
We Are All Confident Idiots - r0h1n
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/confident-idiots-92793/
======
leeber
I think if you're truly (1) confident about your knowledge or mastery of a
particular topic and (2) actually are knowledgeable, you don't have trouble
admitting things you don't know.

Here's what I really hate though. When you are around _multiple_ people who
are the type to claim knowledge about things they truly have no idea about.

For example in social situations or work situations and you have multiple of
these types around. When a conversation comes up and the knowledge of the
people involved is put to the test. Maybe your boss is asking who knows how to
perform a certain task, or who has experience with certain hardware or
software, etc. Or maybe a friend is asking what is the best TV they should
buy, etc. There's the people who claim to know about topics XYZ when they
really don't, and you, naturally, admit that you don't know. But you might
still be the most knowledgeable person about the general topic, and best
candidate to offer advice or take on said task. Doesn't matter, you get
labeled as the uninformed person while the "idiot" who claims to know
everything about XYZ appears to be knowledgable expert. And worst case
scenario is when your boss, co-workers, friends, etc. are dumb enough not to
catch it.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _I think if you 're truly (1) confident about your knowledge or mastery of a
> particular topic and (2) actually are knowledgeable, you don't have trouble
> admitting things you don't know._

I don't think that's true in practice. For proof, just watch any academic
debate, ever.

~~~
StandardFuture
The parent comment is stating a premise as a conclusion. Not having trouble
admitting when you don't know something or understand something very well is
actually a third attribute (commonly called humility), not the result of the
first two. If more people focused on having it as an attribute then the
scenario that the parent comment mentioned (and similar scenarios -- such as
disappointing YouTube comments?) would be much rarer in occurrence.

In fact, failing to have the third attribute affects the other two. Your
confidence will quickly become overconfidence or pure hubris when faced with
something you don't know much about. Also, in relationship to the second
attribute, it is hard to convince yourself that you are _not_ actually
knowledgeable of something if you are not humble enough to consider that
possibility.

------
mathgenius
It astounds me how many people will just make shit up rather than profess
their ignorance. I'm not even sure if they are even aware of their lack of
knowledge, it is as if they discovered this lump of meat in their skull that
emits random verbiage and they assume this must be truth. Like a little tv in
their head, power up and go.

So the next time someone says to you they don't know something, watch out,
this person is probably a genius!

~~~
Bargs
Everyone is guilty of this. You, me, and everyone else on earth. Ignorance of
your own ignorance is what buoys overconfidence in the first place.

From the article:

"The American author and aphorist William Feather once wrote that being
educated means “being able to differentiate between what you know and what you
don’t.” As it turns out, this simple ideal is extremely hard to achieve.
Although what we know is often perceptible to us, even the broad outlines of
what we don’t know are all too often completely invisible. To a great degree,
we fail to recognize the frequency and scope of our ignorance."

~~~
anigbrowl
Not to the same degree. I made a choice nearly 2 decades ago to say 'I don't
know' more often - I was doing on-site networking and tech support for a
living, and I was tired of trying to produce on-the-spot explanations for why
computers were misbehaving in order to soothe clients, so I stopped doing it.
This led to some pushback at first - clients would say 'well what I am I
paying you for if you don't know?!' and suchlike, but by explaining that I had
a diagnostic process and a fallback position if it didn't work (provide a
replacement for a piece of hardware or back up and reinstall the OS or
whatever), I could usually get people to agree that an ounce of patience was
preferable to a pound of bullshit. This turned out to be a good strategy and I
adopted it as a habit in other parts of life, makinh conversation much easier
and more interesting - eg if I met someone interesting at a party, instead of
trying to maintain intellectual parity I'd say 'I'm ignorant of [your field],
could you explain [some basic principle]?' and so on. At the same time I
developed a habit of trying to fact-check everything before making positive
statements, or if I was conversing in person, citing my sources or qualifying
my remarks.

This isn't to say I'm immune to ignorance, as I have assumptions and
misapprehensions like everyone else, not to mention being forgetful, so I have
approximate knowledge of many things.* But assuming it as the default in both
personal learning and social contexts I've saved myself an awful lot of grief.
Unfortunately this sometimes leads to equally fallacious overestimates of
general competence, which is also part of the Dunning-Krueger effect :-/

* with apologies to Pendleton Ward.

------
atmosx
"As You Like It" by William Shakespeare

Act 5, Scene 1:

 _[...]The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a
fool[...]_

I try to keep that quote in mind at all times. I believe it holds a great deal
of wisdom, especially for me. For I am loud and opinionated. But I still fail
when I need it most, at times when I am surrounded by (people who IMHO are
extreme) idiots.

