (Pew Research
| Center, 2019);
| https://www.pewresearch.org/science/dataset/american-trends-...
|
| [9]: Fernbach, P. M., Light, N., Scott, S. E., Inbar, Y. &
| Rozin, P. Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know
| the least but think they know the most. Nat. Hum. Behav. 3,
| 251-256 (2019).
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3
| calf wrote:
| If the abstract actually defined intermediate we wouldn't
| have comments talking so much about advanced education like
| PhDs and STEM majors...
| smcin wrote:
| (useful to note all those surveys are 2019 pre-pandemic,
| before there was severe partisanization of the phrase "trust
| in science". I wonder how hard it would be to construct a
| neutral methodology post-pandemic, now that even the basic
| vocabulary itself is loaded with associations.)
|
| Even then, the 2019 Pew article is depressing reading: https:
| //www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/08/02/partisanship-...
| emodendroket wrote:
| I feel like we've all encountered this guy.
| not_enoch_wise wrote:
| Hacker News is this
| neilv wrote:
| One of my favorite parts of n-gate.com's 'summaries' of HN
| posts was the phrase "incorrecting each other".
| malfist wrote:
| Some of us have been that guy.
| [deleted]
| pickingdinner wrote:
| Or maybe those overconfident with negative attitudes resort to
| intermediate scientific knowledge?
|
| And aren't there humble optimists with intermediate sci
| knowledge?
|
| Maybe there just aren't enough humble optimists?
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I've met both overconfident PhD holders and intermediate sci
| knowledge "flat-earthers" (conspiracy theory propagationists).
| Both are really hard to talk to, and both one couldn't convince
| they are wrong. I observed both being wrong. And meanwhile some
| of conspiracy theories became true...
|
| It's really hard to by sure of anything these days
| gobdovan wrote:
| Could you provide examples of conspiracies you knew were wrong
| and became true?
| gumby wrote:
| I think this is also a root of science denialism (e.g. anti-
| vaxxers). I have some antivax family, and the root of their
| opinion is that the scientists changed their advice as the
| pandemic developed!
|
| My theory is that in primary and high schools, science is taught
| as a series of immutable "facts". You get tested on remembering
| them, and when you do an "experiment" you get marked down if your
| reading of the litmus paper isn't 4. No sense of doubt, and no
| exposure to the epistemic boundaries to controleld trials,
| measurements, etc.
|
| If your takeaway is that scientists uncover and explain immutable
| facts, hearing them say one thing in January and another in June
| can in fact shake your beliefs in these scientists.
| enjeyw wrote:
| In highschool I was lucky enough to join a program run by the
| CSIRO (Australia's Government funded scientific research body),
| where students would assist scientists on experiments they were
| conducting.
|
| I was tasked with measuring the water resistance of a proposed
| environmentally friendly paper coating.
|
| I asked my supervising scientist what numbers I should expect
| to get back from the experiment. I distinctly remember my
| surprise and thrill when he looked at me and said "I have no
| idea, that's why you're running the experiment".
|
| It was such a new concept to me! A scientific experiment where
| the correct answer wasn't written in a teacher's lesson guide,
| or even known to anyone!
| dboreham wrote:
| Doubtful it was anything so logical. Humans like to believe
| magic, and are very easy to manipulate.
| bratgpttamer wrote:
| This has been my experience, too, as well as people who
| understood The Science perfectly and that the authorities were
| just taking a best guess early on, which set them further
| against any kind of mandate. (Mostly older, conservative
| physicians with an "it'll be fine" attitude)
|
| The Science didn't change that much (viz: masks in healthcare
| since forever), but the flip-flopping with messages ("don't
| horde masks; they won't save you!", "wait, no - everyone needs
| a mask!"), which was really less about The Science than about
| different concerns (mask effectiveness, availability) were just
| the "I told you so" they were looking for.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| > scientists changed their advice as the pandemic developed
|
| "Changing advice" is to be expected, but it was the outright
| lying, as proven by FOIA'd emails, which understandably shook
| faith.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Interesting. I think I've seen a research that when it came to
| covid, both uneducated and highly educated were making the wrong
| decisions more often. Sweet spot was around master's degree.
| Those people knew enough to know that they don't know enough to
| wing it themselves and deferred to expert opinion. Both under and
| overeducated thought they know better.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The article is paywalled but the research group has a 2021 arxiv
| publication on the same topic: "A little knowledge is a dangerous
| thing: excess confidence explains negative attitudes towards
| science"
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.11193.pdf
|
| It's a survey-based study but the obvious thing to consider is,
| what do they mean by 'negative attitudes towards science'? Are
| they talking about the scientific process itself, i.e. experiment
| and observation coupled to theoretical modeling as the basis of
| discovering how our universe functions? Or are they talking about
| negative attitudes towards the 'science-based' pronouncements of
| governmental and academic institutions?
|
| Certainly the modern scientific process takes place at such a
| level of specialization that even working scientists in one field
| are usually unable to judge the quality of results obtained in
| another field without doing a lot of time-consuming research, but
| if a long record of failure of peer review exists (and it does)
| then it shouldn't be surprising when people lose faith in
| academic and governmental institutions - but I'd guess they still
| believe that the scientific process itself is valid, it's just
| that the received wisdom of the white-robed annoited priesthood
| is no longer taken at face value.
|
| There are many reasons for this - e.g. while science may have
| been viewed by all as wonderful in the 1950s, many discoveries
| (environmental carcinogens, fossil fueled global warming, etc.)
