Stupid Questions May 2015

Gondolinian

This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.

For example, I often think I am unusually cowardly or clumsy. Then I am totally surprised when I find after like 3 months of martial arts practice I am already better on both accounts than like 20-30% of the new starters, I was sure I will never ever get better at it, which roughly predicts average ability - but then why does it feel so unusually low?

I tend to think others are far more social than me. Then I start wondering, the fact that we are living in the same flat for 3 years now and never had a chat with a neighbor cannot be 100% my fault, it is 50% mine for not initiating such a conversation, but also 50% theirs as they too didn't. So it may actually be they are not that much more social than me.

That one is fundamental attribution error, I think. The real reason you didn't chat with neighbors is because you do not repeatedly bump into your neighbor in spontaneous circumstances on a regular basis - even very social people often don't chat with neighbors. It's more about circumstance than personality.

0MockTurtle11y

From these examples, I might guess that these mistakes fall into a variety of already existing categories, unlike something like the typical mind fallacy which tends to come down to just forgetting that other people may have different information, aims and thought patterns. Assuming you're different from others, and making systematic mistakes caused by this misconception, could be attributed to anything from low-self esteem (which is more to do with judgments of one's own mind, not necessarily a difference between one's mind and other people's), to the Fundamental Attribution Error (which could lead you to think people are different from you by failing to realise that you might have the same behaviour if you were in the same situation as they are, due to your current ignorance of what that situation is). Also, I don't know if there is a fallacy name for this, but regarding your second example, it sounds like the kind of mistake one makes when one forgets that other people are agents too. When all you can observe is your own mind, and the internal causes from your side which contribute to something in the outside world, it can be easy to forget to consider the other brains contributing to it. So, again, I'm not sure I would really put it down to something as precise as 'assuming one's mind is different from that of other people'. (Edit: The top comment in this post by Yvain seems to expand a little on what you're talking about.)