~~~
Swizec
This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect[1], the cognitive bias that
unskilled individuals overestimate their ability and skilled individuals
underestimate it.

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias manifesting in two principal
ways: unskilled individuals tend to suffer from illusory superiority,
mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate, while highly
skilled individuals tend to rate their ability lower than is accurate. In
unskilled individuals, this bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of
the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Skilled individuals tend to
underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which
are easy for them are also easy for others."

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

~~~
Dewie
I swear this is HN's favourite _bias_ to bring up on any topic relating to
intelligence and aptitude.

~~~
emotionalcode
I think the Dunning Kruger effect has been a meme/cultural/conceptual
construct long enough (like the measurement of intelligence) that we need to
test for a Reverse Dunning Kruger effect, where knowledge of the Dunning
Kruger Effect correlates with bias in self evaluation.

~~~
xhedley
Knowing about the Dunning Kruger effect makes me more inclined to ask other
people how good I am at something instead of relying on my own opinion. Which
I think would make my evaluation more accurate.

~~~
mgkimsal
or it might make you more selective about who you ask for feedback?

~~~
ccozan
would this be a meta-Dunning-Kruger effect? Chosing to ask only people who you
know would give you positive feedback?

------
adwf
I usually accredit the evolution attribution problem to the phrase "survival
of the fittest". It's a catchy line, it implies that the better you are the
more likely you are to survive, which is kinda true, but leads to the mistaken
agency issue. It has the additional benefit of aligning with the ethic of hard
work (ie. do better to survive) that we also try to teach kids, which I think
is one of the reasons it persists as a meme.

The problem is that "death of the weakest" is a much better way of describing
it - although possibly not so PC to teach in the classroom. The reason why
people think Cheetahs evolved to be fast is because they equate it with the
ethic of hard work, rather than the real reason - slow cheetahs don't eat and
therefore die before breeding, fast cheetahs eat and get to breed.

Without meaning to start yet another internet debate/flamewar about evolution,
I often wonder whether the strong protestant work ethic in the US is also the
reason why evolution is so poorly understood there. Because "death to the
weakest" involves no agency, no self-improvement or hard work.

EDIT: Just to avoid to confusion (as there seems to be some!), I'm _not_
talking about the mechanism of evolution, purely the actual phrase "survival"
and what it means to people when it's mentioned, the implication of agency
that goes along with the word.

~~~
lucio
It is not just a spin? "survival of the fittest" is exactly the same as "death
to the weakest".

"survival of the fittest" = "not survival of the not-fit"

And also "fit" it is not the same as "strong"

~~~
adwf
Yes it is spin, but not _just_ spin. "Survive" often implies some sort of
agency, that there is some sort of struggle that was overcome and the organism
is still alive. We _teach_ survival skills. Whereas if you drop some
antibiotics on a bacteria culture, there is no struggle, the bacteria that
aren't already resistant just die. That's why I think the inverted phrasing is
clearer in meaning (although yes I meant "weakest fit / not fit").

~~~
lucio
There isnt a struggle?. Do the non-resistant bacteria "try" to survive and
fail, then die? or it "just die"?

