Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to head into the old vault for a classic
Speaker 1: episode of the show. This one originally aired February and
Speaker 1: it's part two of our series about overconfidence. All right,
Speaker 1: let's let's just dive right into it. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back with part two of our discussion of
Speaker 1: over confidence. That's right. If you did not listen to
Speaker 1: the previous episode, do go back and listen to that episode,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna lay the ground work. We're going to
Speaker 1: discuss over confidence in hubrists and mythology in human histories,
Speaker 1: and then get into the psychology of it. What various
Speaker 1: psychological studies have revealed and continue to reveal about the
Speaker 1: nature of over confidence and how we can divide this
Speaker 1: sort of a morphous concept of over confidence out into
Speaker 1: categories that can be more easily studied and understood. That's
Speaker 1: right now. In the last episode, One of the main
Speaker 1: things we talked about was this huge new review of
Speaker 1: the scientific literature on something known as the better than
Speaker 1: average effect, which is the tendency for people to rate
Speaker 1: themselves as better than average with respect to their peers
Speaker 1: on all kinds of stuff. One classic example is that
Speaker 1: something like nine three percent of people think they're a
Speaker 1: better than average driver. So if you're if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this as you drive, eyes back on the road,
Speaker 1: and make sure you use this turn signals, turn signals, stays,
Speaker 1: save lives, turn signals. Let other drivers and pedestrians know
Speaker 1: what you intend to do. Even if you think you're
Speaker 1: a great driver, drive like you're less good than you are,
Speaker 1: and it will make you a better driver. Drive like
Speaker 1: you can't see all the other cars and pedestrians around you,
Speaker 1: because sometimes you cannot drive like you're driving a murder weapon,
Speaker 1: because potentially you are. It's quite true, all right now.
Speaker 1: One of the things we talked about in the last
Speaker 1: episode was a paper from seventeen by Don Amore and
Speaker 1: Derek Schatz called The Three Faces of Overconfidence, which which
Speaker 1: actually broke over confidence down into three distinct categories of
Speaker 1: of bias or misperception, and uh. And we we talked
Speaker 1: about those a little bit last time. We're going to
Speaker 1: be exploring more of what that paper had to say,
Speaker 1: and it's critiques of overconfidence research specifically with reference to
Speaker 1: these three types of overconfidence, and as a brief refresher,
Speaker 1: the three types are overestimation, overplacement, and over precision. Overestimation
Speaker 1: is thinking that you're better than you are, and this
Speaker 1: would be with reference to some kind of, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: objective measure out in the world. So if you think
Speaker 1: that you are taller than you are, you know, if
Speaker 1: you think that you can jump higher than you can,
Speaker 1: if you think that you would get a better score
Speaker 1: on a test than you actually could, that's overestimation. The
Speaker 1: next one, over placement, is similar, but instead it's comparing
Speaker 1: yourself with other people. So the better than average effect
Speaker 1: would be an example of overplacement. It's, you know, thinking
Speaker 1: you are better than average compared to your peers at
Speaker 1: some task. Or it would be thinking that you know
Speaker 1: that you work harder than other people, or thinking that
Speaker 1: you are smarter than other people. Of course, with the if,
Speaker 1: it's over confidence meaning that those are not actually accurate assessments.
Speaker 1: And then finally the other one would be over precision,
Speaker 1: which is being too sure that you know the truth. Again,
Speaker 1: this this might be called epistemic over confidence. It's just
Speaker 1: being too certain that your beliefs are correct. Now, to
Speaker 1: get into more in chats is paper from. One of
Speaker 1: the questions that they address is what actually drives some
Speaker 1: of these different effects as as they are manifested. So
Speaker 1: they start with overestimation. What causes us to say I
Speaker 1: think we would get a better score on a test
Speaker 1: than we do, to think we have more money in
Speaker 1: the bank than we do. A common answer that people
Speaker 1: give to this is the idea of wishful thinking. It
Speaker 1: would feel good if this were true, therefore I believe
Speaker 1: it right. Uh. The authors don't think that this explanation
Speaker 1: is very plausible, and they offer several problems with it,
Speaker 1: and we can interrogate these, maybe disagree with them as
Speaker 1: we go on. But first of all, they say, you know,
Speaker 1: self delusion is demonstrably maladaptive. For example, a tendency toward
Speaker 1: wishful thinking about the safety of kissing sharks so with
Speaker 1: tongue is not a trait that the environment will tend
Speaker 1: to select For people overconfident about their academic abilities, will
Speaker 1: tend not to study and actually do worse. People who
Speaker 1: believe themselves invulnerable will take risks that sometimes get them killed.
Speaker 1: This might seem obvious, but there is actually plenty of
Speaker 1: research on this. I mean, people who are overconfident about
Speaker 1: their abilities do face a lot of downsides when those
Speaker 1: abilities are put to the test. Yeah, I mean, one
Speaker 1: example from literature that comes to mine is that of Macbeth,
Speaker 1: who believes himself protected by prophecy um and then of
Speaker 1: course uh snuffs it because exactly. But then again, I think, okay,
Speaker 1: so it is true that these people will face a
Speaker 1: lot of downside, But then again, people do engage in
Speaker 1: self destructive, self deluded behavior all the time. This is
Speaker 1: a common feature of human life. Yeah, I mean, for instance,
Speaker 1: we were just recently talking about the placebo effect on
Speaker 1: our movie episode where we talked about the fly and
Speaker 1: about the possibility that the placebo effect is basically due
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, this innate tendency towards self delusion
Speaker 1: that may very well be adaptive in at least in
Speaker 1: this scenario where yeah, we we benefit from being able
Speaker 1: to believe something is going to work and and uh
Speaker 1: and and and experiencing at least a small physical benefit
Speaker 1: from it, like a small curative benefit from it. And
Speaker 1: then um, you know, I also can't help but think that,
Speaker 1: you know, self delusion entails far more than just over confidence.
Speaker 1: It also entails all manner of paranoia. And there is
Speaker 1: a strong case for the adaptive nature of say, making
Speaker 1: a type one error in cognition false positive, the belief
Speaker 1: that the rustle in the tall grass is that of
Speaker 1: a tiger when it's not, because if you make the
Speaker 1: type two uh are you're more likely to be eaten
Speaker 1: by the tiger? Right? Right? Yeah, having accurate information about
Speaker 1: the world is actually very useful, and having inaccurate information
Speaker 1: can kill you. Yeah, but but I'm not so much
Speaker 1: you know, trying to disagree with the maladaptive self delusion
Speaker 1: argument that we mentioned earlier, but but rather, you know,
Speaker 1: to point out that the human experiences is rife with
Speaker 1: self delusions. So might a dash of overconfidence, even in
Speaker 1: the form of overestimation, served to balance out this alchemy
Speaker 1: of you know, of our perception of reality. For example,
Speaker 1: so you have a karaoke singer, and granted karaoke is
Speaker 1: very low stakes, but you could involve of social embarrassment,
Speaker 1: which you could fear would lead to ostracism, and that's
Speaker 1: actually one of the most powerful negative motivators on human behavior, right.
