tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post3926255574118029682..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: Overconfidence Goeth Before a FallStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-38672444743815058042015-07-29T08:40:44.913-07:002015-07-29T08:40:44.913-07:00This article describes how optimism may contribute...This article describes how optimism may contribute to financial bubbles:<br /><br />http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-28/why-economists-have-trouble-explaining-bubblesAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-67409721105165039732015-07-23T13:41:11.658-07:002015-07-23T13:41:11.658-07:00Back to the trophy thing... What if your kid is no...Back to the trophy thing... What if your kid is no good at baseball? Maybe he'll be good at something else. Find it. But the other important lesson is failure. The kid who excels all the way through never has to deal with failure... if things come easy to him, he doesn't learn effectively. All human beings have limits. If young people don't see those limits and make different choices, they get into this one-track thing like you see in communities with "travel" sports leagues. How is it healthy for your kid to do one sport all the time? Is that about you or in service of him? It's never made sense to me. Yes, if you're good at something, have at it, by all means. But if that's all you're doing, I'm not sure you ever really grow and experiment and learn where you experience joy. It's a process of trial-and-error. Young people have so many choices now, and it seems like a disservice to keep them locked into one in hopes of mastery and glory. Your kid isn't going pro.<br /><br />And this is where child resilience comes in. You watch kids and see their desire to learn, grow, be in motion, ask questions, adapt, etc. and it's just a miracle. If your kid doesn't get a trophy, support her in exploring and finding something she does enjoy. It's the joy and the experience that we're looking for. Sure, we've educated an entire generation to "follow your bliss," which is poor advice in terms of career utility. But there's also wisdom in saying that not performing in baseball and not getting a trophy is telling you something. There are all kinds of other things one can investigate, learn and do. Maybe your kid goes into the forensics tournament and is phenomenal and now has a passion and becomes a successful forensic scientist. That's not a bad outcome, considering that your kid was never going to be Derek Jeter. Turns out the non-consolation prize was pretty valuable in the end. If your kid is willing to listen, and the parent has some perspective. Yet many don't. Such is life.<br /><br />I'm sure the Obama Administration will come up with a preposterously wasteful social program to give your kid the feeling that he really will be successful at something he's not. That way, their inability can become a "disability," and you can some trial lawyer to file a social security disability insurance claim for him at a young age so he'll never have to work again.Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-83190909831408550092015-07-23T13:40:36.989-07:002015-07-23T13:40:36.989-07:00Regarding the trophy kids, there are two things we...Regarding the trophy kids, there are two things we tend to overlook: (a) value; and (b) child resilience/adaptability.<br /><br />Trophies are used to distinguish merit. If everyone gets a trophy, they might as well get a paperclip, because there's no distinction for performance. Dangerously foolish people create the idea that everyone should get a trophy. Just because your kid wants one, or you want your kid to have one, is not the issue here. Human beings are insatiable in their wants, needs and desires. When we get everything we want, we miss the truth about value, and that is devastating to success in life. Trophies for achievement allow for signaling: this kid excels, this kid does not. There's a gift there. The idea that a child must excel at, say, baseball, is an absurdity of imagination and indicative of disordered attachment on the part of the child or the adult. Children are children. It's the adult's job to be an adult. This seems to be an increasingly difficult idea to fathom. Who do you think came up with the idea there should be a trophy for every kid? An 8-year-old? <br /><br />One damaging thing that I think psychology has emphasized is this idea of scarring memories. You know, that moment when your Uncle Harry the budding schizophrenic freaked out at you at the dinner table and called you all kinds of terrible things? Yes, those kinds of unfortunate things that happen to all of us. It's the time when we learn that the world isn't a safe place and we'd better watch out. Every human being since the beginning of time has experienced these incidents. It is a fairly recent development that parents put their kids in "bubbles" hoping that there kid will not have such a scarring experience. This is understandable... no parent wants their child to experience pain. Yet we all do. We all have those memories. Hopefully we get the support to work through them. "Honey, your Uncle Harry is a sick man, and didn't mean those things he said to you." It's still a penetrating memory, but good parents work through things. But increasingly, parents seem to be preventing children from having any negative experiences and we are getting more and more sensitive and anxious because we're not teaching kids to work things out. We're teaching them not to take care of affairs, and that others will be there to take care of us. I'm not suggesting we should reinstitute some kind of Spartan childhood, but this prophylactic childhood fantasy is quickly becoming a nightmare as we re-fit the college experience to protect young adults (notice the noun) from "triggers." Good grief.Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-76330883782639845212015-07-23T09:13:50.420-07:002015-07-23T09:13:50.420-07:00'Over-righteousness' is a problem among th...'Over-righteousness' is a problem among the 'progressives'.priss rulesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-11087773935244008752015-07-23T09:12:55.453-07:002015-07-23T09:12:55.453-07:00"One suspects that those who are hawking self..."One suspects that those who are hawking self-esteem, to the point where every child receives a trophy, regardless of ability or achievement, are building overconfidence."<br /><br />Initially.<br /><br />But in time, apathy among the truly talented and cynicism among the untalented.priss rulesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-18719981852923649792015-07-23T09:10:13.555-07:002015-07-23T09:10:13.555-07:00Kahneman is over-confident in his conclusion about...Kahneman is over-confident in his conclusion about over-confidence.priss rulesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-46962838125993821132015-07-23T05:58:16.357-07:002015-07-23T05:58:16.357-07:00Anon,
As one matures one of the first things they...Anon,<br /><br />As one matures one of the first things they learn, or should learn, is that one cannot make things happen. One has to start thinking about creating the conditions for them. So much of being able to keep performing at a high level in one's chosen profession is in how the mind accepts adversity and challenges. A good deal of people's greatest works happens in their later years of life when experience is combined with talent, skill, humility and an acceptance of life's vagaries. <br />At a certain point one recognizes, hopefully, that it is not the amount of "practice," but the quality of that practice that counts. Life is far simpler and easier than we believed when we were young. <br />It took me a long time to get my wife to recognize that going outside and doing the flowers, landscaping and other tasks of gardening until she was so tired she could not move for days would be easier if she worked until she started to feel a little bit worked and then stop. This way she could come back the next day a do more and get far more accomplished in a given time period. This applies to almost any endeavor we want to achieve. It does help to have a system in which to classify the importance of the work as well.<br />As an analyst if I started to feel like I was getting too involved I would get up and walk around, go eat or do something else. Invariably when I sat back down the answer or idea would just happen. I believe one's subconscious never stops working to find an answer to what is requested of it. This may sound strange, but I could then visualize it, manipulate it, et al in the space just in front of me. For a while this may have bothered some people, but they began to leave me alone staring up in space for I got results.<br />As long as one keeps an active involved mind age is almost never a problem. The mind lives on constant challenge.Dennishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14962996070458991675noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-78093474556906728852015-07-22T20:22:27.014-07:002015-07-22T20:22:27.014-07:00In summer camp, when asked, "Can you swim?,&q...In summer camp, when asked, "Can you swim?," most children eagerly answer "Yes." The few exceptions are those who are naturally more timid and fearful of water. The timid generally are less distracted during lessons yet require more patience with their fear to get them to practice effective skills that later boost their confidence. The eager children are more easily distracted and want to play with each other rather than practice swim skills. If an adult and some older children demonstrate skills the eager children begin to practice too, like a community of apes, and over the course of a season the pool becomes like an extended classroom, as the older children become swimmers the younger ones skills improve via practice and imitation without thinking so much about the swim lessons anymore. Too little fear would get us killed in many situations but confidence in self and others is necessary to take action and learn, so I think nature favors over-confidence in most children. Deep open water is absolutely deadly for non-swimmers so the timid children have a more accurate self-perception, and yet, for learning swimming more rapidly I observe that the "I can swim" attitude is more effective.<br /><br />Aging doctors, lawyers, and other technical experts probably experience a decline in skills after mid-life which is hard to admit to oneself. There is definitely a biological sweet spot in most professional sports where rookies become skilled veterans and aging veterans can't compete as effectively anymore with younger athletes. The correlation between confidence (subjectively experienced) and skill objectively measured by observing learning and competition is pretty hard to map.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-4278416875251011822015-07-22T17:52:25.791-07:002015-07-22T17:52:25.791-07:00I'm thinking "In all things, moderation.&...I'm thinking "In all things, moderation." I don't know who said that first. it was not me.