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The irony of a clickbait publication like Vox talking about intellectual humility is breathtaking. Vox and its ilk (Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Gawker, etc) have done more than anyone else in pushing people to stick to their guns, even when they know their position is wrong. Their attitude towards apologies is never forgiveness, but to attack even harder, saying, "See, even my opponent admits that he or she was wrong!"
Humility doesn't go viral. Careful consideration doesn't get retweets. What spreads is confidence, whether it's well-placed or not. As a result, Vox's product is the very sort of confidence that this article decries.
> even when they know their position is wrong
Can I get a citation for this one? I've seen plenty of articles that are misleading if not wrong (and also plenty that are quite informative), but I have yet to see evidence they publish ones taking positions they actually know to be wrong.
I expected something like this to be the top comment. Vox seems to have become something that many people love to hate and in that case I imagine it feels good to take them down a peg. (Please note that this does not preclude the possibility that you are right.)
One technique I picked up, was imagine what evidence would change my mind. This exercise usually tells me one of two things. Either one it tells me exactly what evidence I should be searching for to tamper my opinion, or even more importantly it illuminates that it would take an unreasonable amount of evidence to convince me of the opposing viewpoint which alerts me that I'm probably pretty biased on that topic.
The US Gov has a very nice little book on the topic - A Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis. Just google and you'll find it on the CIA's website.
The book is geared towards the intelligence community but can be appreciated by all intelligent communities, especially on a topic such as this *. In a nutshell, it is about discovering implicit assumptions, questioning them, and checking for alternative explanations - in all areas of analysis/thought.
> “Our ignorance is invisible to us”
Just like those tricky drawings, that even after they tell you that both lines are the same length, your mind keep saying “nope that one is longer”. Something very similar happens when we try see our ignorance. It takes a lot of effort, especially when no one have ever bothered to teach us.
But if you ARE taught it, suddenly it becomes possible. If you are brought up in a philosophical tradition which essentially says: "Knowledge is forming a theory, and then trying to disprove it", then suddenly ignorance becomes visible.
In the two line example: sure, you mind tells you they're different, but if you're taught that knowledge is about trying to falsify your own opinion, you think about how it might be disproved. You go grab a ruler, bring it back to measure the two lines, and hot damn!
Growing up, I had a very similar moment trying to understand the Monty Hall problem. I was SO frustrated when my intuition said that I was right, I actually grabbed my father (sorry dad) and made him sit down with me while we physically ran through a hundred or so actual physical simulations and recorded the results to see whether practice would match up against theory or my intuition.
It matched up with theory. I learnt a very valuable lesson about intuition and probability.
Of course you're absolutely right however, almost no education system is actually set up to teach or grade using that style...and most kudos is given in academia for making positive claims rather than setting up realistic hypothesese and then working to actively disprove your own or other people's theories.
I like this story by Bred Weinstein where he asks is a whale a fish or a mammal. If you say fish because it swims in the water you are ignorant of the fact they are mammals who evolved back to live in the water. When you say mammal for this reason you are ignorant of how to read the phylogenic tree of life where subclasses are always part of the superclass. Most fish are Osteichthyes, a group that also includes all mammals. But sharks are not part of this group making us humans closer related to salmon then salmon are to sharks. Its a bad question but if forced to answer you can only be wrong in your own educated way.
Interesting information about sharks!
But it's wrongfully pedantic to pretend that monophyletic groups are the only valid classification system. Paraphyletic groups are fine too. Vertebrata or Craniata, minus Tetrapoda, is more or less the definition of "fish".
Biologically whales are clearly mammals and not fish. Whether bony or cartilaginous fish are closer to mammals does not put that fact into question.
> Its a bad question but if forced to answer you can only be wrong in your own educated way.
You can give an answer that spells out all of that. Alternatively, if you are limited to a single word, there is a "correct" answer to "is a whale a fish or a mammal": "yes."
Does this mean my intuition in this case has actually been right all these years? I used to run around telling everybody that sharks weren't really fish, just like Pluto wasn't really a planet (way back when I was unquestionably considered one). I had sound knowledge behind the Pluto idea, behind the shark one, not so much - I just understood them to be an ancient line, and to be obviously built after a different blueprint than anything known to me as a fish.
Unfortunately, I haven't really found that humility is rewarded much, which is why I think there's so little of it.
Exactly. There's also a cultural process of natural selection at work, and if humility is selected against, we shouldn't be surprised to see less of it.