Speaker 1: But again, karaoke is also one of these things where
Speaker 1: like sometimes it's cool to do it badly. So this
Speaker 1: is not a perfect example, but so you have a
Speaker 1: kara karaoke singer that imbibes in a little liquid courage
Speaker 1: before taking the microphone, as most karaoke participants are are
Speaker 1: are wont to do. Uh, but yeah, they get a
Speaker 1: little liquid courage because they know they don't have the
Speaker 1: greatest voice in the world. And then they feel a
Speaker 1: little awkward getting up there, but but they know that
Speaker 1: a little bit of booze induced over confidence might help matters.
Speaker 1: I think you're exactly right there, and this this is
Speaker 1: funny to start here because I think while the authors
Speaker 1: make tons of good points, this is one of the
Speaker 1: ones they make that I might disagree with the most.
Speaker 1: I think that there are antagonistic adaptations in human behavior.
Speaker 1: One pressure might favor having an accurate picture of the world,
Speaker 1: assessing things in a clear and accurate way, while a
Speaker 1: cross pressure favor self deception, especially self deception in the
Speaker 1: form of overconfidence. For example, you might be more likely
Speaker 1: to survive if you have accurate assessments of your own abilities,
Speaker 1: but you might be more likely to take big risks
Speaker 1: with potentially big rewards if you overestimate your abilities or
Speaker 1: self delusional. Over confidence could be adaptive because it helps
Speaker 1: us persuade or even deceive other people about our worth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You ultimately you have to you have to believe in
Speaker 1: yourself if you know other people are not going to
Speaker 1: believe in you for you, right right. I mean we
Speaker 1: we talked in the last episode about how it's probably
Speaker 1: not a coincidence that you really often notice over confidence
Speaker 1: in people who occupy high status leadership roles. How they
Speaker 1: get there. I mean, it's not hard to imagine the
Speaker 1: overconfidence help to them get to that point. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's uh sometime it's a fun, sometimes terrifying exercise to
Speaker 1: like if you if you engage with people like this
Speaker 1: and then when you realize, oh, they're just really overconfidence.
Speaker 1: They don't they're they're not to say they're not skilled,
Speaker 1: but when you realize unless they're not, sometimes they're not.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you really you realize, oh, there there is
Speaker 1: this gap between ability and uh and and and what
Speaker 1: they're they're saying they're going to deliver on, or what
Speaker 1: they are estimating the future will consist of. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it is kind of shocking how often in life you
Speaker 1: will suddenly come to a realization that, you know, the
Speaker 1: boss or the leader or whatever's main skill is b
Speaker 1: essing like that they can just go out there and
Speaker 1: wing it in a way that you would be too
Speaker 1: timid and reserve to do. Right now, this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, accurate assessments playing into our our own abilities,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think of the film Butch casting
Speaker 1: the Sundance Kid in this scenario, because it really as
Speaker 1: it relates to two specific points in the film. One
Speaker 1: is the whole would you make that jump if you
Speaker 1: didn't have to scenario where they're being tracked, they're being hunted,
Speaker 1: and they've come to this, uh, this this cliff overlooking
Speaker 1: this river, and they realize that if they jump, if
Speaker 1: they jump off this cliff and they land in that
Speaker 1: river and they don't die, they'll get away because the
Speaker 1: stakes are such that those pursuing them will not following them.
Speaker 1: They will not make that jump if they don't need to.
Speaker 1: Um So, so so there's there's that, and then at
Speaker 1: the very end there's kind of a going out the
Speaker 1: old fashioned way guns ablazing scenario where they're cornered, they're
Speaker 1: going to slowly be killed and they decided to just
Speaker 1: go for it, to just bust out shooting and just fight. Right. So,
Speaker 1: so the incentives, like the evolutionary incentives on a brain
Speaker 1: generating accurate pictures of the world versus self deluded over confidence,
Speaker 1: those could very well be just the contrast between a
Speaker 1: low risk, low reward strategy versus a high risk, high
Speaker 1: reward strike, right, yeah, so yeah, the first example definitely
Speaker 1: high risk, high reward, Like it was pretty much their
Speaker 1: only their best option for survival at that point, and
Speaker 1: they took it, and in the film they survive. At
Speaker 1: the end of the film, it's pretty much implied that
Speaker 1: they die, but but at the same time, it's it
Speaker 1: still seems to be their best option, if not their
Speaker 1: best option for surviving. It's kind of at least like
Speaker 1: the psychological best option. You know, we're we're gonna stay
Speaker 1: in here and die like rats, or are we gonna
Speaker 1: you know, just burst out there and uh, you know
Speaker 1: die like heroes in a film that is named after them.
Speaker 1: You know, man, that's a great movie. I want to
Speaker 1: go back, and why I haven't seen it? I remember
Speaker 1: except the end. I mean, the ending is kind of
Speaker 1: a downer, but uh but yeah, it's it's it's surprisingly
Speaker 1: sweet for a for a violent outlaw movie. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a good one. And you know, I mentioned him Inbeth
Speaker 1: earlier in the whole idea of you know, draping himself
Speaker 1: in prophecy and using that to to to to pump
Speaker 1: himself up. But that doesn't bring up bring to mind
Speaker 1: the rule of religion and all of this, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly a lot of the things that religion
Speaker 1: can do to your estimation of ability or you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you can revolve around you know, the survivability
Speaker 1: of the soul for example, pull you know, and like
Speaker 1: what will happen if I act a certain way in life? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think there could possibly be cross pressures going
Speaker 1: the same way with that, I mean that that there
Speaker 1: are some evolutionary drawbacks and some some advantages to it, right.
