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bortels comments on Confession Thread: Mistakes as an aspiring rationalist - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: diegocaleiro 02 June 2015 06:10PM

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Comment author: bortels 03 June 2015 07:03:29AM 0 points [-]

Dunning-Kruger - learn it, fear it. So long as you are aware of that effect, and aware of your tendency to arrogance (hardly uncommon, especially among the educated), you are far less likely to have it be a significant issue. Just be vigilant.

I have similar issues - I find it helpful to dive deeply into things I am very inexperienced with, for a while; realizing there are huge branches of knowledge you may be no more educated in than a 6th grader is humbling, and freeing, and once you are comfortable saying "That? Oh, hell - I don't know much about that, and will never find the time to", you can let it go and relax a bit. Or - I have. (my favorites are microbiology, or advance mathematics. I fancy myself smart, but it is super easy to be so totally over my head it may as well be mystic sorcery they're talking about. Humbles you right out.)

Big chunks of this board do that as well, FWIW.