Michael Lewis on why Americans don’t trust experts
https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/23030205/vox-conversations-michael-lewis-against-the-rules-experts
How a society that is so good at creating knowledge can be so bad at applying it.
How a society that is so good at creating knowledge can be so bad at applying it.
Dunning–Kruger effect
“In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence”
Author Lionel Shriver notes:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/from-trumpism-to-lockdown-people-believe-in-the-craziest-things
“At its inception, the internet promised instant universal access to more information than people had ever historically enjoyed by orders of magnitude. During the web’s early days in the 1990s, expectations were idealistically high. …
Little did we anticipate that loads of information is not the same thing as loads of accurate information. We didn’t remember what people are like. We form opinions first and look for evidence later. We believe what we want to believe, and we’re suckers for whatever promotes our perceived self-interest. We’re not, in the main, rational creatures, and act more from emotion than reason. We prefer interaction with the like- minded, who fortify what we already think — meaning we instinctively seek out the very antithesis of education. If anything, the internet has made us stupider”.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/from-trumpism-to-lockdown-people-believe-in-the-craziest-things
“At its inception, the internet promised instant universal access to more information than people had ever historically enjoyed by orders of magnitude. During the web’s early days in the 1990s, expectations were idealistically high. …
Little did we anticipate that loads of information is not the same thing as loads of accurate information. We didn’t remember what people are like. We form opinions first and look for evidence later. We believe what we want to believe, and we’re suckers for whatever promotes our perceived self-interest. We’re not, in the main, rational creatures, and act more from emotion than reason. We prefer interaction with the like- minded, who fortify what we already think — meaning we instinctively seek out the very antithesis of education. If anything, the internet has made us stupider”.