In the early hours of April 20 1995, police knocked on the door of McArthur Wheeler and arrested him for holding-up two Pittsburgh banks the previous day. Wheeler could hardly have been surprised that the police were on to him: wearing no mask or disguise, he had ambled into the banks during business hours and brandished a gun in full view of security cameras. Nevertheless, he was astonished, protesting “but I wore the juice!” Wheeler had formed the erroneous belief that lemon juice rendered people invisible on video.
Wheeler is now a legend in psychology, since it was his regrettable escapade that inspired two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, to figure out whether we have a good sense of our own strengths and weaknesses. Dunning and Kruger set tests of grammar, logic and even having a sense of humour to a group of undergraduates. Then they asked them how they stacked up to others in the group. Was their grasp of logic and grammar better or worse than average? Were they better able than other students to distinguish funny from unfunny jokes?
Most students thought that they were above-average logicians, grammarians and wits but the Dunning-Kruger effect is not mere overconfidence. The competent people in the study had a reasonable grasp of where they stood in the pecking order. The incompetent ones were blissfully unaware of their incompetence. The good students knew that they were good; the bad students had no clue that they were bad.
Perhaps because Dunning and Kruger opened their 1999 research paper with the story of McArthur Wheeler, the Dunning-Kruger effect has now become a popular insult in some corners of the internet. We chuckle at people who are far too stupid to know that they are stupid. Unfortunately, such mockery misses the subtlety and universality of the effect. All of us are incompetent in some areas. When we stray into them, the Dunning-Kruger effect may be lurking.
The fundamental problem is a person trying to diagnose his own incompetence is — almost by necessity — likely to be missing the skills needed to make that diagnosis. Not knowing much grammar means you’re poorly placed to diagnose your ignorance of grammar.
Tim Harford, “Can trivia help us to be less ignorant of our own ignorance?”, TimHarford.com, 2016-09-06.
June 2, 2018
QotD: The Dunning-Kruger Effect
May 15, 2018
James May is scared of heights! | Extras | James May’s Q&A (Ep 29) | Head Squeeze
BBC Earth Lab
Published on 12 Jul 2013James shares his thoughts on why some people are afraid and reveals that despite his fear of heights James has actually been as high as 73,000 feet in a U2 spy plane.
May 11, 2018
“65% of managers add zero or negative net value to the company” Jordan Peterson
TheArchangel911
Published on 21 Sep 2017to see the full lecture go to https://youtu.be/Q7GKmznaqsQ
In this lecture, he talks about the thorny problem of predicting performance: academic, industrial, creative and entrepreneurial); about the practical utility of such prediction, in the business and other environments; about the economic value of accurate prediction (in hiring, placement and promotion) — which is incredibly high.
Intelligence (psychometrically measured IQ) is the best predictor of performance in complex, ever changing environments. Conscientiousness is the (next) best predictor, particularly in the military, in school and in conservative businesses. Agreeable people make better caretakers; disagreeable people, better disciplinarians and negotiators (within reasonable bounds). Open people are artistic, creative and entrepreneurial. Extraverts are good socially. Introverts work well in isolation. People low in neuroticism have higher levels of tolerance for stress (but may be less sensitive to real signs of danger).
Match the career you pursue to your temperament, rather than trying to adjust the latter. Although some adjustment is possible, there are powerful biological determinants of the five personality dimensions and IQ (particularly in environments where differences are allowed to flourish).
May 7, 2018
Study: climate change skeptics behave in a more environmentally friendly manner than believers
In common with some similar observed phenomena, people who like to signal their climate change beliefs are actually less likely to act in environmentally beneficial ways than declared climate skeptics. At Pacific Standard, Tom Jacobs details the findings of a recent study:
Do our behaviors really reflect our beliefs? New research suggests that, when it comes to climate change, the answer is no. And that goes for both skeptics and believers.
Participants in a year-long study who doubted the scientific consensus on the issue “opposed policy solutions,” but at the same time, they “were most likely to report engaging in individual-level, pro-environmental behaviors,” writes a research team led by University of Michigan psychologist Michael Hall.