The inverted phrase will be a PR disaster for Darwin ;)

~~~
adwf
My point was that the resistant bacteria didn't suddenly evolve the resistance
_because_ the antibiotics were placed in the tray, they were already resistant
to begin with. Therefore they didn't "struggle" to become anything, they
already had the fit attributes for the situation. Hence why I say survival is
a poor word choice as it implies struggle. Death of the non-fit on the other
hand, has no such implication.

Obviously this is all very black and white edge cases and most of the time
we're not talking about absolute death or survival, but decline or success of
certain attributes within a given environment.

And yes, it probably is a terrible way of phrasing evolution from a PR
standpoint ;)

------
DanielBMarkham
"An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s
filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences,
theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors,
and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate
knowledge. "

Yes, and an informed mind is the same, only all the junk is "lined" up to
agree with whatever the prevailing wisdom is.

People don't operate on facts. They operate on feelings, flimsly allegories,
metaphors, and half-baked truths. This isn't a bug; it's a feature. It allows
us to walk into a room we've never visited before, use a chair, and order from
a menu without having to spend time verifying a lot of details. The brain is
emotional and always wildly guessing and generalizing about things, no matter
who we are or what we do.

People wonder why prejudice and stereotyping hasn't gone away in society. Well
heck, it's never going away until you replace people with robots. I was
attacked by a clown as a kid, I hate and fear clowns. You saw your mom shrink
from a tall person, you are afraid of tall people. That's how the brain works,
and it's how we're able to function.

At best we learn to deliberately struggle with this. It's never going to go
away -- at least while we're still human.

------
wglb
Very well written article. Very amusing commentary threads.

But let me suggest something that I have tried. In one of my most intense
coding periods in my career, I kept a log of the bugs that I created and had
to fix. My bug rate declined measurably. (This is one of the old notebooks
that i dearly wish I kept--was left at that job when I moved on.)

There is a relevant quote that I can't locate from someone famous who said
that he would keep a list of his mistakes in his wallet and refer to it from
time to time. A boss of mine who was adventurous about experimenting with new
technology said "I don't know very much about it, but I do know 50 ways that
_wont 't_ work". This has led me to asking someone who claims to be an expert
"Tell me three (or five) things that won't work" in their field of expertise.

The advice from the article _For individuals, the trick is to be your own
devil’s advocate: to think through how your favored conclusions might be
misguided; to ask yourself how you might be wrong, or how things might turn
out differently from what you expect_ seems spot on.

~~~
jameshart
A coaching tip I always give to developers: you don't know enough about a
topic if you can only think of one way to solve a problem. If you only know
one way to do it, how do you know it's not the worst one?

Take the time to sit back and enumerate a few ways of solving the problem and
figure out which one's best in this situation. Why are you rejecting those
other solutions? Are you sure those reasons are sound? Are you sure they don't
apply equally to the solution you've selected?

------
Bahamut
This is anecdotal, but as far as I have seen in the Marine Corps, there is a
bit of knowledge that is passed down that confidence makes you right, and that
you need to be absolutely confident if you make an observation that goes
against what a higher up is doing.

Of course this is bad logic (and likely part of why Marines get a bad rep for
often being stupid), but there is a bit of wisdom in there - confidence makes
things more likely to happen your way, and people also like confidence more
than uncertainty. For the Marine Corps, such a bad adage is useful since
uncertainty is bad, and it often is better to choose an action, even if sub-
optimal, than do nothing at all.

~~~
sliverstorm
I imagine confidence & morale can, in their line of work, tip the scales and
make something impossible, eminently possible.

The small troupe of British soldiers who recently repelled a militant attack
with only bayonets comes to mind. Outnumbered, outgunned, the subject of an
ambush, it seems to me that a combination of resolve and confidence was the
deciding factor.

~~~
billmalarky
Morale is incredibly important in any type of effort. Think about how
productive you are working on something that excites you vs grinding for
dollars.

------
lucio
"epic housing bubble stoked by the machinations of financiers and the
ignorance of consumers"

Isn't he being prey of his own effect?

