Why Being Wrong Makes Humans So Smart 311
Hugh Pickens sends in an excerpt in last week's Boston Globe from Kathryn Schulz's book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. "The more scientists understand about cognitive functioning, the more it becomes clear that our capacity to make mistakes is utterly inextricable from what makes the human brain so swift, adaptable, and intelligent. Rather than treating errors like the bedbugs of the intellect — an appalling and embarrassing nuisance we try to pretend out of existence — we need to recognize that human fallibility is part and parcel of human brilliance. Neuroscientists increasingly think that inductive reasoning undergirds virtually all of human cognition. Humans use inductive reasoning to learn language, organize the world into meaningful categories, and grasp the relationship between cause and effect. Thanks to inductive reasoning, we are able to form nearly instantaneous beliefs and take action accordingly. However, Schulz writes, 'The distinctive thing about inductive reasoning is that it generates conclusions that aren't necessarily true. They are, instead, probabilistically true — which means they are possibly false.' Schulz recommends that we respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity and demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. 'Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent, we can liberate ourselves from the impossible burden of trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition that we could be in error, without deeming ourselves idiotic or unworthy.'"
Rogue_rat (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Rogue_rat (Score:5, Insightful)
The article doesn't claim that bigger errors equal greater intellect. It just says that the characteristics of the brain that makes humans intelligent also make us error-prone. And I don't think all errors are necessarily failures. Sometimes being wrong can be fortuitous.
VERY old news (Score:5, Interesting)
David Hume [wikipedia.org] pointed all of this out hundreds of years ago. And he backed up all his claims with plenty of evidence that was readily available at the time.
I wonder if Kathryn Schulz's is aware of this?
Re:VERY old news (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists are constantly rediscovering and proving ideas that philosophers talked about hundreds or thousands of years ago. Sometimes they're even discovering the ideas that long ago stood as the underpinnings of the science that they're studying, arguably making the whole thing slightly circular.
Still, there's value in rediscovering old ideas (especially when they're good ideas) and there's value in proving them more rigorously or developing a more specific understanding of how these things work. Plus, when I see a story like this, I'm always suspicious that the reporter is oversimplifying.
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Re:Rogue_rat enjoys cock frequently (Score:5, Insightful)
Or deliberately ignoring your own engineers saying, "This is a bad idea. The wellhead will blow out." Then try to act all surprised to discover the engineers knew what they were talking about, and blame the engineers instead of your own stupidity Mr. BP Manager.
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He shouldn't be out sailing, he should be taking a plea bargain involving a few hundred million dollars in personal fines and 15 years in a federal prison.
Re:Rogue_rat enjoys cock frequently (Score:5, Insightful)
Due process, or some other such legal technicality.
Re:Rogue_rat enjoys cock frequently (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is the "BP manager" currently out on a yacht at some annual event instead of sat in court, desperately defending himself
Same reason the Union Carbide guy, who killed tens of thousands of people in Bohpal, is living off his life in luxury in the U.S: The system is made by the rich. for the rich.
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Isn't that what management does best? Takes credit for success, and passes blame for failure? It's the only way to get into the Fortune 100 C*O offices that I'm aware of.
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Or deliberately ignoring your own engineers saying, "This is a bad idea. The wellhead will blow out."
Nobody said that, and if they thought it they had the authority and the duty to stop the operation. I work as a contractor for BP, and they pound it into your head over and over that everyone has the authority and obligation to stop a job if they think it is unsafe. It is one of BP's eight "Golden Rules" of safety. Everyone on-site - BP employee or not - has this authority and duty, it is a condition of employment for BP and all its contractors. If there were engineers who believed the wellhead would bl
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Given everything I'm hearing about BP's higher than average safety violation problems, I know they may talk the talk, but apparently they do not walk the walk.
Companies SAY things all the time that they really do not mean.
For example at my company we have three status rankings for projects.
GREEN
YELLOW
RED
In three years, for projects which were cancelled, which were late, which were horrible failures, guess which status rankings were NEVER USED.
I foolishly used yellow once and the reaction was strong. I said
Re:Rogue_rat enjoys cock frequently (Score:5, Insightful)
Or deliberately ignoring your own engineers saying, "This is a bad idea. The wellhead will blow out."
If there were engineers who believed the wellhead would blow out because of the course they were taking, they should be held liable for the deaths of their coworkers, because it was their job to stop it, especially if management thought the job was safe.
