We all know confidently incorrect people. People displaying dunning-kruger. The majority of those people have low education and without someone giving them objectively true feedback on their opinions through their developmental years, they start to believe everything they think is true even without evidence.
Memorizing facts, dates, and formulas aren’t what necessarily makes someone intelligent. It’s the ability to second guess yourself and have an appropriate amount of confidence relative to your knowledge that is a sign of intelligence.
I could be wrong though.
Education, done correctly, doesn’t teach you what to think but how to think.
Expanding on this, it shows you some basic options/pathways on how to think.
For me it was more like learning how other people think. Like, I took an accounting class as an elective and while it didn’t make me an accountant but it helped me understand accountants.
Education packs you with group of people so your instinct wants you to live in community and puts a boss ( teacher ) above you, because they want you to become a factory worker in capitalistic world. Poor animals are we.
Education existed before capitalism. Or are you going to tell me that Socrates was an industrial shill?
I am sorry I didn’t know that Socrates invented packing couple hundred of people in the same building to teach them something.
i think you have a narrow view of what education is. this is subjective but my view of education is that it’s an emergent property; as long as there’s different individuals that know different skills, natural networks will form of people teaching to anyone that wants to learn.
whether it’s institutions with professors teaching about quantum physics and brain surgery, to herds of dinosaurs teaching groups of young their migration paths and dangers to avoid; it’s all within my personal concept of what education is
No, education gives you a good faith foundation so your neural connections are well groomed and not messy. Arguing in good faith is the basis for what we consider a fact is, and our sciences and legal systems. It’s the basis of progress. It also stops you from being bamboozled, even by yourself, and prevents delusional thinking.
And in terms of IQ, yes, remembering facts DOES make an IQ score go up significantly.
Curiosity and openmindedness are related to intelligence, along with resiliency.
Is the Dunning-Krugger effect mainly displayed by low education people?
In my own personal experience pretty much everybody displays that in areas outside their expertise, and I definitely include myself in this.
For example the phenomenon of people offering what basically amounts to Medical advice is incredibly common outside the Medical profession - pretty much every-fucking-body will offer you some suggestion if you say you’re feeling like you have a bit of a temperature or something generic like that.
It’s also my experience that highly educated people don’t have any greater introspection abilities than the rest (i.e. for self-analysis and self-criticism) or empathy (to spot when other people feel that you’re talking of your ass).
Maybe it’s the environment I grew in, or the degrees I learned and professional occupations I had (so, Physics, Electronics Engineering, Software Engineering) that are too limited to make a judgement, maybe it’s me showing my own Dunning-Kruger effect or maybe my observations are actually representative and reasonably correct: whichever way, my 2c is that learned people are no better at the adult mature skills (such as introspection and empathy) than the rest, something which also matches with my experience that the Education System (at least were I studied, Portugal of the 80s and 90s) doesn’t at all teach those personal skills.
So IMHO, your assumption that the majority of those people have low education is probably incorrect, unless you’re anchoring that on the statistic that most human beings on Planet Earth have low education, in which case they’re certainly the majority of the confidently incorrect even if they’re no more likely to be so than the rest simply because there’s more of them than of the rest.
PS: Also note that amongst highly educated people there are people from different areas which emphasize different modes of thinking. My impression is that whilst STEM areas tend to emphasize analytical thinking, objectivity, assumption validation and precision, other areas actually require people to in many ways have a different relationship with objective reality (basically anything in which you’re supposed to persuade others).
There’s a lot of different things that get pumped into “intelligence”. There’s “reasoning ability”, “knowledge”, “wisdom”, and a whole host of others, some in the category of traditional intelligence, and others around things like emotional intelligence.
Raw knowledge is something that schools can teach through memorization. You have facts. Memorization isn’t the best way to do it, since context and such can often make information stick better, but some things you’re eventually going to memorize, intentionally or not (I don’t calculate 6*6=36 every time).
Reasoning or analytical ability is much harder to teach, since you can’t really make someone more able to have insights and such.
Wisdom is something that can be trained I’d phrase it. I don’t think you can be taught it like you can a history lesson, but it needs to be trained like a sport. How to apply reason to a situation, how the knowledge you have relates to things and other bits of knowledge. Which things are important and which aren’t.
It sounds like you’re mostly taking what I’ve called wisdom, with a dash if introspection tossed in, which can play very well with wisdom. “How sure am I about this?” Is a question wisdom might make you ask , and you need to know yourself to know the answer.