So the "epic housing bubble"(consecuence) was caused by "the machinations of
financiers(cause 1) and the ignorance of consumers (cause 2)"

If this is true, why 2008? Clearly cause 1 & 2 were present waaay before 2008.
So maybe the bubble have other causes?

~~~
byEngineer
The FED artificially kept low interest rates since 2001 till 2008. All that
money had to go somewhere. It went to housing. Cause and effect, plain and
simple. The same currently nobody seems to understand that we have even lower
interest rates today. From 2008 till 2014. And all this money goes to
(primarily) US Treasuries. US Treasuries are currently the most expensive in
its 300 year history. Mortgage APR fixed for 30 years at 4%. For 15 years at
3.5%. When the real inflation rate felt by consumers is at about 10%. Why
nobody sees that? People don't like to think. They prefer imaginary fantasies
where everything is just fine to brutal reality of the unproductive economy
running from a bubble to bubble sponsored only by the USD being reserve
currency of the world.

Once the US Treasuries bubble bursts, the same moment, the bubble in the US
Dollar and America will burst too.

We're living in the final stages of the final bubble, mother of all bubbles in
the mankind history. So we have house prices in bubble territory, car loans in
bubble territory, Wall Street in bubble territory, VCs/startup scene in bubble
territory. Enjoy the ride! But you don't want to be there for the bubble burst
of the world reserve currency. I'm already on the other side of the pond.

~~~
innguest
Glad to see someone here that understands what is going on.

Did you really move out of the US because of the coming crisis? I'm really
curious about this. I understand there will be riots and it will be unstable
for a while but how much chaos are you expecting?

~~~
vectorpush
The smug, self-certain, self-congratulatory attitude seems ironic in the
context of the posted article.

~~~
byEngineer
Reading 0 to 1 by Peter Thiel at the moment. I think we have had too much of
uncertainty in the West from economy thinking to social thinking to medicine.

Peter claims in his book that no CEO looks beyond 3 months timeframe running
their Company anymore. Why? Because market knows better anyway. Why to plan,
when market will determine what the market is going to be? Uncertainty.

Medical: we can't control genes right? They determine everything, so why to
care, why to plan?

Social: cultural marxism. Pessimistic culture -- everything is wrong because
we are capitalist society. As long as it exists we can't be certain of
anything.

If you have debt to gdp ratio of 600%, what do you expect? Flourishing
economy? Things will go down south. You are like a six year old pissed of that
two and two is four every time. Some things are certain. Like 600% debt to gdp
aren't pretty. Not positive. Not uncertain. Fucking shit. OK?

------
prof_hobart
> some familiarity with concepts that are entirely made up, such as the plates
> of parallax, ultra-lipid, and cholarine. In one study, roughly 90 percent
> claimed some knowledge of at least one of the nine fictitious concepts

Is it possible that this is at least partly down to the phrase "some
knowledge"? Knowing what parallax or lipids are might be seen as having some
knowledge of the concept.

~~~
d23
Honestly, even knowing they were made up my brain's first instinct was "yeah,
those _sound_ familiar." If they were just asking about "some knowledge" I can
see how people might say, "hmm, yeah, that sounds like something I've heard
before."

~~~
colomon
And even more so with people's names, at least for me. For every name I know
solidly there are probably two that I vaguely sort of know.

For instance, I probably know more about Irish traditional music than 99.9% of
the American population. But if you came up with a real-sounding random name
for an Irish musician and talked about him like he was real and of course I
should know who he was, the odds that I would confuse that with someone I knew
a bit about are substantial.

Or (speaking of Irish music) remembering tunes. There are tunes I _own_ ,
tunes I think I know, tunes that are familiar, and tunes I flat out don't
know. In my experience, I have the most trouble playing are some of the tunes
I think I know -- more even than playing the tunes that I would just describe
as familiar! Most of those I thought I knew I could probably sort out later
given time, but in the heat of the moment what comes out can be nonsense.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, when I get in trouble is on the fuzzy
boundary between knowing and not knowing. I don't mind saying "I don't know"
when I know I don't know. But sometimes I don't know I don't know, and that's
when the trouble starts.