Speaker 1: And then of course that's not to say that religious motivations, uh,
Speaker 1: you know exist free of social of course. I guess
Speaker 1: you know, there's going to be a rich interplay between
Speaker 1: those and that's you know, that's something that comes up,
Speaker 1: for instance, in UM when you look at studies of say,
Speaker 1: suicide bombers. You know where on one hand, you can
Speaker 1: look at it and just go with the simple scenario
Speaker 1: of oh, here's a person who believes that if they
Speaker 1: die doing this act then they'll be rewarded in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: But then behind that there's a whole social scenario as
Speaker 1: well of other humans, you know, telling them that this
Speaker 1: is the thing to do, etcetera. Yeah, motivations are are
Speaker 1: a rich stew of many different influences. I mean it's
Speaker 1: usually hard to nail down a single inciting incident or
Speaker 1: cause that lead people down a path in life. And
Speaker 1: in fact, I think a lot of times even when
Speaker 1: people do that with themselves and say this was the
Speaker 1: reason I became or whatever I did whatever, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times they're over some they're they're wrong
Speaker 1: about themselves. So basically self delusion, we're all just houses
Speaker 1: of cards. I'm just ready to be knocked down at
Speaker 1: any point. Well, but there's another way of putting it. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing you and I could be getting wrong here
Speaker 1: is if we're talking properly about self delusion or some
Speaker 1: other type of bias or like misperception in the brain,
Speaker 1: because the authors here they're saying, okay, self delusion specifically,
Speaker 1: maybe self delusion implies that there's there's a sort of
Speaker 1: transformation going on somewhere in the brain, like the brain
Speaker 1: gets accurate information about the world and then just somehow
Speaker 1: presents it to the conscious mind in a skewed way.
Speaker 1: The authors share think that, especially if you're talking about
Speaker 1: wishful thinking, is the brand of self delusion, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: getting false perceptions about the world in or to feel better.
Speaker 1: They think that doesn't really work from a like unconscious
Speaker 1: mind to conscious mind model, because emotions and moods also
Speaker 1: seem to emerge from the unconscious mind, not from the
Speaker 1: conscious mind. But then there's another thing they go to,
Speaker 1: which is that they argue the empirical evidence for true
Speaker 1: self deception in overestimation it's actually kind of weak and
Speaker 1: kind of mixed. Why would this be, Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: they say, it's hard to separate true self deception from
Speaker 1: attempts to deceive others, including the researchers. So how can
Speaker 1: you tell when somebody truly overestimates their own traits or
Speaker 1: abilities versus they just tell you that they think their
Speaker 1: traits or abilities are better than they are. In a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, both would manifest equally as outward over confidence. Now,
Speaker 1: you can come up with some methodologies and some tests
Speaker 1: to try to get around this, Like you can make
Speaker 1: people bet sums of money that would where the outcome
Speaker 1: of the bet would be dependent on how good they
Speaker 1: actually are at a task or something. But in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, they say, it's hard to tell the
Speaker 1: difference between true self deception and just attempts to deceive
Speaker 1: other people. Another thing they point out is that you
Speaker 1: don't actually have to be deceiving yourself to overestimate your abilities.
Speaker 1: You could be genuinely completely ignorant of the fact that
Speaker 1: you're not as good as you think you are. Uh.
Speaker 1: And here's one place that the famous Dunning Krueger effect
Speaker 1: comes in. Now you may have heard about the Dunning
Speaker 1: Krueger effect, but very short sketch on it. Of course,
Speaker 1: overlaps with a lot of what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: Participants less skilled in a task or subject area can
Speaker 1: be prone to show even greater overestimation of their abilities
Speaker 1: in that skill or subject area. So with some skills,
Speaker 1: the worst you are, the more you overestimate your awesomeness. Now,
Speaker 1: why why on earth would this be Well, the authors
Speaker 1: here mentioned this could just simply come from your low
Speaker 1: skills providing you with a or frame of reference. You
Speaker 1: don't know enough about this task or skill or subject
Speaker 1: area to even understand how much you don't know, So,
Speaker 1: like the Dunning Kruger effect would show not self deception
Speaker 1: but genuine ignorance. You lack enough information to understand how
Speaker 1: bad you're failing. Like I think a good example of
Speaker 1: this is you know, you read you you read one
Speaker 1: theory about some phenomena and uh, and it can be
Speaker 1: rather convincing. It can be so convincing that you think, well,
Speaker 1: this is it. It made a great case. But if
Speaker 1: you don't, if if you don't actually look at some
Speaker 1: of the other theories out there or look at uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of if you look at writings
Speaker 1: or or pieces that actually compare them, or do some
Speaker 1: sort of meta analysis, then you don't really have a
Speaker 1: proper frame of reference or even like sort of I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even say like nothing like a perfect frame of reference,
Speaker 1: but even say like a healthy frame of reference. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can go so like, you read one article about
Speaker 1: a subject and then you're an expert, and then you
Speaker 1: start reading more and you realize like, oh wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you know there's so much I don't understand that your
Speaker 1: estimation of your own expertise drops sharply after Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you might realize, oh, well, there are other theories, or
Speaker 1: you might realize, oh well, this was just one person's
Speaker 1: summary of this particular theory. And oh and then on
Speaker 1: top of that, perhaps they had a particular acts to
Speaker 1: grind in writing it, etcetera. Yeah, that that's a great example.
Speaker 1: I mean not to say that you should doubt everything
Speaker 1: you read, but I mean, yeah, you should have. You
Speaker 1: should you should have healthy doubt, not you know, not denialism,
Speaker 1: but but you know, just be aware that you don't
Speaker 1: know everything, and you should be especially suspicious when you
Speaker 1: have dipped your toes into a subject and now feel
Speaker 1: that you fully understand it. And we say that as
Speaker 1: a professional toe dippers. Uh. Now, finally they point out
Speaker 1: that the empirical evidence for wishful thinking itself in general
Speaker 1: as a psychological phenomenon. They say, this is not actually strong. Uh,
Speaker 1: if if there were strong evidence for wishful thinking. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be the case that more desirable outcomes would be
Speaker 1: more strongly believed, And they say, no, studies that try
Speaker 1: to test this out do not find this to be
Speaker 1: the case. It's not the case that the more you
Speaker 1: want something, the more you believe it to be true.