Knowing how to question the right part of something, so that you’re not getting caught up in the little inconsistencies and missing the big one, or considering the wrong facts that are unimportant to a situation.
(A pet peeve of mine) Sometimes people will bring up statistics of race in relation to crime. People with perfectly good reasoning ability and knowledge will get caught up debating the veracity of the statistics, or the minutiae of the implications of how other statistics interplay to lead to those numbers, both in an attempt to deny the conclusion of the original argument.
The more wise thing to do is to question why this person is making the argument in the first place. Use your knowledge of society to know there are racists who want to convince others. Your reasoning to know that someone more interested in persuasion than truth can twist numbers how they want. Reject their position entirely, instead of accepting their position as valid and arguing their facts.There was a popular author of technical books about the Commodore 64 who thought nuclear bombs aren’t real.
You can have a few neurons really good at one thing, they don’t map over to other things.
Memorization is such a strange thing to try to teach. I was never good at that in school but could sing any song on the radio after hearing it once. In school I was good enough at math up to a point because I was so bad at memorization got good at thinking my way through it. Was much better at word problems than equations in elementary school.
I do agree with the premise of the shower thought - part of being educated is learning through mistakes. Making mistakes is one of the fastest ways to learn something, and is the main reason I’m good at my job. I am happy to work in accounting where mistakes don’t kill anyone.
- A peeve of mine is the ease at which they’ve correctly diagnosed the Dunning-Kuerger effect and liberally applied. Few, if any, recognize that there is controversy around the effect.
- I think your insight is part of a growth mindset. A concept championed by Carol Dweck, it has been embraced by educators and, unfortunately, abused by managers. Too many people think a growth mindset is better than a fixed mindset.
- Intelligence has many definitions and contexts. I agree that intellectual humility is a useful trait and makes people far more bearable to deal with, but there’s a lot of ways to examine what intelligence is and how it operates
Growth mindset is a privilege of the few with tons of resources for whom potential seems limitless. But really, they can only learn two or tree things well.
I could see why you’d say that. Stress creates environments of basic survival, which kills cognitive thought. More immediate survival is more salient.
That being said, if you have access to the internet, you have access to countless free educational tools.
Too much privilege brings sycophantic bubbles of delusion, like billionaires.
Having all the time and money also let’s you do a whole thing tank about how to ruin a country to fit your preferences. See the heritage foundation as prime example.
That being said, while it is less easy for the poor, it’s still essential to attempt that open mind and learn, so you don’t get trapped by a socialized category error applied as fact.
This is where we need predictive processing and the Bayesian brain to understand how beliefs are weighted and compared, and the failure states that might being.
Basically, poor weighting or system communication leads to an over affirmation of something that should have been high uncertainty, if measured from other directions.
Instead of seeing high cognitive dissonance as a sign to align low probability, it gets socialized into acceptance to save the energy of trying to worry about our deal with what, to that system, appears intractable.
DKE is at least useful in framing how each expertise eco-niche is filled with complexity that doesn’t Transfer. This is why scientists stict to their expertise, where they have high dimensions of understanding, and low dissonance to uphold.
This can be over-prioritized until no dissonance outside of microscopic niches that act more like data collection than science.
Experts however can work together to find truths that diffuse dissonance generally, to continue building understanding.
If the peasants could socialize that laziness was a lack of meta awareness of the greater dissonance diffusing web of shared expert consensus, instead of laziness being the act of not feeding the socio-economic hierarchy machine, which is famous for maximizing paperclips and crushing orphans.
Pretty sure I got beaten black and blue waiting for library access. Had to protest to keep a library open when I’m gradeschool.
So, growth mindset isn’t a privilege, but general access to affordances, pedigree, time, tools, social connections, etc, are all extra hurdles for growth mindset in impoverished places.
If there’s no internet access at all, then that’s just a disabled system.
Is not static with people, and Issue with growth mindset would just be vulnerability to learning yourself into some information bubble that intentionally cuts off communication, so that you can only use that group as a resource for building your world model, bringing you to where the closed brains go just to save energy, and keeping you there forever.
Groups that are cool with making confident choices fueled by preference in high dissonance spaces. which basically acts like fertile soil for socializing strong cult beliefs and structures.
They also use weird unconscious tools that keep them in the bubble. Listen to almost anyone that’s escaped a cult for good elaboration there. Our brains will do a lot to keep us from becoming a social pariah in our given environment we have grown into.
