
Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong - XzetaU8
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/4/17989224/intellectual-humility-explained-psychology-replication
======
quanticle
The irony of a clickbait publication like Vox talking about intellectual
humility is breathtaking. Vox and its ilk (Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Gawker,
etc) have done more than anyone else in pushing people to stick to their guns,
even when they know their position is wrong. Their attitude towards apologies
is never forgiveness, but to attack even harder, saying, "See, even my
opponent admits that he or she was wrong!"

Humility doesn't go viral. Careful consideration doesn't get retweets. What
spreads is _confidence_ , whether it's well-placed or not. As a result, Vox's
product is the very sort of confidence that this article decries.

~~~
kieckerjan
I expected something like this to be the top comment. Vox seems to have become
something that many people love to hate and in that case I imagine it feels
good to take them down a peg. (Please note that this does not preclude the
possibility that you are right.)

~~~
weberc2
Why do you assume ulterior motives? Perhaps people are just sincerely
discussing the irony that a notoriously disingenuous publication lecturing
readers about intellectual humility. No need to assume that they’re
“delighting in tearing them down” (although such delight would be entirely
understandable).

------
JamesBarney
One technique I picked up, was imagine what evidence would change my mind.
This exercise usually tells me one of two things. Either one it tells me
exactly what evidence I should be searching for to tamper my opinion, or even
more importantly it illuminates that it would take an unreasonable amount of
evidence to convince me of the opposing viewpoint which alerts me that I'm
probably pretty biased on that topic.

~~~
jordanchan
The US Gov has a very nice little book on the topic - A Tradecraft Primer:
Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis. Just
google and you'll find it on the CIA's website.

The book is geared towards the intelligence community but can be appreciated
by all intelligent communities, especially on a topic such as this *. In a
nutshell, it is about discovering implicit assumptions, questioning them, and
checking for alternative explanations - in all areas of analysis/thought.

------
lhuser123
> “Our ignorance is invisible to us”

Just like those tricky drawings, that even after they tell you that both lines
are the same length, your mind keep saying “nope that one is longer”.
Something very similar happens when we try see our ignorance. It takes a lot
of effort, especially when no one have ever bothered to teach us.

~~~
ACow_Adonis
But if you ARE taught it, suddenly it becomes possible. If you are brought up
in a philosophical tradition which essentially says: "Knowledge is forming a
theory, and then trying to disprove it", then suddenly ignorance becomes
visible.

In the two line example: sure, you mind tells you they're different, but if
you're taught that knowledge is about trying to falsify your own opinion, you
think about how it might be disproved. You go grab a ruler, bring it back to
measure the two lines, and hot damn!

Growing up, I had a very similar moment trying to understand the Monty Hall
problem. I was SO frustrated when my intuition said that I was right, I
actually grabbed my father (sorry dad) and made him sit down with me while we
physically ran through a hundred or so actual physical simulations and
recorded the results to see whether practice would match up against theory or
my intuition.

It matched up with theory. I learnt a very valuable lesson about intuition and
probability.

Of course you're absolutely right however, almost no education system is
actually set up to teach or grade using that style...and most kudos is given
in academia for making positive claims rather than setting up realistic
hypothesese and then working to actively disprove your own or other people's
theories.

~~~
sitkack
Getting a handle on the unknown is what makes new knowledge come into focus.
By definition, they are working at the boundary. This is why we have
formalisms that ensure we aren't fooling ourselves.

The struggle is constant, that is why we need to blindly follow those
formalisms.

That step of running the simulation was crucial in not cementing gut feelings
over proof. Not many people make that leap to running a simulation, even
though causality and our ability to imagine a far future is a prime human
skill.

------
wrnr
I like this story by Bred Weinstein where he asks is a whale a fish or a
mammal. If you say fish because it swims in the water you are ignorant of the
fact they are mammals who evolved back to live in the water. When you say
mammal for this reason you are ignorant of how to read the phylogenic tree of
life where subclasses are always part of the superclass. Most fish are
Osteichthyes, a group that also includes all mammals. But sharks are not part
of this group making us humans closer related to salmon then salmon are to
sharks. Its a bad question but if forced to answer you can only be wrong in
your own educated way.

~~~
Dylan16807
Interesting information about sharks!

