The main idea this chapter focuses on, is the illusion of confidence. We tend to treat confidence as an honest signal of a person's professional skill, accurate memory, or their knowledge. I learned that the confidence that people project, is all too often an illusion. It causes us to overestimate our own qualities, and our abilities compared to other people. If confidence was more closely interpreted with one's skills and abilities, it wouldn't be much of an illusion or a problem. But the reality is that confidence and ability can diverge so far that relying on the former becomes a huge mental trap, with potentially dangerous outcomes. Another interesting experiment that was conducted in this chapter is regarding humor. Professional comedians rated a few jokes from worst to best. Then, some undergraduate students took the test and also rated the jokes and were later compared to the ones rated by the comedians. Surprisingly enough, the students that voted the jokes oppositely than the comedians (rated the funnest jokes the worst and the worst jokes the funniest), also thought that their sense of humor was better than everyone else in their class. This kind of confidence unearths from 2 problems: a) the person isn't aware that their sense of humor is low. b) the person doesn't know that their sense of humor is bad, and they do nothing to improve their ability.
Quotes:
I really enjoyed the example of the chess player and where they rank opposed to other player and how they believe they should be ranked based on their abilities. Most of them said that they think they should be ranked higher than they are now, but the subjects' rating were checked a year later, and the players were rated almost exactly the same as they been when they were first questioned. This a strong case of people overestimating their abilities and falling for the confidence illusion. I find the quote by Charles Darwin very interesting, ' "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." ' (pg. 86) Charles Darwin is one of the greatest naturalists and geologists the world has ever seen and has contributed greatly to the evolution theory. This quote strongly supports the point that the authors are trying to get across. People let their ego get ahead of them without even looking around and systematically evaluate themselves compared to their surroundings and compared to other people in the same category. That is ignorance that a lot of people experience on daily basis and don't take the time to make the right assumptions and from there improve themselves, making them better people.
Principles:
The examples used in this chapter were very well and thoroughly selected, and backed up with factual statistics and numbers that elaborate and show the effects of the illusion in a way that is not possible to comprehend by just reading about it. Once again, just like every other chapter, it ties back to the main idea of how our intuitions deceive us, and in this case it is our confidence and ego. It makes us blind to reality and blind to our limits as individuals, making us think that we are currently better than we will actually ever be.
Quotes:
I really enjoyed the example of the chess player and where they rank opposed to other player and how they believe they should be ranked based on their abilities. Most of them said that they think they should be ranked higher than they are now, but the subjects' rating were checked a year later, and the players were rated almost exactly the same as they been when they were first questioned. This a strong case of people overestimating their abilities and falling for the confidence illusion. I find the quote by Charles Darwin very interesting, ' "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." ' (pg. 86) Charles Darwin is one of the greatest naturalists and geologists the world has ever seen and has contributed greatly to the evolution theory. This quote strongly supports the point that the authors are trying to get across. People let their ego get ahead of them without even looking around and systematically evaluate themselves compared to their surroundings and compared to other people in the same category. That is ignorance that a lot of people experience on daily basis and don't take the time to make the right assumptions and from there improve themselves, making them better people.
Principles:
The examples used in this chapter were very well and thoroughly selected, and backed up with factual statistics and numbers that elaborate and show the effects of the illusion in a way that is not possible to comprehend by just reading about it. Once again, just like every other chapter, it ties back to the main idea of how our intuitions deceive us, and in this case it is our confidence and ego. It makes us blind to reality and blind to our limits as individuals, making us think that we are currently better than we will actually ever be.
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