------
teekert
In holland, a DJ called Giel Beelen has/had a part of his show called "Gaat ie
mee of zegt ie nee.": "Will he join or will he say no." He asked a national
politician about terrorist Jael Jablabla
([http://nos.nl/op3/artikel/359078-pvdakamerlid-leerdam-
stopt-...](http://nos.nl/op3/artikel/359078-pvdakamerlid-leerdam-stopt-
vanwege-3fmradiospelletje.html)), about a non-existing band and about the coma
of Sharon... The politician bluffed his way through, claiming he knew more
about Jablabla than the DJ... and ended his career shortly afterwards.

~~~
petercooper
We had a similar thing in the UK with a famous satirist called Chris Morris
who convinced a wide array of celebrities, including politicians, to say all
sorts of idiotic things in a series of spoof documentaries about things like
drugs and, most controversially, pedophilia. For example, he got one of the
UK's most famous DJs to say that pedophiles have more genes in common with
crabs than other human beings:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEolSjlcqng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEolSjlcqng)
.. in this case, the facts were fed to the celebs rather than them making them
up though.

------
waterlesscloud
"Because it’s so easy to judge the idiocy of others, it may be sorely tempting
to think this doesn’t apply to you. But the problem of unrecognized ignorance
is one that visits us all."

This means YOU, person who thinks you see through it all.

You don't.

This applies to you too.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
I know intellectually it must apply to me as well...

But it's an interesting illusion. I think that philosophically the correct
lesson here is that being (slightly?!?) aware of your own mind doesn't
actually give you super powers... you can't change it. (Or, at least, you
can't change it by shallow awareness... it would require true efforts.)

------
Dylan16807
>whether his appearance as a judge on America’s Got Talent would damage his
legacy. “No,” said one woman to this last question. “It will make him even
more popular.”

Will. As in, this person was not bluffing. They were not talking about a
previously aired nonexistent show. They were speculating on a possible future.
It doesn't matter if the questioner is trying to lie.

(The 'lie' isn't even something that's disprovable, as a plausible future
event.)

Disclaimer: only talking about the quote in the article, if there was more
context it shouldn't have been cut

~~~
gwern
'would' is ambiguous because the author is describing something in the past.
For example, you would write 'would' regardless of whether the original
question was "Ma'am, do you think Clinton's appearance yesterday on America's
Got Talent will damage his legacy?" or if the question had actually been
"Miss, do you think Clinton accepting his recent invitation to appear on AGT
would damage his legacy?" But either way, the question is false...

~~~
Dylan16807
Still not bluffing, because they are only speculating on the self-contained
scenario, not bringing in fake details.

~~~
gwern
It is still bluffing because the scenario is not being presented as a
hypothetical.

~~~
Dylan16807
If you don't pretend you've heard of it before, it's an abstract scenario that
might as well be hypothetical. You're answering based on the question and only
the question.

------
kevinwang
I'm pretty sure that for the Kimmel segments, they ask the interviewees
different questions and later edit in a different question that makes the
original answer seem funny.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> I'm pretty sure that for the Kimmel segments, they ask the interviewees
> different questions

So, without evidence, you're _confident_ of this?

------
lucio
In the curved-tube image, clearly the ball will exit with a clockwise
spinning, because it'll be rolling on the external wall of the tube (based on
the "Newtonian principle" of inertia). I'll bet if you try it as a experiment
(inside the atmosphere) the ball will follow "C"... Am I a confident idiot?

~~~
bryanlarsen
That's a standard fallacy I often run into: over estimating second order
effects. Yes, unless the ball is perfectly smooth or in a vacuum you will get
slight curvature. But it would be so slight that it would look like B.

~~~
iconjack
Try it with a ping-pong ball (a natural choice). The curvature coming out of
the tube will not be slight.

~~~
bryanlarsen
None of the three choices in the diagram are curved, though.

------
nwatson
I'm probably too late with this comment ... but if the diameter of the tube is
significantly larger than the diameter of the ball, and the initial velocity
of the ball is large enough, then the trajectory of the ball as it leaves the
"curved tube" won't necessarily correlate well with the straightforward
textbook answer you'd expect to see. Perhaps the original context for the
question made this a bit more clear, but as presented in the article, the
"real world" might intervene.

------
blinkingled
One extreme is confident idiot. The other is the ever doubting fool. I keep
thinking there is a happier middle ground - I know some things and I can't
know some others. I will do my best with what I know.

From personal experience #1 obviously leads to certain failures (unfortunate
one if you are even a little wise and honest - you saw this coming and still
decided to be a cocky idiot). #2 you lose out on motivation, don't get the
credit you deserve and get more stressed than necessary.