Hold it. It was management who was pushing pushing pushing to get that well pumping ASAP, and management who told operators that 2 instead of 3 concrete plugs would be sufficient. It as also management who did not ensure both batteries in the BOP were functional/charged. For you to throw this all on engineers when there are numerous reports of management forcing an unsafely accelerated schedule is ludicrous and shows that you are less than impartial on the topic.
To be clear, blow outs happen.
To be clear: blow outs can be prevented if standard safety procedures are not bypassed.
That is where I take issue with the claims in the parent article. It assumes all humans are interested in being intelligent and learning from mistakes. That is far too optimistic a view. The article actually says 'Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent...' But people DO err out of those reasons (I equate greed with 'evil intent' when the person knows their actions has a significant likelihood to harm/kill others, which is exactly what happened in BP's case.) It would be a major mistake to assume nobody in the future will put greed ahead of safety and make a mistake via that incorrect choice. This repeating pattern is not a sign of intelligence.
Re:Rogue_rat enjoys cock frequently (Score:5, Interesting)
You told me, but you didn't convince me.
Actually, had they told anybody, the job would stop. Every employee has the authority to stop a job - any job. There aren't some jobs that some people can stop and some jobs that other people can stop, anybody can stop a job for safety on a BP rig (or any BP facility). That gets pounded into your head day from day 1 - if you see something that you think is unsafe, you stop it, and everybody gets together and double-checks the plan and makes sure they haven't missed anything that would make it unsafe.
There are practical limits, of course. For example, if I'm not involved in a job and I have no idea if it's safe or not because I'm not qualified enough to know the difference, then I have no business stopping a job. I still have the authority to stop it, but I won't stop a job because I have no idea what's involved. However if I'm involved in a job and I feel unsafe, I will absolutely stop the job.
By the same token, management may be pushing to get a job done a certain way (they always want to use the low cost option), but if they aren't qualified to know what is safe and what isn't they obviously aren't going to stop the job for safety. However, if you are qualified to know if it's safe, and you think it is not safe, you MUST stop the job. If you're working on a job and you feel unsafe, you MUST stop the job.
All it took was for one person to say "This doesn't seem safe, we need to stop the job" and the job would have stopped right then and there. The fact that it didn't means either nobody said to stop the job, or there was a serious breach of BP policy.
In other words, all of this "If they had just listened to the engineers" stuff is either complete bullshit (as in, never happened), or criminal mis-management at the rig level. This is not the kind of decision that happens further up the chain. There is a very real possibility that there was a local culture to ignore safety concerns in spite of BP policy, in which case the ones responsible actually are the people on the rig. Not Tony Hayward, not the President of BP Americas, but the rig management and possibly one level above them (if only for putting such people in a position of authority).
I do think there is a real problem with BP's management culture which makes accidents more likely. They have a tendancy to move managers around from position to position, and they tend to stay at one place for no more than two years. The idea is to get a "broad understanding" of oil field operations as well as the corporate side. This means if they are ever going to get a top-level manager, they can't keep them in one place for very long. This leads to serious inconsistencies in management of a particular facility/rig. They also tie bonuses directly to how much of your budget was left over each year. This creates a perfect storm for accidents due to poor maintenance, as the easiest place to cut is the maintenance budget (safety & compliance and production always gets funded). I believe this is why BP has the worst record for environmental accidents in the industry by a huge margin. How that directly relates to this spill is going to be subtle, though. I would definitely name it as a contributing factor.
Re:Rogue_rat enjoys cock frequently (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, had they told anybody, the job would stop. Every employee has the authority to stop a job - any job. There aren't some jobs that some people can stop and some jobs that other people can stop, anybody can stop a job for safety on a BP rig (or any BP facility). That gets pounded into your head day from day 1 - if you see something that you think is unsafe, you stop it, and everybody gets together and double-checks the plan and makes sure they haven't missed anything that would make it unsafe.
Heh; yeah; that's the official policy in lots of companies. But I've worked a number of places where, when I asked around to find the people who had done that, I quickly learned that those people no longer worked there. It doesn't take a genius to make the right inference from this.
It also doesn't take a genius to understand that if something does go wrong, you were present, you'll be one of the people taking the blame for the problem.
The old-timers just grin and say something like "So you've finally figured out how it all works around here."
Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent, we can liberate ourselves from the impossible burden of trying to be permanently right.