We live by headlines, sound bites, quick and easy black & white characterisation. Nuance is not appreciated, and often not understood. Nuance and humility are seen as signs of weakness, and often taken as signs that you're wrong, since you clearly don't really believe what you say. A lie spoken with confidence is more believable than a truth explained with nuance, and that's a real problem.
You're right that there are few rewards to humility.
An example that immediately comes to mind is during my thesis, I set upon the task of creating a multivariate model to predict an observable quantity. My advisor kept insisting that my goal was NOT to build the model, but to first see that IF the variables had enough predictive power. I just never understood (at the time) what he meant. I went straight ahead and hammered out a robust model, and got a good grade (reward).
The rewards are intrinsic, not extrinsic. Sometimes the rewards can be extrinsic in the long run - if you find and invalidate a hidden assumption and are then able to build a theory/product/business around it. But in the short term, the rewards, and hence motivation, is usually intrinsic at best. Often there are no short term rewards, because you're in a perennial state of discomfiture owning to questioning everything.
It is ironical that I find the tone of these people so prepotent when talking about OTHERS being wrong.
For example, they give us an audio and they tell us a robotic voice is telling "Laurel", but they then tell us that what we hear depends on the speakers.
So the fact is that we are not hearing the same thing. So it is not a valid test.
Indeed, the test is wrong because it is computer synthesizers the ones who have problems pronouncing certain sounds, like the "l" that we create putting our tongue back and creating a loop that lets air go out by the sides.
This is a complex analog movement and resonance that is hard to emulate with digital technology, because it is not static and dynamic sounds are very hard to control as we use Fourier analysis for that with windows that introduce distortions in the signal.
Most companies out there just record those sounds from real people.
So those guys instead of accepting the limitations of current technology and accepting their test is wrong, they use it to prove that others are wrong while hearing it.
Oh, the irony. The interesting thing is that while it is very hard to admit that you are wrong, it is extremely easy to admit that other people are wrong.
I feel like you're misinterpreting the demonstration. It is not a test and there is no wrong or right answer. The whole point is to demonstrate that given different conditions, different people can interpret the same thing as being completely different.
The problem is that people ground their egos in their arguments/findings/research etc. If you can resist the prideful urge to do so, your work, and life in general, become much more enjoyable experiences - in my opinion.
A genuine problem is that intellectual hubris is often rewarded. There are many "experts" in their field for a reason - not necessarily because they always know so much - but because we have a human bias to defer to authority figures. This bias is not going away.
If you want to be able to market yourself and access opportunities that other people can't, you often have to project confidence - even overconfidence - in your beliefs. Non-experts can't tell, but they can certainly identify a lack of confidence. People have a bias for simple, clear prognostications, even if they are wrong.
This is an unfortunate reality, but it is a reality. Otherwise, we wouldn't see so many charlatans passing off as experts. But we do.
I think it's useful then to be able to project confidence and even overconfidence in your beliefs. But at the core, you must remain intellectually humble if you want to learn. You can't block out knew ideas because of your ego.
I've summarized this philosophy elsewhere as: look high-status, but be low-status.
This is especially applicable to the scientific cadre; sometimes leads me to think that some scientists are just as close-minded as the religionists of yore. The same applies to "believing in science". If I have to believe in it, it is no longer science. Conversely, by its very nature, the scientific approach must be open to invalidating its own self.
I often wonder if the Jewish tradition of casually and constantly debating all manner of things is a good antidote to getting rigidly attached to one's own viewpoint. But on the flipside, nonstop argumentations are a nuisance too.
And I’m speaking only from my own personal experience, of course ;).
By the other hand, one can think that the level of Knowledge of the authorities and the state-of-the-art in certain fields may be overestimated, because of the confidence of the authorities and the excess of humility of the person who is looking at that field of knowledge. That said, It is impossible to overestimate your own ability of making gross blunding mistakes.
That reminds me of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
One of my teachers said "When convinced you are correct in an argument, you should to defend your position without being swayed by your opponents credentials. Articulate your thoughts, argue with all your strength - and keep in mind that there is a very real possibility that you just might, perhaps, be right."
The author displays the very cognitive blind spots he decries. He says
"One reason I’ve been thinking about the virtue of humility recently is because our president, Donald Trump, is one of the least humble people on the planet.
It was Trump who said on the night of his nomination, “I alone can fix it,” with the “it” being our entire political system. It was Trump who once said, “I have one of the great memories of all time."
