If I recall correctly there is also an unnamed effect at the low end, in which people who estimate themselves as ignorant or incapable miss low when estimating their comparative scores. That is, at both ends of the range people tend to miss. That may be at least partly a property of the scale. In other words, I don't trust self-estimated percentages to be reliably on the same scale as calculated percentages. I doubt self-estimated percentages are even transitive, let alone uniformly continuous in their distribution, etc. I doubt that everyone who estimates their confidence at 100% would also state that there was no chance at all they were wrong, for example. (I kind of tend to disbelieve the assertion that any large number of human beings would have actual 100% confidence in their spellings of a list of English words. Few English speaking people have that much confidence in their spelling.) On the other hand, it's obvious on forums like this that human beings underestimate their ignorance in areas of low information - that is particularly glaring in new scientific fields, where the sight of a consensus of experts overlooking a vast and - once noticed - immediately significant area of ignorance is more common than not.
My spelling has gone down hill, I am not sure what is happening but I may type a word and it does not look correct and if I dwell upon it I gets worse to the point I may have to write it by hand before I am happy it is correct.Adding a spell checker with a mind of its own and I find I can really get confused.It is the years I expect and doing little for the last 20 years. I tend to think of all possibilities what may go wrong what to do if plan b and c fail so I become confident that I have thought of everything but don't stop thinking of possible contingencies. My life has been dealing with people, both law and real estate and find most folk predictable once you spend a short time to observe how they respond to ordinary things, their manners little things they say. I really do not find many folk who I would say are confident.It comes from the fact most are acting out the role they think they must. Me I don't care what anyone thinks and most find that confronting. Humans are most interesting creatures. Most crave attention but that can be in very different forms.I don't like attention mainly because once I was always the center of what was happening with others relying on me to make the calls. I do believe above everything that the hardest thing is to be absolutely honest with yourself. Its so easy to kid yourself and justify ones actions. Alex
Not everyone who questions mainstream cosmology is a crank. There are people like Joao Mangueijo of Imperial College, who proposed that the speed of light may have been much greater in the very early universe (thus getting rid of cosmic inflation and all of the problems surrounding that idea). He found it very difficult to even get his papers published but in my opinion is anything but a crank. You're assuming several things there. That the skeptic about mainstream cosmology was mistaken and that his/her opponent understood the issues and explained the mistakes in a friendly and comprehensible manner. While initial errors are highly probable on a board like this, how often does the latter happen? (Especially on Sciforums, which is rarely conducted with the decorum of a university class discussion.) Isn't the response here more likely to be insults and ridicule, along with arguments from authority? Nobody enjoys being insulted and talked down to, or having their idea summarily dismissed after they put work into it, so the reaction is predictably going to be anger. The same thing would seem to be true of their opponents. Do any professional cosmologists post to this board? Does anyone on Sciforums have any university training in cosmology at all? Maybe a small handful do. But whatever the truth of that, those individuals seem strangely incapable of teaching even the basics of the subject. What's more, you seem to be smearing together two very different complaints. First, you seem to be objecting to anyone questioning mainstream big-bang cosmology with its rather ad-hoc inflation and dark energy add-ons. And second, you seem to be objecting to laypeople trying to think for themselves about science. So what would you have laypeople do when confronted with scientific ideas?
First of all thank you for your input very well put together. I tried to recognise the dangers associated with generalising and can not disagree with your comments. I tried to state my position re mainstream gently perhaps I should approach it again to say that anti mainstream does not worry me at all other than I find folk who critise without some alternative propostion generaly tiresome. Many find something and say GR fails, for example, without suggesting something else. Thats more my position rather than just opposing critics because they are anti mainstream. But as I have said it is the anger that gets to me. I dont think it needs to happen.Just because you are challenged should not lead to anger. I dont think it is acceptable nor the insults that are often part of outbursts. I certainly dont object to laypeople having ideas and I offer my various posts in quantum waves threads which I believe he found supportive. My first chats with the god were always supportive when everyone else were frankly laying in the boot. But stepping back I think I became less tolerant because of the gods bad behaviour towards me, his insults were vile and uncalled for, and after him another who could have been the gods twin. Both angry people, bullies in my view and no doubt caused me to think about anger which lead to this post. I should have put these people on ignore but I did not. Overall there is little in your post that does not make sence and I hope I have addressed only matters where I think I could have been alittle clearer initially. Alex
Alex, It's not a spellchecker but I find Wordweb dictionary helps. It's a stand alone 'app 'for your PC. It's free here... http://wordweb.info/ Once installed and running in the background, double left click on a word in whatever your typing, and then left click the dictionary icon on the task bar. To turn off (exit) right click icon to find options.
