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I was reading a book on cognitive biases recently and the part that really stuck for me was: The smarter you are, the more likely you are to fall prey to the Na
by Swizec 4y ago
I was reading a book on cognitive biases recently and the part that really stuck for me was: The smarter you are, the more likely you are to fall prey to the Narrative Bias/Fallacy.
Super smart people are so good at constructing plausible narratives that they can convince themselves of almost anything. You have to actively look for ways to disprove your own narratives. This is hard because they sound so plausible.
- troutwine 4y agoWhat book was that? I'd be interested in giving it a read.
- NikolaNovak 4y agoPerfect; that sounds like exactly what I've observed - in others as well as myself - but I did not have a name, so now I can google better, thx :) (any recommendations on that specific book?)
- pklausler 4y agoSo smart people don't know when they're wrong because they're smart enough to convince themselves that they're right, and dumb people don't know when they're wrong, because they're too dumb to see how dumb they're being. We can't win.
- Swizec 4y agoYes, I think the lesson to take away is that you want not only to be smart, but also wise and humble. Wise enough to realize you need to poke holes in your ideas, humble enough to fix your hypothesis when facts change.
- unclebucknasty 4y ago>wise and humble...you need to poke holes in your ideas... But where does critical thinking come in? Seens there should be a heuristic or generalized approach for deciding what to believe. Epistemology, I suppose. And this should all preface the formation of our ideas in the first place.
- naniwaduni 4y agoprotip: you can do this without being overwhelmingly smart, too. You need only be smart enough to convince yourself
- pps 4y ago> You have to actively look for ways to disprove your own narratives Socratic Method is one way, I can recommend "The Socratic Method - A Practitioners Handbook" by Ward Farnsworth.