Speaker 1: And there are only a few types of scenarios where
Speaker 1: there's any evidence of this at all, such as scenarios
Speaker 1: where all outcomes are equally likely, like a dice roll
Speaker 1: or something. Now that is interesting to think of in
Speaker 1: terms of dungeons and dragons, were frequently one is either
Speaker 1: making an attack or doing some sort of attempting some
Speaker 1: sort of act that requires a skill check. And I
Speaker 1: find myself doing this. You'll, you go up there and
Speaker 1: you begin to explain what your character is going to do,
Speaker 1: as if you hit that natural twenty that's kind of
Speaker 1: the Yeah. So I find myself engaging in a lot
Speaker 1: of that level of overconfidence with my character because ultimately
Speaker 1: it all comes down to the roll of the dice,
Speaker 1: you know, unless I'm trying to you know, leap off
Speaker 1: of the democ organ's head or something that is going
Speaker 1: to be extremely difficult because they're going to be additional
Speaker 1: numerical you know values. Uh, you know added is attracted
Speaker 1: from the attempt. You know, ultimately it's still gonna be
Speaker 1: one to twenty one being h you know, a pretty
Speaker 1: much complete fail. Uh. You know that's gonna be the
Speaker 1: one where you slip and stab yourself with your own sword,
Speaker 1: or it's gonna be that natural twenty which is going
Speaker 1: to be you know, the wonder hit where you do
Speaker 1: extra damage. That is a fantastic example. I I was
Speaker 1: trying to think of cases where I thought I really
Speaker 1: did engage in wishful thinking, and I couldn't think. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I do sometimes, but yeah, they say it's not
Speaker 1: actually as common as people think it is. And here's
Speaker 1: maybe one case. I think in Dungeons and Dragons, I
Speaker 1: have yet to meet a player or be a player
Speaker 1: that does not engage in will wish will thinking. Every
Speaker 1: time you roll the dice, like nobody, nobody rolls that
Speaker 1: dice and it says, all right, this is how I'm
Speaker 1: gonna fall off this table or this is how I'm
Speaker 1: going to fall into the next trap, and you know,
Speaker 1: and skewer myself on a stake. No, we want the
Speaker 1: best outcome and we we have it in our mind
Speaker 1: before the dice puts this in our place. Now, another
Speaker 1: thing that the authors here bring up is that overestimation itself.
Speaker 1: Remember again, that's just thinking that you are better than
Speaker 1: you are in some way in terms of abilities or
Speaker 1: traits or something. Um that this actually has a mixed
Speaker 1: evidential record. It's not always the case that we overestimate
Speaker 1: ourselves on all qualities or tasks. It's more the case
Speaker 1: for some things in particular. And they give a couple
Speaker 1: of examples of things where there really is a ton
Speaker 1: of evidence for consistent overestimation. One is something you brought
Speaker 1: up in the last episode, Robert, the planning fallacy. There
Speaker 1: is really good evidence that people consistently overestimate how fast
Speaker 1: they'll be able to get things done or complete a
Speaker 1: project of some kind. And this is especially true if
Speaker 1: the project is difficult and novel. So like, if I
Speaker 1: I try to, you know, I put together some complex
Speaker 1: thing for you to do that's hard and you've never
Speaker 1: done it before, you are really likely to massively underestimate
Speaker 1: how much time it's going to take you. Right if
Speaker 1: you're like, well, you know, I'm not a handyman, but
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna install this sink myself and then
Speaker 1: you watch a weekend just vanish. Yeah, I know that feeling.
Speaker 1: Another one that they site is the illusion of control.
Speaker 1: People pretty consistently overestimate how much control they, well they
Speaker 1: will have over future outcomes, even things that that they
Speaker 1: should understand are basically random. Right. You see this financially
Speaker 1: in business wise a lot of times where someone will
Speaker 1: have they think they have a clear idea of like
Speaker 1: how things are going to flow, but they're they're just
Speaker 1: not taking into account all the factors they cannot control,
Speaker 1: and say the economy or or or or just the
Speaker 1: industry that they're a part of. But they're kind of
Speaker 1: they're acting, they're making choices based on sort of like
Speaker 1: a not even a best case scenario, but sort of
Speaker 1: like a standard scenario. You know, Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: know what you mean. Like they're they're not counting on
Speaker 1: the storm, and they're also not counting on the wind
Speaker 1: to completely die away, and that's how they're basing, you know,
Speaker 1: their their estimate of how long it's going to take
Speaker 1: to sail across the sea. Oh yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: that's another thing, like we there's actually a name for this.
Speaker 1: I've forgotten it at the moment, but maybe I'll call
Speaker 1: it to mind in a second. But uh, it's the
Speaker 1: the assumption that the future will be like the present.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's called the continuation fallacy or um. But now
Speaker 1: there's one more thing that they bring up with respect
Speaker 1: to overestimation specifically, uh, and this is a standard finding
Speaker 1: that applies to a lot of the research on overestimation.
Speaker 1: It's called the hard easy distinction or the hard easy effect.
Speaker 1: And UH, this one is interesting because we'll see some
Speaker 1: variations with it in other types of overconfidence. But it
Speaker 1: goes like this, we are more likely to overestimate our
Speaker 1: abilities on hard tasks and underestimate our abilities on easy ones.
Speaker 1: So again, like the hard project comes up with the
Speaker 1: planning foul. See, you massively underestimate how much time it's
Speaker 1: going to take you to do that hard, complex novel thing,
Speaker 1: but then you might overestimate how much time it's going
Speaker 1: to take you to do something that's a common easy task.
Speaker 1: I guess that the main example that's coming to mind
Speaker 1: on this one would be the scenario where driving across
Speaker 1: town are going to a particular destination takes less time
Speaker 1: than you think it will and then you show up
Speaker 1: like fifteen minutes early yea or or worse yeah. And
Speaker 1: the authors here have some explanations for how exactly this
Speaker 1: is working that we'll get to an abid who we
Speaker 1: take a break, Yes, we should, and when we come
Speaker 1: back we will continue our journey through over confidence. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. All right. So we've been talking about this
Speaker 1: paper about over confidence, but the three types of overconfidence
Speaker 1: by shots and more. We were just talking about overestimation,
Speaker 1: the belief that you're better than you are, especially with
Speaker 1: respect to some kind of objective measure or independent measure.
Speaker 1: And so we want to move on to the next
Speaker 1: type of overconfidence they talk about, which is over placement.