Thanks but another part of the problem is I am typing with one finger, my index finger, on a phone or sometimes a table. I am not at home these days but in the city looking after my father. I doubt I would have a problem if I was touch typing with a keyboard and as you suggest a decent spell checker. Typing one finger I get way ahead in my mind a d get careless. My time on this is constantly being interupted and often I dont get to review and even when I have an edit have to fly thru. Moreover I dont have time to put together better content. I proceed on the basis that I will be understood, some folk will say I am a mug, but they are probably sortta right.... Classic I gotta go. Alex
Yes humans are interestin creatures... in that we have evolved to a pont where we can contemplate our condition.!!! I do care what other people thank... after all... its valuable information which i use for my benifit... an personaly... i like bein in charge/makin the calls which includes seekin outside help... or givin my advice an accept that its up to others whether to take it or not.!!! I am honest wit myself... an i woud consider those who cant be to be afflicted wit a form of insanity... an it ant surprizin that it coud lead to crankness.!!!
Its 2-30 am someone phoned but there was no one there, call back said private number, cant sleep but my index finger is tired out. Alex
A good example of - Dunning–Kruger effect The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.
Of course not. But when those questioners are amateurs, and when those questioners claim they know more then the experts, and when those same questioners claim to all and sundry that they are never wrong, then most definitely yes, they are cranks. Only when the "dissenter" fits the description I gave to your previous statement. And of course when the "argument from authority" is the expert professional in the relevant field, than that is totally justified. Which is why on most occasions, I will always give a link supporting what ever answer I have given...if needed. DM was also an "ad hoc"addition, and now has been evidenced on many occasions re gravitational lensing and particularly the bullet cluster observation. DE of course is not really an "ad hoc"addition...we observed an acceleration in the expansion rate, and obviously a DE component seems the logical answer, although as yet we know SFA as to its nature. Inflation is needed to explain other effects and although possibly could fit your "ad hoc"claim, one could ask, so what? Cosmological theories are basically models....ad ons are sometimes necessary. In time it could be validated or otherwise...that's science in progression. Wrong> see my first reply. Any questioner that is genuine will always be answered with the greatest respect and without and malice.
We need a name for the flipside - the tendency of expertise to blind its possessors to even the most obvious of gaps in their knowledge. In a metacognitive mirror of the way the inept underestimate the dimension of the knowledge they lack, the expert underestimate the dimension of the knowledge they lack. Especially in a new field, or a very wide field with peaks of expertise scattered in it, where the gaps in knowledge can be both large and fairly basic and even the best expertise has barely scratched the surface, this can lead to farce. This is what farce looks like: X-ray machines used to fit shoes. Chunks of plutonium passed around from hand to hand as curiosities, used as doorstops. New and biologically unfamiliar trans fats, coloring agents, and sweeteners deliberately incorporated in foodstuffs without investigation. A body of genuinely well-educated and competent moderators of a science forum such as this one publicly endorsing the following statement: "It is the scientific consensus that GMOs are safe". A alert child drawing an historical map of the really big earthquake and tsunami disasters along the coast of Japan over the past few hundred years, in crayon, would have warned the builders of Fukushima nukes that the location they had chosen seemed to be next in line, and probably fairly soon. It required expertise to hide that obvious possibility from consideration. Everyone underestimates what they don't know, the range of possibilities invisible to them. Expertise, almost as much as ineptitude, can blind a person to this, and thereby exacerbate the tendency. That effect just hasn't been given a catchy name. But there's nothing mysterious about its ability to anger folks confronted with what is after all a species of unwarranted arrogance - the difference between these folks and cranks in that respect being, essentially, that they are right.
I've always been amazed (in any subject matter) when someone with little knowledge of that field has high confidence that they are right. People talk about "not knowing what you don't know" but I think most people do generally know what they don't know (just not the specifics). Most of us may not know the specifics of brain surgery but most of us do realize that we don't know how to do it and that there would be even more aspects of it that we don't know if we were to study it. Cranks don't seem to know that. The typical crank reads about GR in USAToday, decides it doesn't make sense and that is their "theory".
