Overconfidence

Every once in a while you read something and then see it firsthand the same day. The other day I was reading about how people are overconfident in their knowledge in this book. Stated another way, they are not objective about their knowledge level.

Think about this:

How do you pronounce the capital of Kentucky: "Loo-ee-ville" or "Loo-iss-ville"?

Now how much would you bet that you know the correct answer? $5? $50? $500?

Most people are pretty confident they know how to pronounce Louisville correctly, but they are answering the wrong question. I asked how you pronounced the capital of Kentucky. What you really need to know is "what is the capital of Kentucky?" This happens all the time. I have a friend who plays Trivial Pursuit with a twist. He answers the question and gives a ranking as to how certain he is in his answer. He found that most people he plays with are overconfident in their knowledge.

Now the way this was concretized to me was over dinner with a group of friends who are all fans of Ayn Rand. We ended up talking about suicide which lead to the question: Does Atlas Shrugged contain a story of a vengeful suicide by a spurned lover motivated solely by the desire to cause the "beloved" pain -- and if so, what is it? See Diana's post for more details.

Since I had JUST read the passage about overconfidence, I was probably more objective about how certain I was and thought to myself that I was only about 50-60% sure of my recollection. (I was 100% wrong.) A few other people at dinner were more confident and lost $5 to their overconfidence.

This dramatized and concretized overconfidence for me. I'm not certain where to take this, but it is definitely interesting.