Sometimes people do "err" out of laziness, stupidity of evil intent!
We can take seriously the proposition that we could be in error, without deeming ourselves idiotic or unworthy
Any suitably intelligent person already knows that failures are as much a part of learning as always being "right". And sometimes we do make really silly mistakes by overlooking things that should have been obvious. I know I do. Then again, often what is obvious to me, isn't to others..
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stupidity of evil intent!
*cough* that wasn't a typo.. it was a moral judgement. Yes.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty obvious that BP didn't intend to cause a spill. But when you get to be as big as BP, the size of the potential mistakes grows. If the point of the article is that we're going to make mistakes no matter what, then the logical conclusion is that nobody should be permitted to get big enough where their mistakes could cause more than xxx of damage, where xxx could be monetary, human lives, ecological impact, or whatever.
I don't think that will be the answer, however.
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>>>It's pretty obvious that BP didn't intend to cause a spill.
Is it? I'm hearing stories coming-out where engineers wrote e-mails warning this blowout would happen. But the managers, based-upon their vast PoliSci degree knowledge, pushed forward anyway with drilling. Later engineers' emails read like this: "I told you this would fucking happen."
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>>>It's pretty obvious that BP didn't intend to cause a spill.
Is it? I'm hearing stories coming-out where engineers wrote e-mails warning this blowout would happen. But the managers, based-upon their vast PoliSci degree knowledge, pushed forward anyway with drilling. Later engineers' emails read like this: "I told you this would fucking happen."
Management being in denial about dire warnings from engineers and other workers is still not "intent to have their drilling rig blow-up and start spewing petroleum". On the contrary their intent was to cut-corners on safety to reduce their costs and thus increase profits, getting away with it without any causing a crisis. It seems most criminals and senior executives have at least one thing in common, they are eternal optimists when it comes to taking risks!
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I don't think the point was "don't let people get big enough" cause really... some professions just have to take on massive amounts of risk. How much is it worth if a plane crashes? should we only be allowed to fly a plane with 5 passengers? Do airlines have to start doing risk analysis based on the earning potential of passengers to stay below some arbitrary threshold (that is how legal claims are processed in case you don't know... in an accident/death situation the damage is calculated based on how muc
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't talking about overlooking things. It's talking about the human ability to make decisions without being able to know all of the necessary facts, the ability to reach a conclusion that could be incorrect... but is still probably correct. That's something that computers cannot do (at least not yet).
Re:Duh (Score:4, Interesting)
the ability to reach a conclusion that could be incorrect... but is still probably correct.
That sounds a lot like fuzzy logic [wikipedia.org] to me..
Re:Duh (Score:4, Informative)
That's something that computers cannot do (at least not yet).
Wake up and smell the coffee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_Bayes_classifier [wikipedia.org]
Also, search for Machine Learning, Statistical Learning Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Support Vector Machines, etc.
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Yeah yeah, but what humans do and what computers do are miles apart.
A simple attempt to search Google for something should tell you that pretty quickly.
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What computers still aren't so good at is: automagically making models/simulations of the world, to the extent of including "others" and "self", and use those models to help decide what to do.
Even many animals can do that - they may not be as good as humans in some ways but they are far better than current AIs.
I believe much human perception is anticipation, your brain keeps the simulations running, and if the world keeps matching well eno
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the potential benefit isn't for those who are confidently intelligent. They see mistakes as a means of learning. The real benefit is for people who are tremendously insecure. They see mistakes and try to explain them away, or blame them on something else, negating the possible positive benefit of seeing why the mistake happened. For instance, they may have overlooked something. Instead of noticing that and learning to look for it the next time, they shy away from looking at the fault in detail.
I see this kind of thing all the time with my students. They misread something, and if I comment on it, no matter how nicely, the shut down because they don't like to be wrong because they think it makes them seem stupid. When in reality, they are trying to use inductive reasoning, which is a huge part of my goal. But...they miss the learning opportunity when they close down.
This article will make its way into my introductory lessons now. It will supplement the big sign on my door that says, "There is nothing wrong with being wrong."
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Sometimes people do "err" out of laziness, stupidity of evil intent!
Well I think there's also another issue: When a mistake is serious enough, it might not matter whether it was made out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent. It might be a sign that the person who made the mistake isn't capable or qualified. In that case, you may want to remove that person from their position of responsibility and find someone else who can do the job.