The happier middle ground works for me - actually look at everything, find out
what you know, what you need to know and equally importantly what you are just
not going to know. Then work a plan on the strengths of what you know.

That's work though - heh! The extremes are just easier to acquire :)

------
androidb
I'm not confident!

------
Shivetya
I wonder where those of us who tend to self depreciating humor, who also in
turn confess to not knowing much while being told we get things done, fall. I
know some of what I am totally clueless about but revel in being told when I
am factually wrong in something I thought otherwise. However there are areas
where I just refuse to understand and worse I think I know what some of those
are and still won't correct it.

------
unknownBits
I don't really mind people not realizing they are idiots, if they could at
least stop trying to be in power and stop ruling over others. Most of our
leaders/rulers are complete idiots without realizing it, that's the worse
problem on this planet; if you try to convince them of their ignorance, they
react with power, insolvable..

------
dlss
If anyone is curious about the Kimmel clip, it's on youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frjaQ17yAww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frjaQ17yAww)

The article makes a lot more sense after watching it IMO.

------
ScottBurson
"Master, what is knowledge?"

"When you know a thing, to know that you know it, and when you do not know a
thing, to know that you do not know it -- this is knowledge."

I don't remember where I read that, but I like it.

~~~
ppereira
Analects of Confucius, Book II, Chapter XVII.

[https://archive.org/stream/analectsofconfuc00confrich#page/1...](https://archive.org/stream/analectsofconfuc00confrich#page/164/mode/2up)

------
shimfish
I often reply "I don't know" when asked about things I don't know. It's
invariably met with an explicit or implicit questioning of my worth. I can see
why people learn never to admit ignorance.

------
gsz
It sounds like it's best to be doubtful and unsure about my knowledge. So as
long as I can make sure I'm unsure, I'm good. But can I be confident that I'm
unsure?

It's turtles all the way down.

------
praptak
Anecdotal evidence from a fun show, plus the mandatory reference to Dunning-
Kruger.

 _" Unfortunately, Kruger and Dunning never actually provided any support for
this type of just-world view; their studies categorically didn’t show that
incompetent people are more confident or arrogant than competent people."_

[http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-
dunning-k...](http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-
kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/)

~~~
georgemcbay
> plus the mandatory reference to Dunning-Kruger.

Well, the article was written by David Dunning, the one the effect is half-
named for, so it is almost literally mandatory that it is mentioned.

~~~
waterlesscloud
This is a very literal LOL moment.

------
jacobn
And this is why software schedules are always off. Any schedule for that
matter.

If you're into this type of psychology, check out "Thinking Fast and Slow" by
D. Kahnemann.

[http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-
Kahneman/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-
Kahneman/dp/0374533555)

------
reddytowns
I would have liked this article more if they had left out the word "All" in
the title

------
century19
> "Often, our theories are good enough to get us through the day, or at least
> to an age when we can procreate."

This is a fantastic line. I guess getting to the age where we can procreate is
all that's needed by our genes !

------
qwerta
"idiot" is well defined medical term, author probably meant "ignorant".

------
tokenadult
This article is very worth a thorough top-to-bottom read. I especially like a
paragraph from farther down in the article where the author brings up an issue
that often comes up here on Hacker News: "According to Pauline Kim, a
professor at Washington University Law School, people tend to make inferences
about the law based on what they know about more informal social norms. This
frequently leads them to misunderstand their rights—and in areas like
employment law, to wildly overestimate them. In 1997, Kim presented roughly
300 residents of Buffalo, New York, with a series of morally abhorrent
workplace scenarios—for example, an employee is fired for reporting that a co-
worker has been stealing from the company—that were nonetheless legal under
the state’s 'at-will' employment regime. Eighty to 90 percent of the
Buffalonians incorrectly identified each of these distasteful scenarios as
illegal, revealing how little they understood about how much freedom employers
actually enjoy to fire employees." I have seen this misconception here on
Hacker News many times. (To be sure, here on Hacker News we have participants
from many countries, not all of which have the same laws about employment, but
I have seen plenty of Americans proclaim "facts" about rights of employees
here in the United States that simply are not facts.) Basically, in our
thoughtful discussions here, we all have to take care to check our facts.
That's why I'm especially glad to upvote comments that ask earlier commenters
to explain where they got their information, or to suggest further reading on
a topic. I'll link a book here about employment law (mostly related to hiring
procedures) as an example of the information I like to see in comments. I need
to check my understanding of all issues, all the time, according to the
article kindly submitted here, and I appreciate it when other HN participants
help me find more information.

[http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Hiring-Manual-Employment-
Backgrou...](http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Hiring-Manual-Employment-
Background/dp/1889150592/)

