Dunning-Kruger detector
Moontower Munchies #140
Friends,
A couple of short Munchies today:
Why being an optimist is hard (5 min read)
Rohit has been writing gigabrain AI articles for years. But when we go for walks, we just chat about life or wander into dorm room-type convos. This musing comes from the Rohit I can actually keep up with. Enjoy a cutting observation born from the history of…traffic?
Confidently Wrong (1 min read)
The study in this article is like a Dunning-Kruger detector that works by operationalizing your cognition white blood cells against Gell-Mann amnesia. That’s internet-speak for saying “your quack opinions on controversial things you know nothing about are not interesting nor provocative given how much of a dumbfck you are on solved problems”. The angle of the study reminds me of a thought I have all the time from Can Your Manager Solve Betting Games With Known Solutions?.
Heres’ Alex Tabarrok:
If you’re going to challenge a scientific consensus, you better know the material. Most of us, most of the time, don’t—so deferring to expert consensus is usually the rational strategy. Pushing against the consensus is fine; it’s often how progress happens. But doing it responsibly requires expertise. Yet in my experience the loudest anti-consensus voices—on vaccines, climate, macroeconomics, whatever—tend to be the least informed.
This isn’t just my anecdotal impression. A paper by Light, Fernbach, Geana, and Sloman shows that opposition to the consensus is positively correlated with knowledge overconfidence. Now you may wonder. Isn’t this circular? If someone claims the consensus view is wrong we can’t just say that proves they don’t know what they are talking about. Indeed. Thus Light, Fernbach, Geana and Sloman do something clever…
Read Alex’s summary to get the gist.
The list of geniuses with stupid theories is endless. Cue any of Newton’s wild claims. We should take a long pause before considering the opinions of someone who is smart (or rich*) talking beyond their narrow domain.
Now imagine the pause you have to take when Uncle Joe, who hasn’t read a book since Facebook was invented, pops off on endocrinology.
*In this country, we equate rich with smart. There’s probably a correlation but the formula for “risk remaining” or “idio” is sqrt(1-R²) which just means the error bars swamp the signal. You can prove how crap the correlation is by scanning 10 random tweets from finance people with 100k+ followers. You know what make that 45k+
Stay groovy
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Fantastic framing with the Gell-Mann amnesia operationalization. The rich=smart equation you mentioned is so underrated as a cognitive trap, especially in finance circles. I've noticed people defer to wealth as expertise signal way more than they admit, then act suprised when wealthy person has terrible takes outside their wheelhouse.