Half of that sounded suspiciously like AI slop. You might have an actual message, but you badly butchered it, especially by spamming diffusion. You seem to be using the language of statistics to explain the functions of the brain, why we err, failures of our society, and you are throwing together a lot of things at once, which is typical of say…an ADHD person, who sees it all as connected.
You badly structured it, and you sound like a scizophrenic, but I think I understand what you are trying to say. I certainly will not put up with that much to not become a pariah, I almost got into a physical altercation more than once with a co-worker for this reason.
will try to take it in good humour, but i love how i got compared to ai, adhd(AuDHD would be the real wombo combo here so you get points), and schizophrenic people.
and i would hope i don’t confabulate half as much as an LLM.
although an understanding of the modern situation does require an unfortunately theoretical take, while, unfortunately, there’s more noise, and conspiracy theories being socially reified than most people can remember. but i’d like to think i’m weighting this take via the best available expert consensus that i can find and source. biggest ‘correction’ i’d make is that i was beaten black and blue for waiting outside of the library, which was unrelated to the protest.
if you do actually care, and can handle more than the internet’s usual 140 character tweet limit, here’s some elaboration.
the ‘sycophancy into delusion effect’ i refer to can be seen widely reported on most news sites, where chatgpt and the like cause a feedback-loop into a psychotic break. this is one individual and machine, but a group that forgives the same things has the same sycophantic effect. predictive processing and the bayesian brain are leading theories in psychology that work well nested with other leading theories such as global workspace.
that global workspace video is a very recent example with michael levin from tufts, who often works with friston’s free energy principle and active inference (included notes in wiki)
friston has hundreds of thousands of citations, if you care about pedigree. i hope i do not poorly capture or inaccurately represent any of their ideas, but if you’d like to drink from the source, you have my full recommendation.
that’s where the “saving energy” stuff comes from. while DKE might not perfectly and accurately explain the situation, i’m all for better ways to convey that eco-niche specific intelligence doesn’t always transfer, especially if it’s ‘overfit to a local minima.’ otherwise knowing you need high samples to gauge your intelligence in any particular niche is also related to the framework i’m describing. in the bio-world you have overspecialization, like pandas too fit to a specific environment, which may focus on skills that don’t transfer outside of that environment. there’s a lot more to gain from the full bayesian perspective, but there is a lot to be gained just by looking at how systems can successfully co-construct, and their possible failure states that are inevitable as systems grow apart into new niche environments.
there’s actually an interplay between that ‘energy saving’ property and putting energy back out which can be used to explore the environment, build a more robust model, and survive greater environmental shifts. this is explained in active inference. good, but slightly old textbook on MITpress. lots of other online resources for the curious.
i’m saying that meta-awareness of the failure states in these specific system dynamics could do much more general and robust good for society than being socially pressured into climbing the socio-economic hierarchy as hard as possible.
there’s a term for an imagined AI going rogue due to being overfit to a single goal. this is called a ‘paperclip maximizer.’ i compare the current socio-economic system to that failure. you know, ‘capitalism number go up!’
i don’t think any studies i’ve seen disagree with that take, but if there’s a relevant expert who’s got a strong weighting i’m unaware of, i’m always open to updating my weights.
as for learning yourself into some information bubble, or how someone can hold ridiculous beliefs without the need to question them, such as grand confidence despite low evidence, is often by taking something you have low evidence about, and having high confidence. and then giving it a high weighting. funny enough, friston’s dysconnection hypothesis is about framing schizophrenia as precision weighting issues, but i don’t think they are the kind i have TY.
mahault has a phd under friston, and her epistemic papers are essential IMO.
so there you have it, the larger environment of my thoughts, largely focused around one of the most cited neuroscience experts of all time, and michael levin who i mentioned is doing some of the coolest current empirical results in modern biology.
i tried, thank you if you got this far. if nothing else, please stay curious, but beware information silos that disable coms completely, or otherwise create barriers to properly comprehending the systems being represented. ‘nothing about us without us’ is important for a reason.
otherwise, wish i could compress these complex topics into fewer words, but words are a lossy compression format.
So here’s how I liken education. I’ve been an instructor at the Naval Engineering School so have a bit of experience in the subject.
First thing to learn is “facts” by rote memorization and then parrot it back. If you can do that you have learned something which is not unimportant and is an important base for the next step.
Then you learn how to apply those facts to help you in a specific set of situations. This is a very small hop above the previous step, but an important one, as now you know how to solve a narrow set of problems in a specific set of circumstances.
