Wednesday, May 04, 2011

TED 2011: Kathryn Schulz, Wrongologist


Score: 10 balloons



In one of the best TED Talks ever, Slate columnist Kathryn Schulz exposes human nature. It doesn’t feel good to be wrong, and so we naturally inflate the confidence we have in our convictions. (My personal theory is that we grow addicted to the endorphnis our brains produce when we’re right, in order to drive the back error propogation fine tuning our neural networks.) A 60% likely belief swells to 90% in our minds. This simple observation that we try to avoid the feeling of ignorance explains a lot of screwy things in the world.

 See the Guide to TED Talks 2011.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing David!

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  2. Couldn't agree with you more.

    There is a great discussion about this in the book "How we decide". Check it out. Some might find it a bit technical when the author goes into what parts of the brain do what, but I found it fascinating.

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