Conversely, those who expressed the greatest belief in, and concern about, the warming environment “were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions.”
Sorry, I didn’t have time to recycle — I was busy watching a documentary about the crumbling Antarctic ice shelf.
The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, followed more than 400 Americans for a full year. On seven occasions — roughly once every eight weeks — participants revealed their climate change beliefs, and their level of support for policies such as gasoline taxes and fuel economy standards.
They also noted how frequently they engaged in four environmentally friendly behaviors: recycling, using public transportation, buying “green” products, and using reusable shopping bags.
The researchers found participants broke down into three groups, which they labeled “skeptical,” “cautiously worried,” and “highly concerned.” While policy preferences of group members tracked with their beliefs, their behaviors largely did not: Skeptics reported using public transportation, buying eco-friendly products, and using reusable bags more often than those in the other two categories.
May 5, 2018
QotD: Making decisions for other people’s “best interests”
Confession: ever since I began to study economics as an 18-year old, I’ve always had difficulty understanding the thought processes of people who fancy themselves fit to intervene into the affairs of other adults in ways that will improve the lives of other adults as judged by these other adults. I understand the desire to help others, and I also understand that individuals often err in the pursuit of their own best interests. What I don’t understand is Jones’s presumption that he, who is a stranger to Smith, can know enough to force Smith to modify his behavior in ways that will improve Smith’s long-term well-being. Honestly, such a presumption has struck me for all of my adult life as being so preposterous as to be inexplicable. I cannot begin to get my head around it.
I cannot get my head around Jones’s presumption that he knows enough to forcibly prohibit Smith from working for an hourly wage lower than one that Jones divines is best for Smith. I cannot understand Jones’s presumption that he ‘knows’ that Smith meant, but somehow failed, to bargain for family leave in her employment contract. I am utterly befuddled by Jones’s presumption to know that the pleasure that Smith gets from smoking cigarettes is worth less to Smith than is the cost that Smith pays to smoke cigarettes. I cannot fathom why Jones presumes that he knows better than does Smith how Smith should educate her children.
Yet this presumption is possessed by many, perhaps even most, people. Why?
Don Boudreaux, “A Pitch for Humility”, Café Hayek, 2016-08-05.
May 4, 2018
Jordan Peterson – Winston Churchill predicted the Death of our Civilization
Dose of Truth
Published on 9 Apr 2018Without tradition or culture and the diligence to keep it alive our value systems and lessons learned by our ancestors will be soon forgotten and Western civilization will descend in to chaos as a result of the forgotten history and disregard for its tradition and value structure. Jordan Peterson sits down with former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and they discuss this topic and Jordan Peterson provides us with an education on concepts in psychology like memory and its function. John Anderson starts off with words of Churchill, as Jordan Peterson unpacks the statement made.
April 29, 2018
QotD: Impostor Syndrome
… the list of people who sometimes worry about being uncovered as an impostor is as impressive as it is long. Having to live with a nagging fear of being “found out” as not being as smart or talented or deserving or experienced or (fill-in-the-blank) as people think is a common phenomenon. So common, in fact, that the term “Impostor Syndrome” was coined to describe it back in the 1980’s. Indeed, researchers believe that up to 70% of people have suffered from it at some point. Myself included.
Apart from serial narcissists, super low achievers and outright crazies, no one is immune to the self-doubt that feeds Impostor Syndrome. But what matters most is not whether we occasionally (or regularly) fear failing, looking foolish or not being ‘whatever enough’; it’s whether we give those fears the power to keep us from taking the actions needed to achieve our goals and highest aspirations. Unfortunately, too often people do just that.
Impostor Syndrome is the domain of the high achiever. Those who set the bar low are rarely its victim. So if you are relating to what I’m sharing, then pat yourself on the back because it’s a sure sign that you aren’t ready to settled into the ranks of mediocrity. Rather, you’re likely to be a person who aims high and is committed to giving your very best to whatever endeavour you set your sights upon. A noble aim to be sure.