There's another issue: sometimes people don't learn from their mistakes. For various reasons, people sometimes repeat the same mistakes o
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I put err in quotes because if they are doing something wrong purposely with evil intent, it's not an error.
I'm never wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm never wrong.
I thought I was once, but it turns out I wasn't.
Re:I'm never wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm always wrong. Just ask the wife...
Old, old news (Score:5, Insightful)
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And CEOs that bankrupt their companies become CEOs of larger companies.
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This was foreseen by Laurence Peter as "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle]
Re:Old, old news (Score:4, Informative)
Well, not exactly. The difference between the Peter Principle and the Dilbert Principle is that the Peter Principle has to do with the promotion of people who are competent at their current job, while the Dilbert Principle is concerned with the promotion of people who are incompetent at their current job.
If you actually read "The Peter Principle" (which is quite funny as well as insightful), you'll find out that Lawrence Peter describes this phenomenon as "Percussive Sublimation" (a.k.a. being kicked upstairs). He also describes one case in which the company in question, who's operations were based in LA created a new "Head Office" in New York and promoted all the useless people to the "Head Office". As he describes it, the people in the Head Office are busy drafting memos, scheduling meetings, conferring with each other, etc, while everyone back in LA actually gets the work done without having to worry about all the drones.
Re:Old, old news (Score:4, Insightful)
Dilbert jokes aside, people who take more risks are going to be more likely to have spectacular successes as well. For the most part, at lower levels in a corporate hierarchy, people can fail at trying something but it generally can't *really* hurt the company. They can also succeed at trying something, and it may have a rather large effect on the company, or be seen as signs that this person is an up and comer.
Low risk of spectacular failure + decent chance of large success = promotions. The smart ones tone down the risk taking a bit once they can do real damage, and become much better at risk assessment and mitigation.
I can honestly say that in the last 2 years I've made probably 3-4 times as many "mistakes" on the job (ideas that seemed worth looking into but didn't pan out, changes to systems that seemed promising on paper but actually were 1/2 as good as our current methods in practice) for every success I've had. But the successes have been disproportionately large (ideas that allowed us to do research in ways/with populations that we previously had a hard time getting access to, implementation of systems that cut the amount of time needed to do data management across *all* projects by 50% or more, etc.) and as a result I've been bumped up 3 steps in the hierarchy to what in the corporate world would be a vice presidency but at my university is a directorship. And since I've taken on that position I've been a bit more risk averse, and when I do set up a new program I take steps to make sure that even if it fails the negative impact is minimal - I've adjusted the risk profile of the work I do so that I can now keep the job I've got, while still being able to move forward.
Meanwhile, I can look at other people who started at the same time and level I did, and they're still at that entry spot because, while they've done solid work and made fewer errors than I, they also haven't really done anything that stands out as a demonstration that they have the potential to do a lot more.
And it makes sense, too. Who is going to be the better leader, or the better person to bring an organization to the next level: someone who plays it safe or someone who stumbles a few times but also manages to come up with some really good ideas and makes them happen?
Of course, this kind of thinking can backfire when the powers that be see someone who takes all kinds of risks but never manages to make them pay out. If your management is snowed by someone who claims they'll be able to do big things but doesn't have a solid, defensible track-record of actually making things happen, you have the prototypical PHB who'll do everything he or she can to sabotage the work those under him or her do so that when it comes time to be accountable for the failures they can point at their staff and say they're trying *really hard* to motivate those lazy peons, but some people just aren't educable...
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Be Careful (Score:3, Interesting)
I think people focus their criticism more on those that make errors that seem glaringly obvious to everyone else. We tend to call those "stupid" errors. It's true however people tend to become far too critical of others who seem to be unable to reach the same conclusions at a high speed that we have already come to.
On the other hand, there are obvious mistakes that should not be conflated with probabilistic errors due to inductive reasoning. When the heads of BP cut corners that result in a giant explosion, a several month long oil leak, and billions of dollars in damage to the environment and people's lives, we can attribute that to gross negligence.
When a politician decides to engage in 2 costly wars while lowering taxes for the rich, or when a majority of society elects politicians who repeatedly punish the poor and middle class while rewarding the rich, and then complain about not having enough money to support their expensive lifestyles, you can attribute that to stupidity.
Re:Be Careful (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the poor voting to cut the taxes of the rich, some people are just so damned stupid and stubborn that they probably shouldn't be allowed to vote. Not because they get it wrong, but because they refuse to actually learn anything from it. It's like those morons that keep pushing for fewer and fewer regulations, then use the inevitable catastrophe as evidence that they didn't go far enough.