Unfortunately, this is where a lot of education ends because this is the easiest level to test. To go beyond this, you as an instructor must inspire the students.
The third level is when you take the facts you know and the situations to apply them and start modifying them to fit new novel situations. This now requires active thinking on the part of the student and will likely result in a lot of mistakes and suffering but this is where the instructor can gently guide them along and nurture their curiosity and keep their spirits up when they fail.
Next level is an important one, when the student starts to ask, “why does this work this way in this situation and this way in this situation”? That is the start of true wisdom.
And the final level of education is when you go back and try to teach the subject. That is when you truly open yourself up to learning.
Depth of Knowledge levels aren’t meant to be progressed through linearly, but a way to assess tasks. One student’s mind might turn on at level three, but not at level one. Another might crumble at level 3 even if they’ve performed level 1 and 2 exceptionally.
That first student will, having been inspired by the nature of the question, go back and learn the basics. They need to be given material that supports that activity. The second student needs to know how to chunk and connect their previous tasks to the new one.
Great educators can personalize this work for each student and meet them where they are at. They can leverage technologies to do so and express sincere belief in students in a way no technology can.
I think it’s more nuanced than that, and it really depends on the level of education.
Making kids memorise things also teaches them the process of learning a thing. Testing them on facts, dates, and formulas has value because it tests whether they’re able to learn those facts, dates, and formulas.
In high school maths, I had to learn formulas. When I was applying to university, the admissions test came with a formula booklet. It was assumed I knew how to learn formulas, they were testing whether I’d learned how to look up the correct formula, and apply it. They weren’t just testing my mathematical ability, they were simultaneously testing my reference skills. I only really appreciated that when I was much older.
Making kids memorise things also teaches them the process of learning a thing.
Well, there’s different ways of learning things and i’m more the associative type, which is quite the reverse of memorizing.
I’m an associater too. Didn’t stop me from being top of every class I’ve ever been in. Take the time to study how to learn, specifically how you learn
Memorization have importance. We, as a species, are as intelligent as primitive cavemen. Our brains haven’t changed that much since those times.
What allows us to be different, to have a prosper civilization, is the information we have stored. Much of that information is stored in our brains.
Critical thinking is of great importance. Of course. But let’s not dismiss the ability to store that critical information.
Memory is often used as a facade to demonstrate intelligence that lacks thinking, though.
If we define intelligence by the development of the brain’s abilities, memorization is one of those abilities. Then, great memorization would be, per se, a feat of intelligence.
I think that’s a good part of it, learning fundamentals of things you’ll need is also vital. I’ve grown to mostly appreciate learning how to learn. It’s a skill that’s implicit, but putting the building blocks in at an early stage regarding how to seek and learn knowledge sets you up so well for the rest of your existence.
Dunning-kruger is probably not an actual thing. It just conforms to our biases.
I am a flight instructor. I had to study the fundamentals of instruction to earn that title, so I believe I can speak with some authority on this subject.
When discussing facts, figures and such, we consider four levels of learning. The easiest, fastest and most useless is rote memorization. Rote memorization is the ability to simply parrot a learned phrase. This is fast and easy to achieve, and fast and easy to test for, so it’s what schools are highly geared toward doing.
An example from flight school: A small child, a parrot, and some Barbie dolls could be taught that “convective” means thunderstorms. When a meteorologist says the word “convective” it’s basically a euphemism for thunderstorms. You’ve probably already memorized this by rote. You would correctly answer this question on the knowledge test:
Which weather phenomenon is a result of convective activity?
A. Upslope Fog
B. Thunderstorms
C. Stratus Clouds
Ok, but you never finished the example with the child, parrot and barbie dolls. What is the punchline there?
Children can be taught to repeat something even if they don’t understand it. So can many species of parrot, they famously mimic sounds they hear including human speech without understanding the meaning behind the sounds. And I seem to remember a model of Barbie doll that had a little sound recorder built in so she can “really talk.” These things can repeat something they’ve "learned’ without any deeper understanding.
Another way to think about it is to say that education is the memorization of knowledge, while intelligence is the application of said knowledge. i.e. book smarts vs. street smarts. They aren’t the same things, but are two building blocks that work together.
At least that’s how I look at it.
I disagree about education being about memorization. Education is about knowledge being imparted. Testing is often about memorization, although I’d argue that’s usually only with poorly designed tests. To me, a good education is also a lot about teaching critical thinking skills.
