Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Lazy_eye
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

Post by Lazy_eye »

Possibly one reason why we don't hear many Buddhists talking about "precious gator birth"...?
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Lazy_eye wrote:Possibly one reason why we don't hear many Buddhists talking about "precious gator birth"...?
The fact that googling "mother kills baby" returns 59,000,000 hits like this one means that Dawkins' theory of genes being the driving factor might be the least bit flawed....
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Lazy_eye
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Admin_PC wrote:
Lazy_eye wrote:Possibly one reason why we don't hear many Buddhists talking about "precious gator birth"...?
The fact that googling "mother kills baby" returns 59,000,000 hits like this one means that Dawkins' theory of genes being the driving factor might be the least bit flawed....
It doesn't always work in a simple, linear way. To begin with, the idea is that human behavioral habits evolved when we had just gotten out of the trees and were struggling to survive on the savannah. When behavioral tendencies that evolved in that ancestral environment then get transplanted to modern environments, all kinds of whacked out things can happen.

Another aspect is that in some situations it may be in the interest of the genes for a parent to sacrifice progeny in the hope of producing other kids with another partner who appears more "fit." In other situations, it may be in the interest of the genes for the parent to prevent someone else from producing children (who might compete for resources).

Again, we have to keep in mind how this behavior would have played out in the ancestral environment, not in a modern society.
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Lazy_eye wrote:Again, we have to keep in mind how this behavior would have played out in the ancestral environment, not in a modern society.
I'll probably have to read up on what he actually wrote, because nothing I've seen in this thread establishes a convincing argument that genes would play a greater role than psychology - especially in light of adoptive families, interbreeding between homo sapiens & neanderthal, current inter-species altruistic behavior (gorillas & cats), etc.
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dharmagoat
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Evolutionarily speaking, gators aint goin' nowhere.
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Grigoris
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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dharmagoat wrote:Evolutionarily speaking, gators aint goin' nowhere.
Yeah, but they have been really good at going nowhere for a really long time. Humans, by contrast, during their short space of existence on this planet, are on the verge of driving themselves into extinction.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Sherab Dorje wrote:
dharmagoat wrote:Evolutionarily speaking, gators aint goin' nowhere.
Yeah, but they have been really good at going nowhere for a really long time. Humans, by contrast, during their short space of existence on this planet, are on the verge of driving themselves into extinction.
There is a line of argument which says that intelligence is maladaptive.
... In spite of our hubris, humans are nothing but a short-lived biological aberration, with no legitimate claim to superiority. As a minor branch on a vast evolutionary bush, modern humans have been roaming the earth for no more than a few hundred thousand years of the earth’s 4.5 billion-year history. Ours has been a brief presence, with too little time to demonstrate if the evolution of large brains is a successful strategy for long-term survival of the species. Our self-anointed position to exalted status has blinded us to the reality that our big brains might not be our savior but the potential source of our demise. We claim we are special, but there is a loss of credibility when you choose yourself for an award.

If evolution had a pinnacle, bacteria would rest on top. While it hurts our ego, we live in the Age of Bugs, not the Age of Humans. These single-celled germs are the most successful of all life forms, and have been dividing away for more than 3 billion years. ...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schw ... 10976.html
It's a long way OT, but not much further OT than we have been for the last few pages :rolleye: so feel free to run with it.

:coffee:
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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I've always found it amazing that Dawkins gets away with the level of speculative thinking he does, while still feeling he has a place to denigrate the 'religious' for similar forms of speculation.
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Admin_PC wrote:
Lazy_eye wrote:Possibly one reason why we don't hear many Buddhists talking about "precious gator birth"...?
The fact that googling "mother kills baby" returns 59,000,000 hits like this one means that Dawkins' theory of genes being the driving factor might be the least bit flawed....
Either that or Dawkins is right, and we are observing evolution in action as the genes for destruction of offspring are ruthlessly eliminated from the gene pool.
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Johnny Dangerous
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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catmoon wrote:
Admin_PC wrote:
Lazy_eye wrote:Possibly one reason why we don't hear many Buddhists talking about "precious gator birth"...?
The fact that googling "mother kills baby" returns 59,000,000 hits like this one means that Dawkins' theory of genes being the driving factor might be the least bit flawed....
Either that or Dawkins is right, and we are observing evolution in action as the genes for destruction of offspring are ruthlessly eliminated from the gene pool.

There's no "gene for destruction of offspring"..such an idea is reductionist enough that I think it would be called into question even by people who believe mental illness can be reduced wholly to biological causes..who AFAIK are a shrinking group anyway.
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Johnny Dangerous wrote:

There's no "gene for destruction of offspring"..such an idea is reductionist enough that I think it would be called into question even by people who believe mental illness can be reduced wholly to biological causes..who AFAIK are a shrinking group anyway.
Of course there isn't. It's shorthand for the idea of a wide variety of genes and gene side effects operating together to produce an effect. If you were interested in finding the genes responsible, there are plenty of hot candidates. Sensitivity to pheromones, general neurotransmitter levels, intensity of fight or flight response... all these should have a bearing on aggression and target selection.

Some mental disease is entirely biological in origin. For example, permanent delusory states induced by long term drug use or even short term use of some extremely dangerous drugs. Krokodil comes to mind. The fact that schizophrenia and depression run in families is well documented and highly suggestive.
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

Post by emaho »

This is a nice illustration for the Dunning-Kruger Effect. A guy named Randall Jones has posted a math riddle on facebook and it went viral:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... 047&type=3

Even though he commented "Only one in thousand will get it" millions of people are flooding the comment section with wrong answers, quite a few of them bragging how they came to their (wrong) answer in less than 30 seconds and how ridiculously easy that was. I'm not saying that people who aren't coming to the real solution are stupid because obviously you need some math skills to solve this puzzle, but if you skim through the answers and also some of the media's reactions it becomes quite clear that the less people are able to grasp the full complexity of the puzzle the louder they spout out their wrong answers.
"I struggled with some demons, They were middle class and tame..." L. Cohen
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Re: Dunning-Kruger Effect

Post by Ayu »

The posts about the guessing game went here:
http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.ph ... 61#p341161
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