But giving your best is not the same as being the best. Likewise, there’s a distinct difference between trying to better yourself and being better than every one else. Overcoming the Imposter Syndrome requires self-acceptance: you don’t have to attain perfection or mastery to be worthy of the success you’ve achieved and any accolades you earn along the way. It’s not about lowering the bar, it’s about resetting it to a realistic level that doesn’t leave you forever striving and feeling inadequate. You don’t have to be Einstein to be a valuable asset to your organization and to those around you. Nor do you have to attain perfection to share something with the world that enriches people’s lives in some way.
Margie Warrell, “Afraid Of Being ‘Found Out?’ How To Overcome Impostor Syndrome”, Forbes, 2014-04-03.
April 27, 2018
The rise of the “sexbot”
In Jacobite, Diana Fleischman discusses the appeal of sexbots to young (and not-so-young) men:
Sexbots are usually woman-shaped gynoid machines. At the present time, sex robots are simple: they’re silicone sex dolls that have some capacity for movement and response. Manufacturers are rolling out new models and new promises: sex robots that respond to touch and penetration, sex robots with interchangeable faces and bodies and sex robots with different personalities. Future robots will have all the allure of the cues of fertility in a flesh-and-blood woman combined with the artificial intelligence that creates compulsive reward directed behavior.
Sex robots are overwhelmingly gynoid because heterosexual men drive the market for sexual products like prostitution and pornography. Across cultures, men desire more sexual partners, need to know someone for less time before they want to have sex with them, and have lower standards for a sexual liaison than women. Looking at gay men is instructive here. Their sexual interactions are not limited by women’s sexual choosiness and they, on average, have many more sexual partners than straight men or lesbians.
It isn’t hard to see the reason for this. Men don’t get pregnant and don’t lactate, and they have smaller, easier-to-produce sex cells than women. For a man, the cost of producing offspring is cheap. Getting one’s genes into the next generation is the engine of evolution. The low opportunity costs make men motivated to take every opportunity, even if it comes in the form of a robot. Ever think a dog is dumb for growling at his reflection in the mirror? Human men can become aroused looking at flat images of nude women in black and white, our evolved psychology can respond in maladaptive ways towards novel stimuli.
[…]
My view is that the uncanny valley is something analogous to Capgras delusion, a psychological disorder that causes sufferers to believe that someone they know has been taken over by an imposter, often inhuman. According to VS Ramachandran, there are two aspects to recognizing faces: the identification of the external familiar representation and the “internal” validation – the warm emotion that goes along with it. In the uncanny valley, you recognize a robot as humanlike, but it’s missing the facial movement or some other characteristic that gives you a warm feeling of recognition. Many men won’t experience the uncanny valley, especially with regards to sex robots. These men are going to be the early adopters. Men are worse at identifying faces than women and are far more likely to have prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces.
Sex is weird. Sex is gross and awkward. Natural selection addressed this issue by causing arousal to attenuate the human disgust response. It’s worth noting that men have a much lower baseline sexual disgust than women, and that sexual excitement further reduces disgust sensitivity in men. In a classic paper by Dan Ariely, aroused men had much more positive attitudes about all kinds of unusual sexual acts. Sexually aroused men were more likely to say that it would be fun to watch a woman urinating or that they could imagine getting sexually excited by contact with an animal). 3-D pornography of video game or cartoon characters that might be creepy in a nonsexual context are popular genres. The most direct evidence that men won’t be put off by uncanny vulvas is from a paper that laments the “unabashed sexualization of female-gendered robots” in comments on YouTube videos of robots. Bawdy comments on gynoids – “you’ll have to replace it monthly due to semen corrosion,” for example – were more frequent than comments expressing unease.