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>>>When a politician decides to engage in 2 costly wars while lowering taxes for the rich
What about a politician that drives the national debt from 10.5 trillion (105,000 per US household, approximately) to 13 trillion (~$130,000 per) after only 1.5 years in office? Never has our debt grown this fast. Not even under Ronnie Raygun.
.
>>>or when a majority of society elects politicians who repeatedly punish the poor and middle class while rewarding the rich
90% of income taxes are paid by the
Re:Be Careful (Score:5, Interesting)
90% of income taxes are paid by the 1% richest earners. 99% are paid by the 10% richest. Yes I know - an inconvenient fact but also happens to be true (came direct from the IRS).
The simple truth [lcurve.org] is that they should pay much more. If you want to hold all the wealth, why shouldn't you pay all the taxes? The idea that a few can make almost all the money and yet accept less than their share of the stewardship (through various tax dodges including ye olde capital gains) is ridiculous no matter how you examine it. The top 10 taxpayers in the year 2000 paid taxes on only 50% of their income, another fact straight from the IRS. Typical wageearners who work for some corporation have to pay taxes on nearly 100% of their income. Now what's fair?
Re:Be Careful (Score:4, Informative)
The lower half(below $40k) representing 45.8% of taxpayers accounted for 9.1% of taxable income, and 5.6% of income tax revenue.
The top half ($40k-$1 mil), representing 53.2% of taxpayers accounted for 70.4% of taxable income, and 58.3% of income tax revenue.
The upper crust (over $1 mil) are 0.9% of taxpayers and accounted for 20.5% of taxable income, and 36% of income tax revenue.
So the bulk of income tax revenue comes from the moderately wealthy, those making $40k-$1 mil.* Arguing that the wealthiest individual doesn't pay enough, as your l-curve site does, and using that as a reason to raise income taxes on the moderately wealthy doesn't really make a lot of sense since the people you're proposing to raise taxes on aren't the wealthiest individual. Cranking up the tax rate on people with incomes over $10 mil (a "merely" 33-foot tall stack of $100 bills 0.72 inches from the goal line according to your site) may make you feel better, but it won't increase income tax revenue significantly since they only represent 8.2% of taxable income and 9.8% of current income tax revenue. It's very difficult to raise income tax revenue significantly without dipping into the lower-upper class (to $100k as Obama campaigned on) and upper-middle class ($40k-$99k). (And no, arguing that they're using tax dodges so their gross income is much higher than their taxable income doesn't work either. I ran those numbers as well and the people with the biggest ratio of gross to taxable income were in the $4k-$12k range. Those earning $1+ mil had the smallest ratio. Apparently the AMT is working.)
*(The cutoffs are somewhat arbitrary; I chose them because they broke up taxpayers into roughly 50% blocks. Feel free to pick $30k or $50k or whatever you like from the IRS figures and run the numbers yourself. The median seems to be around $45k.)
This is why I use this name (Score:5, Insightful)
I have known this for most of my life. The name reflects the idea. I'm not afraid of being wrong... at least not as much as others seem to be.
The depth of the value of errors goes much further than the topic describes. The animal brain itself is a noisy collection of errors. The reason correct processing happens at all is because nearly all possibilities are explored in neural pathways to get to the correct responses. Once correct responses are identified, neural pathways to the correct response are established. This is what we call learning in the lowest level sense of the word.
I have always found it amusing and interesting that computers work the way they do. They work in ways that are the complete opposite of the animal neuromechanism. Computers, originally derived from numerical processing devices, rely on accuracy and seek to prevent errors in every way possible. Memory is storage rather than a path. In a way, computers are our biggest hangups about being wrong put into mechanical practice.
I find it to be far from ironic that we are now trying to get computers to "learn" under these conditions. The fact that it doesn't work particularly well. When every measure is taken to always be right, how can a machine learn? It is also far from surprising to me to see that people who are so afraid of being wrong are also the least capable of learning anything new or useful or being able to adapt to new circumstances. It all fits neatly within my own observations about mistakes and learning.
Re:This is why I use this name (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. In more ways [merriam-webster.com] than one.