<br /><br />At closing out 77 summers I have lived most of my life where occasionally time and circumstance required and allowed the development of the perfect answer, but the ordinary case called for a good-enough (preferably tunable) answer now is required, a perfect answer in the future has no value, real or potential.<br /><br />I wonder if the first line of that Proverb is the most frequently misquoted bit of the Bible. Larry Sheldonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12653436584890594776noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-58841734177609890142015-07-22T11:21:46.506-07:002015-07-22T11:21:46.506-07:00I heard of Daniel Kahneman from his talk (and book...I heard of Daniel Kahneman from his talk (and book) thinking, fast and slow.<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWaIE6u3wvw Daniel Kahneman on Thinking, Fast and Slow<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqXVAo7dVRU THINKING, FAST AND SLOW BY DANIEL KAHNEMAN | ANIMATED BOOK REVIEW <br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow<br />---------<br />The book's central thesis is a dichotomy between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The book delineates cognitive biases associated with each type of thinking, starting with Kahneman's own research on loss aversion. From framing choices to people's tendency to substitute an easy-to-answer question for one that is harder, the book highlights several decades of academic research to suggest that people place too much confidence in human judgment.<br />--------------<br /><br />I learned I preferred system 2 from High school when I went to a Science Olympiad, first solving problem as a computer programmer, where I had time to plan and think, while even after I solved the problems, I kept checking for limitations of my solutions, and I was the only person who stayed the full time limit. Then I was an unplanned substitute for the quiz bowl team and never answered a single question because someone else would always press the buzzer first and it surprised me to hear afterwards from team members they'd press it even knew if they knew the answer. They just assumed adding 5 seconds between pressing the buzzer and having to speak, they could come up with the answer. For me that was a completely offensive attitude, but curious since they were willing to look foolish to guess on something when they didn't know.<br /><br />For me I'm 100% in love with "system 1" thinking, whether it is gut-thinking or intuition, but ONLY if there are no irreversible consequences from listening to it, if there's time to evaluate it and reverse course if its wrong. So ideally I'd use System-1 to avoid danger, and retreat to a safe distance, and then use System-2 to analyze a situation more carefully, looking for affirmations and contradictions for each possible interpretation I can find.<br /><br />I'm probably also happy for others, experts or not, to be over-confident (whether from their system 1 or system 2) because that positions sort of "forces action" that my observer role can't generate. So if someone "cries wolf" I'm willing to consider that a legitimate point of view that may need fast and slow responses, fast response to test and face immediate danger, and slow response to evaluate the danger in proportion to other dangers, like the fable of the lions where the old lions roar from one direction to send prey into the path of the younger ones. So known dangers may be more manageable than unknown ones.<br /><br />Probably the biggest "confidence games" is the stock market and financial world now. It would seem "conservatives" should not trust markets, and would instead invest their savings as close to home as possible, but strangely "free markets" are a virtue to Conservatives, pretending such a thing existed, pretending buyers and sellers are equals, ignoring (liberal) Trump's boasts of "screwing people" with his expert negotiation skills like the best used car dealer. Somehow we're all "over-confident" we can play, we can invest retirement savings for 30 years with the sharks and expect to get our fair share in the end, just for trusting them.<br /><br />Distrusting markets (or distrusting government) both in their own ways can be a "out of the frying pan, into the fire" proposition. And in either case, we have to trust to play the game. That's where FDR's "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" comes in perhaps? But we still have to decide which fear to face and which to flee from. We need both System I and II here.Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-25332642086448793012015-07-22T07:55:53.997-07:002015-07-22T07:55:53.997-07:00"On the other hand, some criminal defendants ..."On the other hand, some criminal defendants are so overconfident in their cases that they refuse plea deals because they believe that they will be acquitted at trial."<br /><br />Indeed, and the ones who are convicted express this even more overconfidence. The highest scores for self-esteem in the United States are from... people in our prisons. That was from research by Roy Baumeister at Florida State University. Shockingly, Baumeister advocates for emphasis on self-control rather than self esteem. Madness!<br /><br />http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060301005947/en/Self-Esteem-Problems-Solves-Argues-Controversial-Article-Stanford#.Va-tnGC9zGs<br /><br />The Proverbs verse was a wonderful touch, but our modern society needs opaque, intelligent-sounding jargon and verbose explanations to believe in anything. We only trust people who are really, really smart. Only fools read the Bible.Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.com