Perhaps we should encourage some men to use sex robots. Men who get environmental cues that they’re evolutionary dead-ends disproportionately menace society. In the 1980s, evolutionary psychologist couple Wilson and Daly found that perpetrators of violence and homicide had something in common: they were young, single and didn’t have access to the kinds of resources with which to win mates. Polygynous societies in which wealthier men have access to multiple women are more violent and less stable because they have a class of young men without the prospect of getting a mate. Monogamy, rather than being the state of nature, may have been an important cultural technology for reducing violence.
April 20, 2018
QotD: Nationalism
The nationalist religion is strong. Many are ready to die for it, fervently believing that it is morally good, and factually true. But they are mistaken; just as mistaken as their communist bedfellows. Few creeds have created more hatred, cruelty, and senseless suffering than the belief in the righteousness of the nationality principle; and yet it is still widely believed that this principle will help to alleviate the misery of national oppression. My optimism is a little shaken, I admit, when I look at the near-unanimity with which this principle is still accepted, even today, without any hesitation, without any doubt – even by those whose political interests are clearly opposed to it. But I refuse to abandon the hope that the absurdity and cruelty of this alleged moral principle will one day be recognized by all thinking men.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 1963.
April 18, 2018
Stossel: Jordan Peterson on Finding Meaning in Responsibility
ReasonTV
Published on 17 Apr 2018Jordan Peterson is an unlikely YouTube celebrity. The Canadian psychologist lectures about things like responsibility. Yet millions of young people watch his videos, line up to hear his speeches, and buy his book 12 Rules for Life. It was number one on the Amazon bestseller list for a month.
———
John Stossel asks: What could make a book about responsibility take off?
“People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom,” Peterson tells Stossel. “There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.”
The other side of the story, according to Peterson, is that “it’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.”
Peterson instead advises: “Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth….That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.”
Many leftists hate Peterson. They attack him for saying people should be “dangerous.” Peterson explains to Stossel that he means people should have the capacity to be dangerous, but control it.
“People who teach martial arts know this full well,” Peterson says. “If you learn a martial art you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously you learn to control it.”
Advice about that, and responsibility, bring Peterson big audiences.
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The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
March 31, 2018
If anybody could be described as Machiavellian, it’d surely be Machiavelli, right?
At the Foundation for Economic Education, Paul Meany tries to rescue the reputation of Niccolò Machiavelli:
Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito (1536-1603)
Via Wikimedia Commons.If you have ever studied Shakespeare, you might have heard your teacher use the word “Machiavellian” to describe amoral characters such as Iago from Othello or Edmund from King Lear. “Machiavellian” denotes a person or action that disregards morality and is wholly self-serving. The origin of the word derives from the famous Florentine politician and writer Niccoló Machiavelli.
[…]
Published posthumously, The Prince left Machiavelli with an infamous reputation as an amoral, atheistic, and cynical writer. In 1559, the Catholic Church put Machiavelli’s works on the Index of Prohibited Books. In the play The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe, written in 1589, Machiavelli appears in the prologue, boldly exclaiming, “I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.”
Machiavelli came to be associated with an Elizabethan term, “Old Nick,” used to denote the devil. There is a subject of modern psychology, known as the “dark triad,” which focuses on three malevolent personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.
However, this deeply negative image of Machiavelli did not always exist. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a more positive view of Machiavelli emerged, with authors such as the Republican James Harrington referring to Machiavelli as “the prince of politicians.” During the Italian Renaissance, humanist Giovanni Battista Busini fondly described Machiavelli as “a most extraordinary lover of liberty.”
This praise might seem confusing; after all, the word “Machiavellian” denotes someone who is cunning and unscrupulous. How could a man so devious and pragmatic be called a lover of liberty? The answer lies with Machiavelli’s other book, known as Discourses on Livy, which presents a very different image of his political beliefs.
[…]
The stark differences between Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy and The Prince come from the nature of the aims of each book. The Prince aims to refine the conduct of a single prince, while Discourses on Livy offers guidance for the entire citizen body. The Prince was written to address a unique political opportunity that quickly evaporated, whereas Discourses on Livy was written to articulate the principles required by republics that sought longevity, liberty, and prosperity.