Speaker 1: And again this is different from overestimation because this is
Speaker 1: thinking that you're better than you are with respect to
Speaker 1: other people and judging yourself compared to others. Now, the
Speaker 1: authors have some methodological critiques of some of the literature here,
Speaker 1: but they acknowledge there's a lot of evidence for overplacement,
Speaker 1: citing the better than average effect in all its beastly forms,
Speaker 1: Like in the other paper that we talked about that
Speaker 1: was you know, recently found to be extremely robust. Uh
Speaker 1: they've got some quibbles about methodology and some of these
Speaker 1: studies like using ambiguous scales or measures. Robert, you were talking,
Speaker 1: I think in the last episode about you know how
Speaker 1: some of these types of things like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: how people rate themselves in terms of attractiveness or intelligence
Speaker 1: or something. These can of course suffer from ambiguous criteria,
Speaker 1: right yeah, or sometimes just straight up unfair criteria, racist criteria, um,
Speaker 1: misogynistic criteria, etcetera. Well, yeah, it absolutely has all those
Speaker 1: negative effects. I mean, I think overplacement is like it's
Speaker 1: behind a lot of the worst types of prejudices that
Speaker 1: make themselves known. But even if you're just like looking
Speaker 1: at what is the quality you're trying to measure, you know,
Speaker 1: attractiveness or something like that, that there's usually not like
Speaker 1: a way of rating that is it's all based on
Speaker 1: these kind of ambiguous subjective judgments. One great example of
Speaker 1: this is something that we've brought up several times already,
Speaker 1: like the driving example. So Vinson in one did a
Speaker 1: study where he discovered that nine percent of American drivers
Speaker 1: rated themselves above the median and driving ability. Obviously, whatever
Speaker 1: criterion you use, it's impossible for to be above the media,
Speaker 1: and it would have to be you know, like, um,
Speaker 1: the majority can be above average, but the majority cannot
Speaker 1: be above the median. And the authors point out this
Speaker 1: would be more impressive if it were more specific, because
Speaker 1: due to this problem with like ambiguous scales or measures,
Speaker 1: anybody could technically have their own definition of what makes
Speaker 1: a good drive. Ever, so you could be answering that
Speaker 1: thinking like, well, there are things that I do well
Speaker 1: when I drive, and maybe they're different from what somebody
Speaker 1: else thinks that they do well when they drive, and
Speaker 1: that's their criterion, right, I mean, your your definition of
Speaker 1: being a good driver could just be I did not
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't in a wreck on the way
Speaker 1: to work this morning, you know. Or or it could
Speaker 1: be I get the places I need to go fast, yeah,
Speaker 1: like in those are those are are definitely you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the same vision of good driving. Or I
Speaker 1: look really cool when I do it, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's another thing they bring up which is interesting, which
Speaker 1: is the role of self selection in increasing the apparent
Speaker 1: prevalence of overconfidence in the real world. So an example
Speaker 1: would be like this, On average, more overconfident people are
Speaker 1: likely to apply for jobs just sort of by definition, right,
Speaker 1: more overconfident people are likely to start businesses, to run
Speaker 1: for office, So we're we're exposed to more of these people,
Speaker 1: and this could lead to us thinking that their confidence
Speaker 1: level is more represented in the general population than it
Speaker 1: actually is. Oh yeah, you turn onto television. It's what
Speaker 1: it's almost exclusively overly confident people. That's true. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: if you just look at like business leadership, politics, celebrities,
Speaker 1: all this, you're gonna see. I think you will see
Speaker 1: in general way more over confidence than you just will
Speaker 1: talking to your friends and relatives and co workers. Now
Speaker 1: here's a really interesting thing. Remember we talked about the
Speaker 1: hard easy effect or the easy heart effect with overestimation,
Speaker 1: where people tend to overestimate their abilities on hard jobs
Speaker 1: and underestimate their abilities on easy jobs. Apparently, for overplacement,
Speaker 1: it's there's also an easy heart effect, but it's in
Speaker 1: the exact opposite direction. With overplacement, you overplace yourselves relative
Speaker 1: We overplace ourselves relative to others on easy, common tasks
Speaker 1: and underplace our selves relative to others on difficult, unusual,
Speaker 1: or rare ones. So again, what would be some examples
Speaker 1: of this? Uh, you think you're in the ninety percentile
Speaker 1: of drivers, but really you're in the fort This is
Speaker 1: an easy, common task. On the other hand, people think
Speaker 1: that they are less likely than others to win difficult competitions. Uh.
Speaker 1: Studies show that when there's a teacher that decides to
Speaker 1: make an exam harder and graded on a curve, students
Speaker 1: expect their grades to be worse than others, even when
Speaker 1: there's common knowledge that there will be a curve, So
Speaker 1: as the test gets harder, students perceived that they will
Speaker 1: do worse relative to other classmates. That's kind of interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: They point out that people believe they are worse jugglers
Speaker 1: than other people. They believe that they are less likely
Speaker 1: to win the lottery than other people. Again a difficult,
Speaker 1: rare thing, uh, And that they here's here's a very
Speaker 1: interesting version. Just in terms of ages. People believe they
Speaker 1: are less likely than other people to of past one hundred,
Speaker 1: But they also think they're more likely than other people
Speaker 1: to live past seventy Interesting. Well, of course, both of
Speaker 1: those kind of depends on where you are in the
Speaker 1: age spectrum when you're making that estimation, you know, because
Speaker 1: you could be I mean, I mean, but apparently it's
Speaker 1: true of all age. Yeah, but also your quality of life, right,
Speaker 1: I mean for some people that prospect of living two hundred,
Speaker 1: depending on where you are healthwise, that might be terrifying.
Speaker 1: That might be it might be wishful thinking that you'll
Speaker 1: expire sooner than that. Uh, or it could be the
Speaker 1: other way around. You know. Um, what kind of explanations
Speaker 1: are they they're throwing out? Yeah, this was interesting? So yeah,
Speaker 1: why do we fail in opposite directions here? Depending on
Speaker 1: whether we're imagining our performance against objective measures versus relative
Speaker 1: to others and the author's site solutions from some of
Speaker 1: Moore's previously previous work with other authors, They write this quote.
Speaker 1: If people make any errors estimating how well they've done
Speaker 1: or will do, then it stands to reason they're more
Speaker 1: likely to over us to make a low score and
Speaker 1: more likely to underestimate a high score. That's the herd
Speaker 1: easy effect. As long as people have more uncertainty about
Speaker 1: other scores, they will tend to make even more regressive
Speaker 1: estimates of others than of self. The consequence would be
Speaker 1: that they overestimate others even more than themselves on difficult
Speaker 1: tasks and come to believe that they are worse than others.
Speaker 1: The opposite would hold true for easy tasks. People would
Speaker 1: underestimate others more than themselves and wind up believing that
Speaker 1: they are better than others. So that took me a
Speaker 1: minute to get my head around, but then I finally
Speaker 1: made sense of it. So when you're not sure how
Speaker 1: you will do it something, as we're always you know,
Speaker 1: not sure, there's a ton of uncertainty in life, or
Speaker 1: you're not sure how others will do they're simply more
Speaker 1: room for possibility to guess high if your performance is
Speaker 1: likely to be low, and more room to guess low
Speaker 1: if your performance is likely to be high. And this
Speaker 1: applies to both the self and other people. Since we
Speaker 1: know even less about other people than we do about ourselves,
Speaker 1: we're going to spend more time guessing wrong in these
Speaker 1: vast over and under zones for other people, depending on
Speaker 1: what type of task it is. Now we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about over precision from this two thousand seventeen study. Now,
Speaker 1: over precision again is that that's like having way more
Speaker 1: confidence than you should about what you believe to be true.