I think it has. I was reading about various conditions and I think the condition you describe was outlined and did indeed have a "catchy name" but I cant remember it. I will try and retrace my steps and deliver a link. I must say I really did like your post and admit I get frustrated with so many issues findings proceedures etc that are offerred by experts which just seem stupid. And I suppose an expert opinion is insulated from all counter opinion such that frustration and anger may be the only voice that may be heard but nevertheless ignored. Still I see no point in anger. I parked in a wheelchair spot and cpped a heavy fine. I need a walker so I felt justified. However my car does not have the appropriate sticker. I tried to get a sticker from the traffic people but they rightly pointed out my doctor had not filled in my full name and when I filled in my full name the counter guy destroyed the certificate saying I had tamper with it and he had no other option. So I make another appointment to see the doctor but my doctor has left the practice and the new doctor says that he needs the details from the hospital re my back opperation before he can give me a correct certificate. It takes me two weeks to get a doctors appointment and a two hour drive to get there so I the get called to look after my father in the city, he is 94, and I park in the wheelchair space to get him into the doctor and get a ticket. I have spooken to the council who cant help, I spoke to the debt re overy office they cant help there is no one to whom I can present my case unless I go to court and if I did the fact remains I did not have the sticker. Did I get angry? No not at all. My blood pressure is great for an old man an only mybeard is grey. Would anger avoid the fine.... Of course not... Anger does not help. Alex
Looking at this again it may not be exactly describing what we were talking about but well its another thing out there so now we know... The description could have been more catchy... Too negative for my liking. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge Curse of knowledge The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when, in predicting others' forecasts or behaviors, individuals are unable to ignore the knowledge they have that others do not have, or when they are unable to disregard information already processed.[1] An example of the curse of knowledge is demonstrated in a classroom setting, where teachers, or subject experts, have difficulty teaching novices because they cannot put themselves in the position of the student. A brilliant professor may no longer remember the difficulties that a young student may be encountering when learning a new subject. This curse of knowledge also explains the danger behind thinking about student learning based on what appears best to faculty members, as opposed to what had been verified with students.[2] Alex
In a rational world: You showing up in court with a walker should end the confusion. Something similar happened this past year. My wife could hardly walk for the hip pain --- 2 steps then stop, then 2 steps then stop with a cane---so, i parked in a handicapped spot to retrieve her from her office, thinking to shorten the distance and save her from some pain, and got a $200 ticket then got the handicapped sticker and appealed the ticket which was then dismissed. IMHO anger is (perhaps) always a waste of time and energy.
The people at Los Alamos who were handing around chunks of plutonium to visitors, so that they could feel the curious warmth, did not know what they did not know. Neither did the people who declared that artificial sweeteners and trans fats were safe to eat. Hundreds of thousands of people at least, most likely tens of millions, died because of this, which is at least as serious as any of the consequences of modern crankery. You know who was right, absolutely and 100% correct in their assessments of the safety of artificial sweeteners and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils? The "cranks". That's what they were called. The organic peanut butter eating, carrot juicing, chakra massaging veggienuts who thought the food industry was an amoral vendor of profitable but unhealthy garbage to a deceived and victimized public, were right. And why were they called cranks? Well, partly because they didn't actually know what the actual risks were or could be, the physical details of what might be involved. They weren't experts, see? But notice that the experts who dismissed them - and we are talking about essentially all the experts in the relevant fields - didn't know that stuff either. And unlike the cranks, who at least had the sense to fear an unknown they were dimly aware of, the experts not only did not fear, but were not even dimly aware of, or wary of, the scale of their ignorance - the risks inherent in the dimension of what they didn't know. The cranks had bad arguments, but a good basic perception. The experts's job there was to make the good argument, handle the basic perception with their superior knowledge - to make the cranks's case for them, or shoot it down in its strongest, expert form. They did not do that. They did not do that because their own ignorance was invisible to them. That makes them intellectually the inferior, not the superior, of the cranks. Yet they condescended, they patronized, they mocked, their intellectual superiors. And that is too common a pattern. Until it becomes rare, there is no mystery in cranks getting angry.
No, the "cranks" were lucky and the "experts" were eventually self-correcting. You are cherry picking. Even cranks get it right (due to serendipity) occasionally. That's no reason to listen to them however. Case in point, see the thread on this forum entitled "We never went to the Moon"...
Another excellent post and you make a compelling case. I owned a real estate office and folk did things that certainly could get you upset. But I remember one of the sales trainer suggestions for self talk was.... Champions dont get mad champions get even. Strangely that helped even if there was never opportunity to get even. But the issues of stuff going wrong is alarming. It seems education will not always deliver us from stupidity. Thank you for your well considered posts. Alex