~~~
brazzy
Not at all limited to law - accepting facts/stories/statements that fit one's
worldview or even just seem interesting or important, and passing them on
without ever checking or even doubting their correctness is a mistake that I
see very frequently (and occasionally in myself despite conscious efforts to
avoid it).

~~~
sakri
I see this with developers:

The young gun who assumes he understands architectural concepts without
reading up on them, and re-invents the wheel (often producing a wheel that's
tough to turn).

Then there's the cocky senior who doesn't need the latest and greatest because
he already "knows" they do the same thing as his solution from 15 years ago
(and when he's fired he can't find work because he's a dinosaur).

I know, I've been guilty of both :D

Edit : Come to think of it, the worst offenders are buzzword spewing managers
and sales guys. "Oh the Cloud? Our product can mesh your business objectives
with transparent synergies through the Cloud! Trust me, I'm an expert! Ah-hah-
hah-haa"

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Do dinosaur managers just talk slower?

~~~
j4meserljoness
No, they also eat leaves that are further up the tree due to their long necks.

------
cowardlydragon
The REAL problem is that confident incompetence in males is attractive to
females.

------
piker
TL;DR go with your gut--it's probably correct.

------
vinceguidry
The article makes a few generalizations about evolution that don't really hold
up. The idea that evolution does not have agency needs to be re-examined in
the light of the fact that animals themselves have far more agency than we
realized.

To use the author's example, cheetahs may well have all decided as a group to
run faster, in the sort of 'social learning' way that we're just now starting
to really get a grip on. I mean, adaptations don't just happen, beings have to
use their abilities, and then the cells will respond by getting thicker,
stronger, more responsive. Think about lifting weights. If agency isn't
responsible for evolutionary advantages, then what is? Random differences?
Really?

Evolution is way more complex than we realize. Every year, we come across
crazy things that happen _in our own bodies_ that just totally blow our minds.
Right now I think our broader understanding of how evolution works is hampered
by the fact that we just don't know yet how genomes hold on to experiences and
then pass them along to our offspring. So we assume that every life form is a
blank slate, limited to just the same genetic code all their fellow life forms
share.

But just because we share the same template in one, specific way doesn't mean
there can't be a ton of ways that fertilized zygotes can be different from
each other too. And that those differences could result from the things our
parents did in their lives.

~~~
obitoo
"...we don't know how genomes hold on to experiences and then pass them along
to our offspring. "

Err they don't. That's Lamarckism theory, and I wasn't aware there was even a
shred of evidence towards it.

Sometimes when you don't know how something happens, its because _it isn 't
actually happening_

~~~
Someone1234
> Err they don't. That's Lamarckism theory, and I wasn't aware there was even
> a shred of evidence towards it.

There is quite a bit from the last few years. Gene expression in particular is
a field we continue to learn a lot about [0] and several studies have
suggested Lamarckism might have some merit [1].

Saying there isn't a "shred of evidence" is just scientifically untrue. There
is some legitimate evidence that limited information could be passed from
mother to child prenatally.

Your post is the classic Dunning–Kruger effect. Few in evolutionary biology
would be as "sure" as you are, and you get less and less sure the more you
learn.

[0]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK43787/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK43787/)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Epigenetic_inherita...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Epigenetic_inheritance)

~~~
arielby
Macro-scale evolution does not go through epigenetics, but mostly "knob
tweaks".

~~~
Someone1234
Because, why? Why exactly can't large scale evolutionary change by powered by
single mother-child genetic signals? That makes just as much or as little
sense as claiming that evolution is powered primarily through a single random
mutation.