To this day, there still remains a huge debate over the intricacies and contradictions that characterize Machiavelli’s writings. Machiavelli was an extremely nuanced and original thinker whose reputation should not exclusively be that of an evil schemer. He argued for a republic whose liberty is safeguarded by the common person, in which free, unhindered debate provides the best course of action, and where compromises between opposing groups create harmony. Discourses on Livy reveals another side of Machiavelli, a man committed to the ideals of freedom through the means of representative government.
March 28, 2018
Ideological Possession
Robin Koerner offers some information on how to diagnose and treat the widespread scourge of ideological possession:
As someone who has long been writing about the threat posed by this all too prevalent epistemic disease, I am delighted to see the attention that is now being paid to it.
Ideological possession is to healthy political discourse as scientism is to science.
The most important thing to know about diagnosing ideological possession is that you can’t do it by looking at the content of the possessing ideology.
As I have said elsewhere, it’s not the content of your belief that makes you dangerous, it’s the way you believe it.
Any ideology has the potential to be deadly when advanced by those who are so sure of their own knowledge and moral outlook that they would impose it against the protestations of those affected by it. To the ideologically possessed, the imposition can always be justified because “it’s the right thing to do,” “it will start working if we keep at it,” “the complaints are coming from bad people,” and so on. (Yes. The logic is as circular as it seems.)
[…]
To protect oneself from the terrible epistemic disease of ideological possession, epistemic nutrition and exercise are extremely effective.
With respect to the former, the regular consumption of great thinkers like J.S. Mill (“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that”), George Orwell (“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle”), and Dostoevsky (“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer. Nothing is more difficult than to understand him”) will keep you in good epistemic health. Supplement these basics with a more varied diet of thinkers with whom you disagree on things that matter, and you’ll be in even better shape.
With respect to the latter, a comfortable regime of epistemic exercise — which takes a little time and effort but is immediately rewarding — involves maintaining real friendships with people who have very different assumptions, experiences, and declared moral and political priorities from your own.
The good news is, if you’re chasing Truth hard enough, it is very unlikely that this particular disease will ever catch up with you.
March 27, 2018
Stereotype duel – Boomers versus Millennials
In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, Sarah Hoyt discusses the long-term damage the Boomers have done to the Millennials:
I’m highly amused that the boomers, possibly the most media-stereotyped generation in history, where the decent members keep telling us they’re not like the lunatics who protested, shut down universities and joined sex communes to share medieval-like diseases from never bathing, are the ones most stereotyping the millennials, according to how the media portrays the millennials.
As some millennial readers here have said, and as I know from my circle, most millennials aren’t like the lazy, game addicted creatures who preach socialism at everyone that the media shows you. Most millennials I know were raised under the spur of boomer teachers who — sorry guys — really are stereotypical in “challenge all authority except mine!
Yes a lot of millennials got lost along the way, and yes, I know my share of millennials drifting through life with no aim, no job, no training, nothing.
But do consider these kids were assured from their youngest age that they were surplus (there are too many humans. I mean they tried to force both of my kids to sign a no-reproduction agreement); that there is nothing they can do (capitalism is inherently unjust, and we’re all ruled by corporations and big, shadowy forces); that no one cares about them (blood for oil; the only reason guns aren’t banned is because people want you to get shot); that their future is poorer and any children they have will be condemned to hell on Earth (we’re running out of oil, water (according to my kids’ teachers), glass (also according to my kids’ teachers) and anything else you can think of (including some things you can’t), there is no future for humanity (global warming is going to kill us all.)
The amazing thing is not that some millennials drift through life with no aim and no plan. Who cares, if it’s all going to end, anyway.
I’m fairly sure they resemble nothing so much as the generation that grew up in the shadow of the year 1000, except without the religious portion, since the prophecies that depress them pretend not to be religious. And yet, anyone who has seen a millennial white male talk about how he’s guilty of all the evils in the world and how he will never be clean of white privilege knows EXACTLY what the flagellants looked like.