Re:This is why I use this name (Score:4, Interesting)
What annoys me is that managers expect perfection from imperfect being. I remember in my second year as an engineer I was testing an FPGA using a self-designed testbox. By a simply drawing a line in the wrong place I had connected 28 volts to 4 of the pins, which then blew-out the FPGA.
Rather than say "Ooops. Fix it and try again," the managers totally over-reacted and stopped work on the project. We wasted two weeks on this simple error. Thousands of dollars in man-hours because of a damaged $200 part. Rdiculous. I identified the problem within just a few hours and had it fixed by the next day, but the managers went into panic mode and forbade me from entering the lab until a 2 week review was finished.
They would not allow for error.
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I have always found it amusing and interesting that computers work the way they do. They work in ways that are the complete opposite of the animal neuromechanism.
Well it makes sense. We developed computers to do the things that we're bad at, such as fast error-free calculation and perfect storage of information. If computers worked the way the human mind worked, then it would have the same problems as the human mind, and we'd be better off getting a person to do those things.
Look at yourselves in the mirror. You do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mistakes can cost us time and money, expose us to danger or inflict harm on others, and erode the trust extended to us by our community.
Or being ridiculed and humiliated by assholes who gain a false sense of superiority by belittling people over mistakes - many times trivial ones. Which then leads the other person to dig their heals in, argue pedantic points to stay "right" which then leads to counter pedantic arguments from the other, and round and round we go!
But hey! That's what you get when you post on Slashdot or work in IT.
Re:Look at yourselves in the mirror. You do it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Man. That totally reminds me of how much I hate this one dude at work. He gets this stupid-ass grin on his face whenever he thinks he's telling you something you don't know, and it makes me want to knock the smug bastard's teeth out of his head.
At least he's a socially inept moron with a stupid-sounding voice, so the cosmic joke is on him.
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Nothing is more satisfying than letting a smug git know that his audience is not impressed.
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At least he's a socially inept moron with a stupid-sounding voice, so the cosmic joke is on him.
Only insofar as he considers social acceptance his ultimate value/goal. If he does not, then the joke is on you.
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I agree with you that getting a sense of superiority because you caught someone else's mistake is itself a mistake. Discounting someone's argument because they made an error unrelated to the relevance or efficacy of the argument is likewise a mistake.
However, when someone points out an error and you take it as an insult, you are doing exactly what this research is telling you not to do. The *point* is that we need a willingness to make mistakes *and a willingness to learn from them*.
If you're unwilling to
Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, in a trivial sense, nobody wakes up in the morning and says "Gosh, I sure do feel like really fucking up today!"; but some people take measures that reduce the probability of error(and, where possible, measure it) and others do not. Just because virtually all human reasoning, outside of (some) math and syllogisms, is inductive does not imply that all human reasoning is on equally firm ground. In fact, given that deductive logic is useful pretty much only in certain types of math and in carefully controlled toy situations, the ability to distinguish various statements of inductive logic by quality or probability is probably the most vital aspect of epistemology as an applied science...
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I'm forever "being wrong". I often make an untrue statement to see if I'm corrected or if I'm fishing for information. Yes, I am that cunt.
Probabilistically true (Score:2)
It only raises one important question: Why are people fighting, kicking and screaming, every step of the way when t
Re:Probabilistically true (Score:5, Funny)
"There is no such thing as an absolute truth."
Is the above statement absolutely true?
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"There is no such thing as an absolute truth."
Is the above statement absolutely true?
Probably.
already a platitude (Score:4, Funny)
To #ERR is human, to forgive divine.
"We can take seriously the proposition (Score:5, Funny)
that we could be in error, without deeming ourselves idiotic or unworthy."
i guess Schulz has never read a comment board
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Oh Baby! (Score:4, Funny)
If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right!
It Makes Sense! (Score:4, Funny)
So that's why I feel smarter after staying at a Holiday Inn.
In Western culture, maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
Up to a point (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at what happens in Japan when a major mistake is make and in the west. Has anyone from BP taken accountability? Has anyone from Boeing ever laid down their jobs because they killed a couple of hundred people with their bad decision? Has any airline director every left? No.
But in Japan the higher ups DO feel that they are at fault for mistakes.
Your explenation of western attitude often becomes: A fault is nobodies fault.
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The "fault is nobody's fault" is exactly what we're talking about! Don't resign in disgrace or commit suicide, just go on like nothing has happened. What BP is doing is crass modern Western shamelessness. Why is that that BP is the first thing that pops into mind? Can we have a higher discussion without interjecting the crisis of the month?