Speaker 1: So I could ask you, you know, I could ask
Speaker 1: you to answer a question that I could ask you
Speaker 1: how confident you are that your answer is correct. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the authors here right quote results routinely find that
Speaker 1: hit rates inside confidence intervals are below fifty percent, implying
Speaker 1: that people set their ranges too precisely, acting as if
Speaker 1: they're inappropriately confident that their beliefs are accurate. So if
Speaker 1: you take a quiz, you say you're more than confident
Speaker 1: on average about your answers, and you're actually more like
Speaker 1: fifty percent correct on average. This is something that's been
Speaker 1: found a bunch of times. It's quite clear that there's
Speaker 1: tons of over precision in human behavior. The authors have
Speaker 1: a few critiques about like common research paradigms that are
Speaker 1: used to study this. One example is they say, you know,
Speaker 1: it may be that normal people don't have a very
Speaker 1: solid understanding of how to use confidence intervals, so there
Speaker 1: have been other ways of trying to measure it. But however,
Speaker 1: the authors here believe that over precision is the most
Speaker 1: pervasive form of over confidence. You find it absolutely ever everywhere,
Speaker 1: even in experts talking about their own subject matter. I
Speaker 1: think that's come up on the show before that, I
Speaker 1: don't remember when. After this, the authors here turned to
Speaker 1: the question UH, a question we talked about a little before,
Speaker 1: could over confidence actually be useful? Like? How do why
Speaker 1: does it make sense for a brain to be over confident? Uh?
Speaker 1: And they talk about explanations in two main categories, intra
Speaker 1: personal and interpersonal. Uh. The authors generally think the evidence
Speaker 1: for the interpersonal explanations, the explanations and how it works
Speaker 1: on other people are stronger than the intra personal ones,
Speaker 1: though there could could be some good intrapersonal ones. For example,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe over confidence doesn't just make you feel good, it,
Speaker 1: as we hypothesized earlier, makes you more likely to take
Speaker 1: risks that can pay off big. Yeah. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: for instance, to come to to go to like a
Speaker 1: predator prey scenario, like one is reminded of the you know,
Speaker 1: how effective your average predator is. You know they are
Speaker 1: going to fail a lot. And granted, a leopard is
Speaker 1: not really subject to human you know, over confidence or
Speaker 1: under confidence, but certainly, if you if you if you
Speaker 1: look at a human scenario, if you look at human hunters,
Speaker 1: you know it, it's certainly a situation where it would
Speaker 1: pay to be overconfident. Uh, to a certain degree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you can find some analogies of confidence and
Speaker 1: over confidence and animals like, you know, how likely are
Speaker 1: you to try to take down prey animal that you're
Speaker 1: very unlikely to succeed against what you know would provide
Speaker 1: you with a lot of meat and energy of you
Speaker 1: do right. Of course, the reverse of the other side
Speaker 1: of that is that you would not need want to
Speaker 1: be so overconfident you were going after prey that was
Speaker 1: extremely likely to kill you if you try to bring
Speaker 1: it down. Right. But the authors here they do think
Speaker 1: that there's really good evidence for interpersonal benefits for over confidence.
Speaker 1: One example would be all the empirical evidence that already
Speaker 1: exists that just outwardly projecting confidence has all these benefits
Speaker 1: affecting how other people see us. There are studies that
Speaker 1: show that highly confident people are more persuasive, they're more influential,
Speaker 1: they're perceived as more sexually attractive, they tend to get
Speaker 1: promoted to positions of authority in groups um, and it's
Speaker 1: possible that confidence is actually more important than competence in
Speaker 1: determining who gets promoted to high status positions the author's
Speaker 1: right quote. While a preference for confident leaders may make
Speaker 1: sense if there's a correlation, however, weak between confidence and competence.
Speaker 1: There is real risk in selecting over confident leaders. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean because on one hand, you on a boss
Speaker 1: that can say, you know, do their job and and
Speaker 1: keep the company afloat and actually grow the business, etcetera,
Speaker 1: all the various catchphrases. But you also want a boss
Speaker 1: that you can kind of like you can you can
Speaker 1: you can trust that they're doing their thing like they
Speaker 1: seem confident. I guess they have their whole end of
Speaker 1: it figured out, and maybe I can focus on my
Speaker 1: own thing and not my own role in the company
Speaker 1: without you know, freaking out about what's going to happen tomorrow. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe in the business scenario we should pivot to talking
Speaker 1: about the Icarus paradox. Oh, all right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but we'll be right back with more.
Speaker 1: And we're back. So, Robert, you wanted to bring in
Speaker 1: a concept from the business world about overconfidence, the Icarus paradox. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm as surprised as maybe some of you are
Speaker 1: that I'm bringing in a something business wise, but it
Speaker 1: caught my attention when I was looking for things on
Speaker 1: for papers and so forth on over confidence, and also
Speaker 1: looking at Greek mythology and so forth, because yeah, the
Speaker 1: Acarus paradox invokes the story of Chris rather directly. And
Speaker 1: I think it also makes sense at another level because
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have gods uh so much anymore,
Speaker 1: Like these are not the driving commanding forces in our world.
Speaker 1: But we do have institutions, industries, global economies, and these
Speaker 1: are not unlike the concepts of the gods. Right. You know,
Speaker 1: they're sometimes lawful, sometimes chaotic entities that are likely to
Speaker 1: destroy you if you question their authority or if you
Speaker 1: you you turn against them. But anyway, I ran across
Speaker 1: this interesting concept of the Acress paradox um. It was
Speaker 1: devised by Canadian economist Danny Miller, and he points out
Speaker 1: that businesses are often like Icarus in the myth They
Speaker 1: start out confident and competent, they rise, but then they perish. Uh.
Speaker 1: The The irony, he writes, is that many of the
Speaker 1: most dramatically successful companies are prone to this exact sort
Speaker 1: of failure. Uh. And and it doesn't in the business sense,
Speaker 1: since businesses are sometimes less likely to they're more like
Speaker 1: the gods. You know, they're they have downfalls, but there
Speaker 1: may be they may very well be immortal. In some cases,
Speaker 1: they're still alive. They're just chained to a rock getting
Speaker 1: their liver pecked out by an eagle. Right for eternity.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they just declare multiple bankruptcies. Immortal declares
Speaker 1: bankruptcy is a different thing than than a corporation doing it.