But it's wrongfully pedantic to pretend that monophyletic groups are the only
valid classification system. Paraphyletic groups are fine too. Vertebrata or
Craniata, minus Tetrapoda, is more or less the definition of "fish".

~~~
weberc2
Seems like that supports the point. :)

~~~
Dylan16807
Not really, as far as I can tell. The argument was not just that you're
picking between choices, but that both choices are fundamentally wrong in a
technical way. But taxonomic categories _don 't_ technically force you to be
wrong. That part of the argument is just broken.

------
projektir
Unfortunately, I haven't really found that humility is rewarded much, which is
why I think there's so little of it.

~~~
mcv
Exactly. There's also a cultural process of natural selection at work, and if
humility is selected against, we shouldn't be surprised to see less of it.

We live by headlines, sound bites, quick and easy black & white
characterisation. Nuance is not appreciated, and often not understood. Nuance
and humility are seen as signs of weakness, and often taken as signs that
you're wrong, since you clearly don't really believe what you say. A lie
spoken with confidence is more believable than a truth explained with nuance,
and that's a real problem.

------
hevi_jos
It is ironical that I find the tone of these people so prepotent when talking
about OTHERS being wrong.

For example, they give us an audio and they tell us a robotic voice is telling
"Laurel", but they then tell us that what we hear depends on the speakers.

So the fact is that we are not hearing the same thing. So it is not a valid
test.

Indeed, the test is wrong because it is computer synthesizers the ones who
have problems pronouncing certain sounds, like the "l" that we create putting
our tongue back and creating a loop that lets air go out by the sides.

This is a complex analog movement and resonance that is hard to emulate with
digital technology, because it is not static and dynamic sounds are very hard
to control as we use Fourier analysis for that with windows that introduce
distortions in the signal.

Most companies out there just record those sounds from real people.

So those guys instead of accepting the limitations of current technology and
accepting their test is wrong, they use it to prove that others are wrong
while hearing it.

Oh, the irony. The interesting thing is that while it is very hard to admit
that you are wrong, it is extremely easy to admit that other people are wrong.

~~~
Digit-Al
I feel like you're misinterpreting the demonstration. It is not a test and
there is no wrong or right answer. The whole point is to demonstrate that
given different conditions, different people can interpret the same thing as
being completely different.

------
kizer
The problem is that people ground their egos in their
arguments/findings/research etc. If you can resist the prideful urge to do so,
your work, and life in general, become much more enjoyable experiences - in my
opinion.

~~~
alexpetralia
A genuine problem is that intellectual hubris is often rewarded. There are
many "experts" in their field for a reason - not necessarily because they
always know so much - but because we have a human bias to defer to authority
figures. This bias is not going away.

If you want to be able to market yourself and access opportunities that other
people can't, you often have to project confidence - even overconfidence - in
your beliefs. Non-experts can't tell, but they can certainly identify a lack
of confidence. People have a bias for simple, clear prognostications, even if
they are wrong.

This is an unfortunate reality, but it is a reality. Otherwise, we wouldn't
see so many charlatans passing off as experts. But we do.

I think it's useful then to be able to project confidence and even
overconfidence in your beliefs. But at the core, you must remain
intellectually humble if you want to learn. You can't block out knew ideas
because of your ego.

I've summarized this philosophy elsewhere as: look high-status, but be low-
status.

------
paradoxparalax
By the other hand, one can think that the level of Knowledge of the
authorities and the state-of-the-art in certain fields may be overestimated,
because of the confidence of the authorities and the excess of humility of the
person who is looking at that field of knowledge. That said, It is impossible
to overestimate your own ability of making gross blunding mistakes.

~~~
dfischer
That reminds me of:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation)

------
sam_goody
One of my teachers said "When convinced you are correct in an argument, you
should to defend your position without being swayed by your opponents
credentials. Articulate your thoughts, argue with all your strength - and keep
in mind that there is a very real possibility that you just might, perhaps, be
right."

------
shmulkey18
The author displays the very cognitive blind spots he decries. He says

"One reason I’ve been thinking about the virtue of humility recently is
because our president, Donald Trump, is one of the least humble people on the
planet.

It was Trump who said on the night of his nomination, “I alone can fix it,”
with the “it” being our entire political system. It was Trump who once said,
“I have one of the great memories of all time."

Trump is of course not a humble man. Is he any different in this regard than
his predecessor?

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more
about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell
you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my
political director.” -- Barack Obama
([https://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/81895_Page2.html](https://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/81895_Page2.html))

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look
back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide
care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the
rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the
moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as
the last, best hope on Earth." \-- Barack Obama, Primary Election victory
speech, Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008.