| have upset major economic and institutional powers leading to
| coordinated attacks on the reliability of science in major media
| outlets. Then there's the long record of pharmaceutical
| skullduggery (the push to prescribe opiates for just about any
| condition, leading to an addiction epidemic, the failure of a
| wide variety of science-approved medications to live up to claims
| and/or the production of negative side effects (Vioxx etc.)) -
| and as far as the vaccine controversy, yes it was a terrible idea
| to put organometallic preservatives in multi-use bottles of
| vaccines, and yes it was done to cut costs, but the claim it led
| to an epidemic of autism isn't well-supported, there are many
| more plausible industrial sources of heavy metals to blame for
| high childhood exposures, but that's not as convenient for class-
| action lawsuits due to vaccination records, etc.
|
| This doesn't mean that most science isn't fairly reliable, but
| the glaring failures are what make the headlines, and there have
| been quite a few of them.
|
| If we really want to regain public trust in academic
| institutions, divorce proceedings aimed at kicking the corporate
| interests out of the academic sphere will have to be initiated,
| meaning for example no more exclusive private rights to NIH-
| financed inventions and no more revolving doors between academic
| institutions and pharmaceutical executive boards. Don't hold your
| breath, we live in an era of systematic insitutional corruption
| that Trofim Lysenko would have fit right into.
| mathisfun123 wrote:
| to wit: <gestures broadly around>
| not_enoch_wise wrote:
| Fucking fantastic
| ObservingFuture wrote:
| I only glanced at the paper, but I wonder how much of this is
| explained by just random chance?
|
| It looks like they used multiple choice quizzes to determine both
| knowledge in science and a propensity to respond "don't know"
| indicating confidence. Any "don't know" response was counted as
| an incorrect response, while a correct guess increased the
| participants "science knowledge".
|
| Thus, a willingness to guess something at random in the multiple
| choice test would both increase "science knowledge" as well as
| make the participant appear overconfident.
| cududa wrote:
| Well yeah but that's where data modelling comes in.
| ObservingFuture wrote:
| I mean, the data modeling assumed people guessing were doing
| so completely at random without eliminating any options (In
| the section "Simulation").
|
| If I'm looking at the right document, one question was about
| which city out of Chicago, New York, and LA have the greatest
| annual temperature range (accompanied with a plot). Almost
| all respondents said New York or Chicago, rather than LA or
| "All equal".
| moffkalast wrote:
| Sounds like your intermediate knowledge of the paper is
| resulting in an overconfident negative attitude :P
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| oh irony
| cassac wrote:
| Intermediate [insert topic here] knowledge associated with
| overconfidence and negative attitudes.
|
| Topics: Science, Sports, Cooking, Driving, Programming...
| literally anything.
|
| I didn't need a study to know this.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It this the B swimming lane thing again?
| cassac wrote:
| I do not know the reference. Is it that people claim the
| middle lanes are faster?
|
| But I do know that a lot of people across a lot of topics
| over estimate their ability because they don't know what they
| don't know. Science as a topic isn't special in this regard.
|
| Jr devs are great examples. Your code is garbage and I am
| brilliant, just let me change this thing here and OH MY THE
| SYSTEM IS BROKE PLEASE HELP ME! Intermediate knowledge and
| negative attitudes.
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| The study has an interesting approach to avoiding self-reporting
| level of confidence.
|
| > We propose and use in the paper, an indirect measure of
| confidence in knowledge, defined as the ratio of incorrect to
| 'don't know' answers in any knowledge questionnaire, as long as
| it had the format true/false/don't know (or similar). The
| rationale is that an incorrect answer corresponds to an
| overestimation of one's knowledge (more details in the main
| text).
|
| On face value it seems like a good way to avoid the pitfalls of
| self-report surveys, perhaps also useful in affective modeling.
| mistermann wrote:
| One issue though is that in realtime cognition under non-
| laboratory conditions, "I don't know" often isn't available,
| unlike when it is explicitly given as an answer.
|
| The number of science fans I've met who sincerely proclaim they
| possess knowledge of the unknowable is scary.
| svnt wrote:
| How do they/you remove the confound of becoming more
| conservative vs less confident, or do they assume that
| overconfidence and being conservative are opposites?
|
| I might be motivated to be more conservative because I have a
| reputation to protect, but not actually be less confident. This
| may have an effect just as much as because I am more
| experienced.
|
| I may also have just learned not to express my overconfidence
| interpersonally, while still exhibiting it in practice.
| Expressing appropriate levels of confidence is a skill, not
| just the absence of overconfidence.
|
| I can't access the paper currently.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Isn't participating in such research usually fairly
| anonymous? And I'm guessing the researchers didn't tell the
| participants how they were going to interpret "I don't know"
| vs wrong answers?
|
| > Expressing appropriate levels of confidence is a skill,
|
| That's interesting, confidence can be gamed, just like other
| traits in personality tests
| subw00f wrote:
| > learned not to express my overconfidence interpersonally,
| while still exhibiting it in practice
|
| What does that mean? If you're overconfident in the forest
| and nobody hears it, it doesn't really matter, right?
| svnt wrote:
| If you still act on your confidence, but learn to give the
| right answers understating it in conversation, it could be
| that you gave those same right answers on the test
| reactively and then their interpretation is probably
| flawed.
|
| In this case, additional knowledge wouldn't actually
| represent a diminishment of your confidence in a functional
| sense, but a learned compensation to social feedback.
| colordrops wrote:
| Very meta study.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I think lifespan plays an important part in this. I know a few
| aging scientists, some with extraordinary achievements, who
| having accumulated a lifetime of wisdom are finally entering the
| "We don't really know" phase about every question.
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