Speaker 1: Um wait, what is that eagle. It's like a private
Speaker 1: equity eagle. Yeah, the private equity eagle. Um yeah. He
Speaker 1: mentioned several companies and discussing this, and and most of them,
Speaker 1: I think that he was discussing, are still around, like
Speaker 1: they have survived their downfalls. Uh but yeah, yeah. He
Speaker 1: writes that the irony is that that many of these
Speaker 1: dramatically successful companies are prone to these sort of failures.
Speaker 1: And what's more, the very factors that drive success, when
Speaker 1: taken to excess, are the factors that bring about decline.
Speaker 1: So I think this is an interesting model to look at,
Speaker 1: not only for the you know, because it's a just
Speaker 1: a take on it from the business world, but I
Speaker 1: think he can also serve as sort of a reflecting
Speaker 1: pool for some of the individual concepts that we've discussed
Speaker 1: already by placing them outside of the human psyche and
Speaker 1: looking at them in the context of an organization or
Speaker 1: a culture. So Miller wrote a book about this, The
Speaker 1: Acarious Paradox. How exceptional companies bring about their own downfall,
Speaker 1: New Lessons in the dynamics of corporate success, decline, and renewal.
Speaker 1: I know you love a long title like that, um,
Speaker 1: but I also I was mainly looking at his Business
Speaker 1: Horizons article that he wrote on the subject, and he
Speaker 1: summarizes a lot of the key points. So Miller identified
Speaker 1: four key to trajectories in the richest to rags business scenario.
Speaker 1: So the first one that he mentions is the focusing trajectory.
Speaker 1: In this trajectory, the craftsman becomes the tinker. Quote firms
Speaker 1: whose insular, technocratic monocultures alienate customers with perfect but irrelevant offerings.
Speaker 1: So I guess in a scenario would be, you know,
Speaker 1: the company that creates a really groundbreaking product, and then
Speaker 1: all they do is tinker with that concept. All they
Speaker 1: do is make adjustments to that concept, and eventually, like
Speaker 1: somebody else is going to create a better widget or
Speaker 1: a better you know, smartphone, or whatever the situation may be,
Speaker 1: somebody else is going to take some some you know,
Speaker 1: some wider swings next comes the venturing trajectory, and this
Speaker 1: is by which builders become imperialist. And this one, I
Speaker 1: think is the one that really has the smack of
Speaker 1: overconfidence to it. In this trajectory, the strategy of building
Speaker 1: feeds into over expansion. The goal of growth becomes grandeur,
Speaker 1: and an entrepreneurial culture becomes one of the gamesman. A
Speaker 1: divisionalized structure becomes fractured. And then on top of that
Speaker 1: there's the the inventing trajectory. This is where you go
Speaker 1: from pioneering to escapist. In this trajectory, innovation feeds into
Speaker 1: high tech escapism. Science for society transforms into technological utopianism.
Speaker 1: Research and development gives way to think tank culture, and
Speaker 1: the overall culture goes from organic to chaotic. And then
Speaker 1: he rounds us out with the decoupling trajectory from salesman
Speaker 1: to drifter quote. Finally, the decoupling trajectory transforms salesman organizations
Speaker 1: with unparalleled marketing skills, prominent brand names, and broad markets
Speaker 1: into aimless, bureaucratic drifters whose sales fetish obscures design issues
Speaker 1: and who produce a stale and disjointed line of me
Speaker 1: too offerings. Okay, so that's the company that's more based
Speaker 1: around marketing culture than around having a good product, right.
Speaker 1: You know, thinking about these trajectories kind of reminds me
Speaker 1: of the peaking in high school stereotype in life trajectories.
Speaker 1: It's a stereotype, but there is some truth to it.
Speaker 1: I think it's possible that too much success early on
Speaker 1: in life can kind of corrupt a person, and can
Speaker 1: kind of corrupt your work ethic, your ability to learn
Speaker 1: from mistakes and mature. It's important for people to experience
Speaker 1: both successes and failures early in life. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. It kind of comes act to what we
Speaker 1: talked about looking at considering Aristotle's uh summary of hubrists
Speaker 1: saying that the young and the rich were the most
Speaker 1: likely to engage in it, and the idea that perhaps
Speaker 1: in some scenarios, certainly there there are plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of very wealthy people who got there through defeat, like
Speaker 1: through learning the lessons of defeat. There are also examples
Speaker 1: of of people who have you know, arguably maybe you know,
Speaker 1: never suffered a true defeat like they have. They have
Speaker 1: remains sort of man children, uh, kind of failed upward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Um. And again we're dealing abroad
Speaker 1: tropes here. But you know, to some extent, I think
Speaker 1: it's useful to consider to consider these, um. But but
Speaker 1: also I feel like it does get too into the
Speaker 1: idea that that when we're dealing with the trajectory of
Speaker 1: of the human life, you know, um, part of it
Speaker 1: is perhaps comes down to just our ability to forecast
Speaker 1: the future, our ability to make long to engage in
Speaker 1: long term planning. Like we're as humans were generally not
Speaker 1: as good about that. We're certainly not good about planning
Speaker 1: beyond uh, you know, the scope of a human life.
Speaker 1: But but even like beyond the scope of a of
Speaker 1: a few years, we're better at the short term goals,
Speaker 1: and it's only with considerable effort that we we get
Speaker 1: better at considering long term goals. UM. So I think
Speaker 1: that's important to keep in mind. And all of this now,
Speaker 1: one thing that I think is also interesting in Miller's
Speaker 1: writings is that he talks, he talks a bit about
Speaker 1: over confidence, you know, as a symptom of underlying issues,
Speaker 1: you know, as opposed to being like an intrinsic quality. Uh.
Speaker 1: He writes, Unfortunately, configuration and synergy are usually attained at
Speaker 1: the cost of myopia. Stellar performers view the world through
Speaker 1: narrowing telescopes. One point of view takes over, one set
Speaker 1: of assumptions comes to dominate. The result is complacency and
Speaker 1: over confidence. And I think that plays into a lot
Speaker 1: of what what we've we spoke about earlier. You know, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make sense of it. Given that this
Speaker 1: out the word synergy in it, I shouldn't know what
Speaker 1: that means. By now I've purged it from my brain.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I see now, yeah, I'm looking at the quote. Okay,
Speaker 1: so no, this is this is a very standard thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have successfully hammered several nails in
Speaker 1: everything and you've still got the hammer, everything really starts
Speaker 1: to look like a nail, just because like, if you've
Speaker 1: had success with the strategy in the past, you don't switch.