Intellectual humility starts at home.

~~~
Flozzin
Recently Obama gave an interview where he pretty much stated something along
these lines. You go into politics locally, and you meet idiots, so you shrug
it off, go into state politics, and meet idiots. You then hit national, and
world politics, and you meet the same idiots.

While I like and respect Obama, it did make me think about the saying, if
everyone is a dick, you're probably the dick.

More on topic. I know a pastor and she recently told me that its sad and
disheartening at how many people will come up to her after a sermon and say,
"Oh that was great, I just wish X was here to hear it." It seems when people
hear about a possible flaw in behavior/personality they always search for
people that have that flaw. But they rarely ever look at themselves. So it's
not too surprising that the author would displays a blind spot while decrying
them.

We can only hope he's realized it and is working on it.

~~~
hodgesrm
> It seems when people hear about a possible flaw in behavior/personality they
> always search for people that have that flaw. But they rarely ever look at
> themselves.

Since you're on the topic of religion the Christian New Testament is pretty
big on humility, for example the famous quote from Matthew 7:4: "Or how can
you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold,
the log is in your own eye?"

As your example shows not everyone who goes to church lives up to the message.
But people have been thinking about the problem for a long time.

------
jacobedawson
Unfortunately the people most likely to exercise epistemic humility are those
that are already rational thinkers, whereas the people that __could benefit
most__ suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect and are unlikely to change their
modes of thinking.

------
mbrodersen
If you live in a society where humility is not rewarded (quite the opposite)
then you will obviously get less of it.

------
sunasra
Very interesting article. Definitely learning starts with accepting mistakes,
avoiding arrogance and being humble.

------
thisrod
There's an old saying in physics: "Knowledge advances one funeral at a time."

------
SimeVidas
Are there any good books about this topic? I have close-minded people in my
family, and I’m looking for books that may have been translated to my native
language, so the more popular the book is, the better.

~~~
hvs
I feel like, "Hey, you're close minded, read this book to find out why" isn't
going to get you very far. But good luck.

~~~
SimeVidas
These types of books usually have a more positive approach.

------
mulle_nat
A sentiment of a bygone era. In the new middle ages we are in now, its all
about "feel". And it its feels right it is right.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I think it may be selective memory. I suspect that the past had plenty of
cocksure blowhards who were "often wrong but never uncertain". But a good
fraction of the great minds had intellectual humility.

And it may be the same now. Hundreds of years from now, those who think "if it
feels right it is right" will be forgotten, and humanity will remember a
higher fraction of those who valued truth more than their own opinion or
feeling.

~~~
mulle_nat
Sure but they weren't dictating the intellectual climate as they are now and
as they were then.

~~~
oblib
I think it's pretty easy to find historical examples of that.

~~~
mulle_nat
Yes around 1200 AD its no problem.

------
james_s_tayler
corrigibility and defeasibility

------
Gatsky
Saying that social scientists need to be taught intellectual humility is
tantamount to saying they are not scientists at all, which seems to be the
real problem.

~~~
Flozzin
Social scientists are people. We are all people first. None of us are robots.
We can be rational in certain situations, but overall, we are not a rational
species.

In order to fight some of our worse qualities, we have to first identify them.
Then break down any social barriers that keep us from not fighting them.

That is what this article is doing. It is naming one of them, and then asking
us to be forgiving. And helping us realize that mistakes are not as punished
as we all may think.

------
oblib
There were comments on a recent post here that drifted to children reacting to
vaccines that surprised me with how many claimed with absolute certainty there
was no link to autism.

I'll certainly acknowledge that most kids do not suffer such a reaction but
not that it's impossible for some to, but those who were certain wouldn't do
that.

Some of them were quite demanding about it. Almost insisting I admit I am
wrong. I may well be, but I also know there's a lot we do no know about human
biology. Just what we've learned about "gut bugs" in the past few years is
pretty solid evidence of that. And it's also one of those cases where the more
we've learned the more we realize there's even more we do not know.

To me, uncovering something that reveals how little we know, now that's
exciting.

~~~
sifoobar
One issue is that we're encouraged from every angle to make fun of those
challenging the narrative; which is very effective in discouraging people from
doing just that, especially after having taken part themselves.

~~~
projektir
> make fun of

While this exists there will be incentives to something other than truth.

