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People somehow feel uniquely qualified to speculate wildly about theoretical physics. It's bizarre in a forum full of technical-minded people.
by gbrown 8y ago
People somehow feel uniquely qualified to speculate wildly about theoretical physics. It's bizarre in a forum full of technical-minded people.
- spiritcat 8y agoits the only worthwhile thing left to speculate about. well that and i guess like number theory. aka life, universe, everything in it. and even if someone figures it out i probably won't understand it :/
- delecti 8y agoI don't know what it is about us technically minded people that makes us so confident in our knowledge in so many fields like that (note that I'm including myself in that generalization). It seems to go beyond your garden variety Dunning–Kruger effect. My personal supposition is that most people don't know very much if anything about most subjects, and tech people tend to know a bit more than that quite low average (though still not anywhere near expert level) in an above average number of subjects, and that "novice polymath" status amplifies the Dunning-Kruger effect. Of course it's entirely possible that demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect by even thinking we tend to have an above average exposure to an above average number of fields.
- gbrown 8y agoWell said, that captures exactly the effect I was thinking about.
- D-Coder 8y agoWe're tired of debating double-linked lists versus hashed sets.
- raattgift 8y agoIf it's any consolation, forums full of theoretical physicists can have discussions on topics like law, economics, or computer programming, and those tend to fill up with shocking displays of ignorance. Of course, one can find that in discussions touching on law and economics here too. :-) ETA: you also get experts in one subdiscipline getting another subdiscipline terribly wrong, analogous to experts in programming language design making crazy statements about wide area networking.