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Daniel Kahneman: ‘What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence’
- linhchi 11y agoHuman's emotions are connected in constellations. Overconfidence has its evolutionary story. For example, with a little overconfidence, you can take risk to start up. You have to be a bit delusional to aim high. And it doesn't sound bad to me.
- dschiptsov 11y agoIt is about mating mostly.)
- DonHopkins 11y agoThat's odd. Owning a magic want would give me a lot of confidence. It's magic!!!
- StavrosK 11y agoOverconfidence is confidence above your ability to actually deliver. You pretty much can't get overconfident in a magic wand, it's magic.
- Ntrails 11y agoYou can get overconfident in your ability to use it - gotta save those charges for when they really count man.
- acheron 11y agoYeah but you can always repeatedly (z)ap it when it's out of charges to wrest one last charge.
- DonHopkins 11y agoNow you tell me. DAMMIT!
- freyr 11y agoGreat, now where will we find 24 year olds to run Silicon Valley startups?
- dschiptsov 11y agoThat means 2/3 of HN.
- torreens 11y agoTypical partial-rationality. Humans are not robots. Having an accurate picture of your own flaws and the risks involved in most endeavors will not help you to perform better than having a slight overconfidence. We tends to overemphasize risks if we are made persistently aware of them. In every dynamic performance based activity, this tendency needs to be counterbalanced by a degree of irrational confidence. It's a feature, not a bug. There are times when it is also harmful, but things like actually being able to talk to that girl, ask for that raise, close that sale, take down that oppressor...these things benefit tremendously from irrational confidence. Removing all overconfidence would be the end of the human race.
- rodgerd 11y agoThree paragraphs to demolish an acclaimed Nobel prize winner! Congratulations! You should be put forward for yours.
- eklavya 11y agoProves his point beautifully :D
- blfr 11y agoHe makes a good point. Overconfidence is more evolutionarily stable than objectivity. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/full/nature10384.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/full/nature1...
- arpa 11y agoNot to be that guy, but -- you are appealing to authority, which is not a valid argument... Personally, if I had a magic wand, would probably use it on myself to cure that damn impostor syndrome and the paralyzing fear of failure. But that's just me.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoWell technically, while appeal to authority may not be valid for a perfectly informed rational agent, it is something that is valid for humans for the very same reasons 'torreens advocates overconfidence is useful - namely, we don't have neither enough time nor computing power to evaluate to evaluate all available data. Authority is a useful heuristic.
- Htsthbjig 11y agoI would replace the term "Nobel Price in Economics", with "Nobel Memorial price of Economics" or "Fake Nobel Price" for short in any publication.
- new1234567 11y agoPhysicist?
- blueflow 11y agoObama got a Nobel Price despite Guatanamo and Drone Murders, so i think the price's value isn't that high anymore.
- tempodox 11y agoTL; DR: Nobody can really know, and it's all just held together by hope, in spite of evidence to the contrary. That's a nice change from the “we tell you how to succeed” methodologies for the impatient. Heidegger was wrong. Not even a god can save us.
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoYou know, the world keeps turning and civilization keeps running on a daily basis. All of that is pretty solid evidence that we're a lot less cognitively crippled than we think we are.
- innguest 11y ago> Heidegger was wrong. As were all German continental wannabe philosophers. No wonder this poseur embraced the Nazi ideology. If you're reading philosophy and all of a sudden the word "phenomenology" comes up... you might not be reading philosophy.
- ianstallings 11y agoIt's always in others. Never in us.
- ycosynot 11y agoAs the smartest man on Earth, I concur the problem is with you all. Goddamn blind people, when will you see my genius already, I need money for a Lamborghini. Don't make me work for it. And I see your doubt, and I raise the card 'Self-reliance' by Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reliance https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays:_First_Series/Self-Reliance https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays:_First_Series/Self-Rel... For certain, it is beautiful. Reason, it's overrated, it makes people all mean. "Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say `I think,' `I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence." Sounds like me
- amelius 11y ago> The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. -- Bertrand Russell
- stophammertime 11y agoThis is a nice saying, but there are other classes of fools and fanatics who are also full of doubt. How do you know if you're any one of those? SELECT * FROM Everyone WHERE doubt=true && (foolishness=true || fanaticism=true)
- littletimmy 11y ago"Nobel prize in Economics" = "Swedish Bank Prize in Economics". It's ridiculous when some financiers get together to legitimize their field, co-opt the brand of another prestigious award, and everything just accepts it.
- qwtel 11y agoI think Daniel Kahneman is the wrong guy to start with this argument.
- yvsong 11y agoOverconfidence can only be defined in hindsight, therefore avoiding overconfidence cannot be a guide for decision making.
- davemel37 11y ago>“(overconfidence)is built so deeply into the structure of the mind that you couldn’t change it without changing many other things”. Based on his book and other books similar I think he is referring to people using incomplete data to prove a fact and have absolute confidence in it despite a cognitive bias being at play. Just think about all the political issues we are so aure about or the anecdotal evidence we trusted about a new feature or the results of a split test. There is a case study with horse handicappers in "the psychology of intelligence analysis" that shows the accuracy of handicapper predictions were the same whether they had 5 data points or 40...but when they had 40 their confidence in their predictions skyrocketed. He is warning us to second guess those facts (not self esteem related) that we feel so confident in...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- afrancis 11y agoInteresting article. On overconfidence. A number of years ago, I took a graduate managerial science course. I recall an exercise: 10 questions (i.e, the moon's diameter) were asked with an numerical answer. One has to provide a range (high, low) that guarantees one is 90% correct without being overly wide in one's estimate. I think the goal was to get 6 questions correct. The class abysmally failed: answers way too narrow. The class really over-estimated their knowledge. There was more questions like this, all to demonstrate various fallacies in decision making. That said, I recall reading a chapter in the "Black Swan" on balancing overconfidence and underconfidence. Reading some of the comments reminded me of a quote from Bill Parcells: "Confidence is born out of demonstrated ability."