{"id":18633,"date":"2014-10-28T15:45:18","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T19:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=18633"},"modified":"2014-10-28T15:45:52","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T19:45:52","slug":"we-are-poor-judges-of-our-own-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/10\/28\/we-are-poor-judges-of-our-own-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are Poor Judges Of Our Own Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pacific Standard\u00a0 – The Science of Society<\/em> has the article We Are All Confident Idiots<\/a>.\u00a0 Turns out that the article is much more interesting than the off putting title and accompanying graphic would make you believe. It would be a shame if people are turned away from reading the article by the very teaser meant to attract them. One might even call that ironic, given the actual content of the article.<\/p>\n

As I read the article, I copied down a few snippets that I found intriguing.<\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s so easy to judge the idiocy of others, it may be sorely tempting to think this doesn\u2019t apply to you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reminded me that we should not be smug about how other people fall into this trap.\u00a0 The title of the article did say that it applied to all of us.<\/p>\n

In the classroom, some of best techniques for disarming misconceptions are essentially variations on the Socratic method. To eliminate the most common misbeliefs, the instructor can open a lesson with them\u2014and then show students the explanatory gaps those misbeliefs leave yawning or the implausible conclusions they lead to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given my own feelings of the inadequacy of the Socratic method, I was almost ready to dismiss the article.\u00a0 However, the quote does give a hint that the very implausible conclusions that the Socratic method leads to would insulate you from falling victim to the method.\u00a0 My first and second impressions were both wrong.\u00a0 In the end, this issue of the Socratic method is probably only a red flag for me.<\/p>\n

For individuals, the trick is to be your own devil\u2019s 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. It helps to try practicing what the psychologist Charles Lord calls \u201cconsidering the opposite.\u201d To do this, I often imagine myself in a future in which I have turned out to be wrong in a decision, and then consider what the likeliest path was that led to my failure. And lastly: Seek advice. Other people may have their own misbeliefs, but a discussion can often be sufficient to rid a serious person of his or her most egregious misconceptions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is probably the best lesson you can learn from the article.\u00a0 Which is not to say that reading the whole article to see how we get to this conclusion isn’t also very worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Jo\u00e3o Geada for posting this on his Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pacific Standard\u00a0 – The Science of Society has the article We Are All Confident Idiots.\u00a0 Turns out that the article is much more interesting than the off putting title and accompanying graphic would make you believe. It would be a shame if people are turned away from reading the article by the very teaser meant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18633"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18635,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18633\/revisions\/18635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}