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The Evolution of Overconfidence
- forinti 17y agoIt is possible for most people to be above average. And what is a "statistical impossibility"?
- CodeMage 17y agoA good example of "statistical impossibility" (it does have a silly sound, doesn't it) would be to claim that all people are above the average ;)
- jerf 17y agoA "statistical impossibility" is an outcome with probability 0. Or, depending on how badly you've botched up your math, probability less than zero.
- seigenblues 17y agoDidn't we just see a post on how people who had high self-opinions of their abilities made more money on average? Wasn't that just yesterday? squaring up this ("The Kind of Employees You Want To Hire"): http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/sep2009/ca20090922_894897.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/sep2009/ca20090... with this: ("Unskilled and Unaware of it") http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://www.damninteresting.com/unskilled-and-unaware-of-it http://www.damninteresting.com/unskilled-and-unaware-of-it seems to suggest that the natural explanation is a) overconfidence helps us in a lot of intangible ways -- impressing bosses, convincing people to give us jobs/money, whatever. b) as long as it doesn't kill us in the tangible ways. (whoops, turns out i can't catch a bullet with my teeth!)
- hegemonicon 17y agoMore on our overconfidence bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect and it's twin brother, certanity bias: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/10/the_certainty_bias_1.php http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/10/the_certainty_bias_1.... The human brain just isn't built to handle probabilities very well.