Trump is of course not a humble man. Is he any different in this regard than his predecessor?
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” -- Barack Obama (https://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/81895_Page2.html)
"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth." -- Barack Obama, Primary Election victory speech, Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008.
Intellectual humility starts at home.
Recently Obama gave an interview where he pretty much stated something along these lines. You go into politics locally, and you meet idiots, so you shrug it off, go into state politics, and meet idiots. You then hit national, and world politics, and you meet the same idiots.
While I like and respect Obama, it did make me think about the saying, if everyone is a dick, you're probably the dick.
More on topic. I know a pastor and she recently told me that its sad and disheartening at how many people will come up to her after a sermon and say, "Oh that was great, I just wish X was here to hear it." It seems when people hear about a possible flaw in behavior/personality they always search for people that have that flaw. But they rarely ever look at themselves. So it's not too surprising that the author would displays a blind spot while decrying them.
We can only hope he's realized it and is working on it.
There has to be a balance between humility and confidence though. If no one was ever confident (or even over-confident) in what they were doing, they probably wouldn't have enough motivation to get the task done. In addition to this, some tasks require you to exhibit your confidence in order for you to fulfill them (like showing confidence to win over votes in an election).
It’s an interesting choice to compare “best of all time at anything you care to mention” to “better at the core skills of my job than the folks in the more junior roles”. They are extremely different attitudes.
Wouldn’t most people at the top of their game think they’re good at the game? Wouldn’t it be dishonesty rather than humility if they claimed otherwise? Isn’t being able to describe your bias and ego an essential part of intellectual humility?
To judge that kind of statement, the intent and context is important. Trump is usually justifying why he doesn’t take advice and won’t answer questions.
I’ll bet you Obama (like most competent folks and past presidents) will have been making a broader point eg about the reality of being the leader but still relying on a team of good people.
I’m pretty sure Obama let his ego get in the way of any number of occasions. But Trump relies on pure ego. Not comparable in my view.
Yeah, I was a bit disappointed to see Donald Trump dragged into this, almost arbitrarily, and almost needlessly. Then I remembered I was afterall reading the Vox.
You don't seem to make a point about what specifically the cognitive blindspot is. I infer, perhaps in err due to my lack of comprehension, that you feel the author was somehow wrong to mention Trump here, or perhaps that failing to mention Trump's predecessor is an indication of a blindspot.
Politics is a great area for cognitive blind spots. Sometimes we get so wrapped up our support or opposition that we forget to build the arguments we make from sound foundations. Or our blind spots might just confuse us and leave us not making clear points at all, instead of fallacious ones.
It was unnecessary for the author to mention Trump in the article. It can even be considered detrimental, if the goal was to convey the points in the rest of the article. By mentioning a divisive figure the author undermines his ability to communicate the main points of the article. The figure diverts even intelligent people into discussion of the person mentioned as a trigger for his thoughts for the article, instead of discussion of the article.
That is why the author was wrong to mention Trump in the article.
However, if you're conveying some other point, it fails to reach me. Is it that the author is wrong to say what you yourself feel about the sitting president because earlier presidents did similar things? That the author should also give focus to past presidents who left office years ago and mention them as well or instead? Something else? I can only speculate, which usually ends badly.
The author's inspiration for the article seems to come off earnestly. It is natural for person whose actions and words are amplified and widely disseminated, and who has a lot of power, to inspire thoughts. The man's predecessor has been out of office for years now and is no longer in the same position of power. It would seem a bit disingenuous for the author to quote the previous president as inspiration for his new article, unless there was some particular recent event that caught his attention.
To some, this reply to the article might appear as if it were the result of a polarization tactic that has some historical precedent [1] in other countries. The political leaders would encourage and engage in arguments that attempt to discredit their opponents through claims of hypocrisy, without actually refuting anything. It's a variant of the tu quoque fallacy. If a leader can convince his base, through example and repetition, that this type of fallacy is a valid way to argue, it provides them a form of inoculation against other forms of reason and logic that might sway away their support. It can spread like a meme (in traditional sense) and serve as the basis for their own arguments.
It's very difficult to point out this sort of instilled behavior without offending people. And it's impossible to make a definitive determination with any kind of accuracy. Often people make accidental fallacies that are not indicative of their typical mode of argument. And even if that's their normal mode, it doesn't mean that it's something new to them, or instilled. So to be clear, I am not claiming your argument is the result of the deliberate introduction of this behavior. I have no way to know. It's something each person needs to understand for themselves.