Put yourself in their place. The kids who swallowed the gospel of human guilt for everything and in particular the gospel that the West is particularly evil and that the end is nigh and inevitable aren’t getting up and building. I’m shocked, aren’t you shocked?
The brighter they are, too, the easier it is for them to swallow that gospel, because it’s easier for smart people to become attracted by internally consistent systems even if (particularly if) they have no contact with the outside world.
Again, these aren’t all the millennials, just like the toking, commune dwelling lot weren’t all of the boomers.
But they are a significant portion, and in some way they might be the portion that would have been most dedicated/creative.
So, what can be done?
March 26, 2018
Rick McGinnis on Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Peterson’s book and lecture series has been much in the news lately, so Rick McGinnis shares his thoughts, particularly about the message and intended audience for 12 Rules for Life:
It was probably inevitable that this sudden notoriety would create a demand for a book-length statement of principles from Peterson, and he obliged earlier this year with 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Deceptively packaged as a self-help tome, the book expands on a series of postings Peterson made on Quora, a crowdsourcing website that, instead of asking for money, invites its readers to contribute answers to questions posed by other readers.
The book’s structure is straightforward; after sketching in the origin of the dozen precepts, he states them at the outset of each chapter, explains them in varying degrees of complexity with examples from his practice as a clinical psychologist, anecdotes from his own life or – and this is proving to be most tantalizing – ruminations on quotes from history, philosophy, mythology or (most often of all) the Bible.
On the surface, Peterson’s edicts for a good life are self-evident: Stand straight; Obey the Golden Rule; Choose your friends wisely; Set yourself reasonable expectations; Raise your children well; Don’t be a hypocrite; Cherish meaning; Don’t lie; Listen before you speak; Choose your words carefully; Let children fail so they learn to succeed; Be kind to animals.
But lest you think that short paragraph should save anyone the price of the book, it has to be understood that we are at least a generation, perhaps several, from the point where these commonsensical statements were known, understood or accepted by any sane adult. We are, at the end of a century of phenomenal technological advances and cataclysmic history, sorely in need of a book-length exposition on phrases that you’d once expect to find on needlework samplers.
Early on and quite often, Peterson comes across with butt-clenching dread as the smartest-man-in-the-room, laying out the stories behind the facts, culled from his years of reading and research, with the force and volume of a firehose. He relies heavily on evolutionary biology to explain our hardwired need to create and find our place in hierarchies, with examples that distill our endlessly troubling social responses to bluff, authority, and even violence down to chemical and neurological mechanisms set in place way back in time with far less complex creatures (a scenario that’s easily satirized as “we are all lobsters”).
It’s been observed – and confirmed by Peterson – that the ideal audience for his book is young people in general and young men in particular. As a former young man, I can attest that being told by a wise older man, clearly on your side but unwilling to sugar coat the facts, that the bully and the big-man-on-campus are better armed than you are to jockey for status and fulfillment – the alpha lobsters, waving their claws around to appreciable effect – is very much less than comforting. Peterson’s ideal audience will have to endure the climb up a very steep hill of biological determinism to reach the far more hospitable plateau beyond.
I’m not saying Peterson is wrong. From the perspective of an older man, I’ve seen this lobster battle played out too many times to deny its plausibility. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest that the ideologies that he decries, imagining that there is no biological determinism – not even the binary division of gender – or even a landscape governed by measurable standards or objective truth, is far more appealing to young people raised to believe in an ever-expanding entitlement of “rights” and a pursuit of “justice” that needs to triumph above history or biology.
It’s when Peterson tries to explain the philosophical and even theological roots of our cultural systems that things might be rewarding, for both young and older readers. He has a core group of texts that he relies upon, with particular emphasis on Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn on the modern side, and while he will evoke ancient mythology – the gods of Egypt make several appearances, though even he can’t overcome the essential strangeness of their myths – he reaps more rewardingly from the Bible, especially in one passage where he analyzes the difference between the Old and New Testament God.