Besides, responsibility has been taken already, so if there are any screwups, we already know who to blame: "I ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisi
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Saying you take responsibility for fixing something is entirely different than the blame game of whose fault it is. Particularly all those that present it like you are incompetent fuckups, I'm the knight in shining armor are extremely frustrating, since 99% of the time they're just looking to kick a man that's down. BP will take a beating at least as bad as their misdeeds already, Obama is just scoring polictically. Not unlike corporate politics.
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Re:In Western culture, maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
Culture notwithstanding, the conclusions regarding the probabilistic nature of inductive reasoning are insightful. It is important to understand that complex tasks and systems of belief are the result of trial and error; of making mistakes. Regardless of whatever superstitious or fallacious beliefs various cultures might have (and they all have them), this is an immutable fact of cognition, behavior, and psychology in general.
So I don't think it's that the conclusions don't make sense in an Eastern culture. It's simply that, as you describe it, this aspect of Eastern culture makes no sense at all to begin with. You can't do everything perfectly the first time around.
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Surprising really, because such thinking doesn't actually apply in the Western world either. If you make mistakes in the West--even minor ones--you will hounded out of your position by a feral media. Unless you're in a position of considerable corporate power obviously.
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Working with computers, we deal with hard facts, boolean truth values. Separating what we know from what we don't know is a large portion of this job. Therefore, being right about what you do and do not know is important.
To me personally, being right is so important that I will admit when I am wrong, so I can be right about that.
I realize that my experience is not typical. I learned reasonably early in life to put little stock in other peoples opinions of me and my actions, largely because the opinions o
this kind of thinking is insulting (Score:2)
it is kind of insulting to talk of eastern culture as this "shame culture/ honor culture", or a western "guilt" culture
it implies there is no shame/ honor in the west, and no guilt in the east. it also implies motivations in the east, or west, can be understood with simplistic facile concepts
what your words above really say is that some people, yourself, are simpleminded: that you buy into overly broad brushstrokes, surface level pop psychology ideas about other groups of people you know little about
i don't
Evolutionary Bloom Filter? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter [wikipedia.org]
Correction is a good thing (Score:2)
Proof of Charlie Brown's superiority.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans always said Bush was smart (Score:3, Funny)
Not So (Score:2)
Not only are we stupid, We don't even know how stupid we are! [nytimes.com]
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- George Carlin, Doin' It Again (1990)
i'm part of that half!
False claims - The key to knowledge. (Score:3, Interesting)
Heuristics (Score:3, Interesting)
Shulz is precise, just not quite accurate in her descriptions, assertions and conclusions.
It's not (just) inductive reasoning that produces the humans' results, it's heuristics. We create the fastest good enough result rather than the best possible result more slowly. The former proved conclusions that are correct enough but very fast, which evolution favors over slower but more accurate decision making. You can be right as god, but if you get ate you're just very right poop.
Heuristics works in all directions, top-down, bottom-up and side-to-side. Inductive, deductive and all the rest is labels we developed much later to try to describe what we could figure out about what's really going on in our heads. We can do those things because they're all part of how we work, but on the fly we never work in only one direction. Heuristics develops chains of thought according to associations, and so can fill in the chain (more often, the tree)
There are some things that defy logical reasoning, such as language. We can use reasoning to figure out how to talk about the arrangement in memory of the items we can recall and so talk about, but learning to communicate happens far faster than learning can account for. Hence "generative grammar" and the utterly arbitrary nature of language production. Such things are predetermined in the way of species specific behaviors. We are genetically predisposed for these, and no logic could possibly keep up. This could be hardwired heuristics, though nobody can prove that as yet, but it certainly acts like it.
So, heuristics, not induction, plus hardwired exceptions. Thus, we're never right, but we're right enough (to varying degrees) fast enough to survive.
Top Shulz's cake with that frosting, and her precision becomes accurate also when it comes to our (neuroscientists) present best picture of how we think.
It's not in the article above, but thinking that's always completely right has the major failing of being unable to produce novel responses. Heuristics allow the adaptability which novel situations require (another ability favored by evolution as well as Dr. Chandra), and which allows for creativity.
Sounds like a very good book. Adequately correct too. Must have been written heuristically.