But if an intelligent person who generally does not rely on fallacy were to begin to use them them increasingly, they might not be aware that they were doing so. If it were pointed out, they might deflect and ignore, or believe it was an accident. It would take repeated incidents for them to see a pattern. And once they saw a pattern, they wouldn't immediately associate the behavior as something that was introduced to them over a span of years of consumption. They wouldn't go back and look at the past media they consumed with a new awareness to try and determine the prevalence with which they saw similar argument and behavior.
The natural human response to this sort of suggestion is to reject it. My hope is that a person who has an self-inspecting mind that thinks about the way it thinks might eventually see this in themselves. I have a _ton_ of behaviors that have are instilled in me. I know about them, have conscious awareness of them, but don't always stop them. My go-to swear word is 'Jesus', even though I stopped attending church when I was 14. I know that I can't _really_ make people think more about their own minds with just a few words on the internet, but sometimes I do it anyway.
I can't tell if this post was a valid indicator or not; even if I knew you directly and for years, I wouldn't be qualified to say. People have to be the expert on themselves. I'm just proposing a thought for your own consideration. If the idea of thinking about the way you think is somehow upsetting or angering, then try to find out why that is. In the spirit of your affirmation that intellectual humility begins at home. I hope that you look beyond the surface thought of just "that anonymous person is irritating" and figure out exactly what it is that's so irritating. Then find out why that irritates you so much. And is it a valid reason to feel that way?
Unfortunately the people most likely to exercise epistemic humility are those that are already rational thinkers, whereas the people that __could benefit most__ suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect and are unlikely to change their modes of thinking.
If you live in a society where humility is not rewarded (quite the opposite) then you will obviously get less of it.
Very interesting article. Definitely learning starts with accepting mistakes, avoiding arrogance and being humble.
There's an old saying in physics: "Knowledge advances one funeral at a time."
Are there any good books about this topic? I have close-minded people in my family, and I’m looking for books that may have been translated to my native language, so the more popular the book is, the better.
I liked Mill's On Liberty, but it's pretty old-style.
I feel like, "Hey, you're close minded, read this book to find out why" isn't going to get you very far. But good luck.
Denialism
A sentiment of a bygone era. In the new middle ages we are in now, its all about "feel". And it its feels right it is right.
I think it may be selective memory. I suspect that the past had plenty of cocksure blowhards who were "often wrong but never uncertain". But a good fraction of the great minds had intellectual humility.
And it may be the same now. Hundreds of years from now, those who think "if it feels right it is right" will be forgotten, and humanity will remember a higher fraction of those who valued truth more than their own opinion or feeling.
I hope (but am not confident of it) that the article will encourage people to be more humble in their assertions.
The world will be a better place.
People always want to act like somehow this is a relatively new 'thing'. It's not, the difference now is that people recognize that thinking you're right doesn't justify making someone upset or being indignant. It's about being able to understand how other people feel.
In the household I grew up in, I wasn't allowed to question my step-father. Doing so was considered, essentially, insubordination. This was in spite of him being objectively wrong about some of the things he said, including how to repair a car, about women and how they drive and more.
Why? Because he was right, and I was wrong. His gut feeling overrode anything else I was allowed to say. He was The Man Of The Household and his word was law.
corrigibility and defeasibility
Saying that social scientists need to be taught intellectual humility is tantamount to saying they are not scientists at all, which seems to be the real problem.
Social scientists are people. We are all people first. None of us are robots. We can be rational in certain situations, but overall, we are not a rational species.
In order to fight some of our worse qualities, we have to first identify them. Then break down any social barriers that keep us from not fighting them.
That is what this article is doing. It is naming one of them, and then asking us to be forgiving. And helping us realize that mistakes are not as punished as we all may think.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
There were comments on a recent post here that drifted to children reacting to vaccines that surprised me with how many claimed with absolute certainty there was no link to autism.
I'll certainly acknowledge that most kids do not suffer such a reaction but not that it's impossible for some to, but those who were certain wouldn't do that.
Some of them were quite demanding about it. Almost insisting I admit I am wrong. I may well be, but I also know there's a lot we do no know about human biology. Just what we've learned about "gut bugs" in the past few years is pretty solid evidence of that. And it's also one of those cases where the more we've learned the more we realize there's even more we do not know.
To me, uncovering something that reveals how little we know, now that's exciting.