To engineer is human: the role of failure in succe (Score:2)
This sounds a lot like a book I read a few years ago:
To engineer is human: the role of failure in successful design By Henry Petroski
http://books.google.com/books?id=mkLB8dasvPYC&dq=engineering+failure+book&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=wGcfTKjnD8mOlAfquKTACw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CEkQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=engineering%20failure%20book&f=false [google.com]
Tell it to the Army (Score:2)
Once upon a time the U.S. Army brass came up with a policy called 'No mistakes, no excuses.'
'No excuses' we could understand, but 'no mistakes?' On a battlefield? What stupid little Ivy League wonk came up with this idiocy?
So, we all became liars.
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Evil Intent (Score:2)
"Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent, we can liberate ourselves from the impossible burden of trying to be permanently right."
This is almost too self-referential, but the fact that most mistakes are honest does not mean that all mistakes are honest. That would be an error of inductive reasoning. And in fact that inductive reasoning (assumption of honesty/ fair play/ empathy) is exactly the vulnerability that makes sociopath-type behavior rewarding. It is, in short
Yet another reason... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet another reason why the idiots pushing for instant replays in baseball should STFU.
Machine Learning? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that anyone who has dabbled in machine learning would not be too shocked (weather by Hume's version or this post). It's the error term in machine learning, adaptive filtering, etc. that really drives the learning. As a stupid but simple example: Least Mean Squares in adaptive filtering (essentially gradient descent over the error surface).
Being wrong makes humans smart? (Score:2)
My neighbour must be a fucking genius.
Yeah (Score:2)
Humans Prefer Abduction to Induction, Deduction (Score:3, Interesting)
DEDUCTION: Rule + Case -> Conclusion
Induction and Abduction use the elements in a different way:
INDUCTION: Case + Conclusion -> Rule
ABDUCTION: Conclusion + Rule -> Case
Only deduction provides a valid inference. But humans default to using abduction and learn induction and deduction only slowly through formal training.
Point...Missed (QED?) (Score:3, Insightful)
Kathryn Schulz's book makes a great case for understanding why being wrong is so intrinsic to being human...unfortunately, and ironically, she's got it 180-degrees-wrong.
Where she fails is her conclusion: it's not that BEING WRONG is what makes us so successful, adaptive, and smart. It's the 'trying again to be right' bit.
Being wrong is easy. Being right is much, much harder, and probably requires trial and error. But if you're satisfied with being wrong, you don't keep trying. While the idea that 'being wrong is human' is all nice and friendly, ACCEPTING being wrong without any sense of negative consequence is staggeringly, blindingly stupid. Without gradations of consequence (ie more and more serious consequences for more and more serious failures), life doesn't even make sense.
"Schulz recommends that we respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity and demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. "
Sorry, but that's just stupid. This is the same sort of touchy-feely crap that's infected modern American public schools. "It's ok, little Timmy, you just keep trying to figure out what 2+2 is. You're still a valuable and precious little snowflake."
Why should Timmy ever bother to figure out 2+2 if he never NEEDS to get it right? Whether it's reward-based or something more simple like shame, there MUST be a disincentive to be wrong. Anything else is simply asinine.
So you send your husband out to get dinner; instead of buying food for your children, he spends the money on porn and beer. Ah well, you should respond with generosity and empathy, right?
Can you imagine if her methodology was followed? "It's ok BP, we all know that drilling for oil is hard work, and can "It's ok, Mr President. You just spent well over a $trillion on an ostensible economic rescue plan, but aside from simply not working, it pretty much all ended up in your friends' and political allies' pockets. We won't be angry, we won't even be annoyed. We'll respond with generosity and empathy. Perhaps you could take another $trillion from our kids' and grandkids' future and try again? Maybe this time you'll succeed?"
Engineers vs. Politicians (Score:3, Insightful)
- As a scientist or engineer, it is acceptable - even required! - to incorporate new data and adapt your thinking, even reach different conclusions.
- As a manager or politician, such behavior reflects weakness or lack of principle, sometimes called "flip-flopping".
In my experience the latter approach seems to be the *typical* perspective of normal people (non-engineers), who would rather "stay the course" and "finish what they started" even when they openly admit that they would have chosen differently now. The contrapositive concept of "what did he know and when did he know it", with the understanding that someone who chose badly may have made a reasonable decision based on the information available AT THE TIME, is often displayed pro forma and then trampled upon.
Re:First Post! (Score:5, Funny)
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There, there. It's OK that you're wrong and stupid.
To Err is Human (Score:2)
And I am very Human
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