Speaker 1: You just keep doing what you've done before, even if
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense anything like, yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: this is what works, this is what our product is,
Speaker 1: and this is what we're going to stick to. Um
Speaker 1: and and then yeah, he talks a good bit about
Speaker 1: to do about overconfidence as just a result of success
Speaker 1: writing quote failure teaches leaders valuable lessons, but good results
Speaker 1: only reinforce their preconceptions and tether them more firmly to
Speaker 1: their tried and true recipes. Success also makes managers overconfident,
Speaker 1: more prone to excess and neglect, and more given to
Speaker 1: shape strategies to reflect their own preferences rather than those
Speaker 1: of the cut stomers and uh, you know. He also
Speaker 1: points to one of the key aspects of the Acreus
Speaker 1: paradox being that overconfident, complacent executives extend the very factors
Speaker 1: that contributed to success to the point where they cause decline.
Speaker 1: So the thing that's working on, you know, the button
Speaker 1: we're pushing that is leading to success, let's just really
Speaker 1: jam that sucker. You're like the rat in the experiment
Speaker 1: that keeps pushing the cocaine button. Yeah. So he summarizes
Speaker 1: that there are really two aspects of the Acreus paradox.
Speaker 1: One is the success can lead to failure via the
Speaker 1: fostering of overconfidence and other factors. And then to the
Speaker 1: aspects of a business that brings success can also hasten
Speaker 1: failure or quote, the very causes of success, when extended,
Speaker 1: may become the causes of failure. And as far as
Speaker 1: you know ways to fight these transformations, because that's when
Speaker 1: one question I had, It's like, it's just just the trajectory,
Speaker 1: this is what happens. Like this is things can't just
Speaker 1: go up forever and a business cannot just exist, you know, indefinitely,
Speaker 1: Like things have to die, right, I mean, these corporations
Speaker 1: are not like you mortals, but they are given to
Speaker 1: life and death. They're not eternal. Uh and and he says,
Speaker 1: he argues that there are ways to fight these transformations.
Speaker 1: He suggests self reflection and intelligence gathering that guards against excess,
Speaker 1: over confidence and irrelevance. And this this I think matches
Speaker 1: up with what we've been talking about so far in
Speaker 1: the individual level, like like if you think you're you're gracious,
Speaker 1: like take a step back and and and uh and
Speaker 1: and think in the question whether you know you actually
Speaker 1: are to what extent you are? What else you could
Speaker 1: be doing to ensure that that that you were actually
Speaker 1: living up to your overestimation of self? If you think
Speaker 1: it's true about yourself, prove it, prove it to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say Miller was a is a is
Speaker 1: a really good writer about it. This because normally I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in business culture type stuff like this. But
Speaker 1: but he does a great job of like tying it
Speaker 1: back into just the basic human scenario as well. Like
Speaker 1: like he points out that excellence in any human endeavor,
Speaker 1: be at arts or sports or what have you, you know,
Speaker 1: it tends to come at a price. We cannot excel
Speaker 1: at everything. We have to make sacrifices and choose what's
Speaker 1: important in the middle of the road or a jack
Speaker 1: of all trades approach is not going to lead to greatness,
Speaker 1: you know, unless it's a story or some fable where
Speaker 1: greatness is just thrust upon somebody, you know, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: got to be some sort of a trade off there.
Speaker 1: And he says it goes for the individual, but it
Speaker 1: also applies to companies as well. You can only sharpen
Speaker 1: your blade if you first realize that it is dull
Speaker 1: and must be sharpened, you know, like if if you
Speaker 1: if you believe yourself eternally and infinitely sharp, you're not
Speaker 1: going to do the sharpening right. And it's interesting to
Speaker 1: come back and think about the individual level and think
Speaker 1: about over confidence in this scenario, like one like basic
Speaker 1: trophy mentions is the idea of, say, you know, the
Speaker 1: artists who neglects their family to focus on their art,
Speaker 1: or a business person that does the same thing. In
Speaker 1: those scenarios, it be you know, I guess you know,
Speaker 1: maybe in a warped sensor in a way that that
Speaker 1: that caters to their their prime focus. Might it be
Speaker 1: beneficial to just think, oh, I'm a good dad, I'm
Speaker 1: a good husband, even when they're not. But it enables
Speaker 1: them to then put all of their more of their
Speaker 1: resources anyway into the pursuit of the thing that ultimately
Speaker 1: matters to them, like you know, card, hard cold cash,
Speaker 1: or the pursuit of art. Yeah. Well, so to be clear,
Speaker 1: obviously this wouldn't mean that it's actually useful in being
Speaker 1: a good person have any good life, but it may
Speaker 1: very well be useful in focusing on whatever it is
Speaker 1: that really matters to you, to be overconfident about your
Speaker 1: your crappy efforts in other areas of life. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's entirely true. So it's it's yeah, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to compare the to the corporate version of this and
Speaker 1: the individual version of this. And certainly if you want
Speaker 1: to read more about this idea of the Chris paradox,
Speaker 1: uh I certainly recommend checking out more of his writings.
Speaker 1: So we have all these economic metaphors, like you know
Speaker 1: from Adam Smith, the Invisible Hand or whatever. I feel
Speaker 1: like we need an economic metaphor of the nemesis, like
Speaker 1: the Nemesis that is this force in the market that
Speaker 1: swoops into punish hubrist and overconfidence in business. Yeah, sometimes
Speaker 1: it seems like Nemesis is a little a little uh
Speaker 1: resistant to doing that. I don't know. I mean, part
Speaker 1: of it comes down again to the fact that that
Speaker 1: businesses and corporations are are are less mortal. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is funny that, uh, we've discussed a
Speaker 1: lot of these episodes how overconfidence can both lead to
Speaker 1: disaster and and negative outcomes, but can also in some
Speaker 1: cases be highly rewarded and be very lucrative. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm also remind talking about, you know, curbing
Speaker 1: overconfidence or the perception of overconfidence by making statements that
Speaker 1: cannot be put to the test. You of course see
Speaker 1: that a lot in the business world. You know that
Speaker 1: if you're saying you're the best card leadership in the galaxy,
Speaker 1: you know that you can get away with saying you're
Speaker 1: the best car dealership in town. Well then people can say, well,
Speaker 1: let's see your sales numbers, let's compare you to gems
Speaker 1: across town. No, even that would be easier to get
Speaker 1: away with. Like the one that would be hard to
Speaker 1: get away with is saying like we have the lowest
Speaker 1: prices in town. That's something like that. Then you're like,
Speaker 1: then you're stuck either that's true or that's not right.
Speaker 1: But then again, on a personal and the personal level,
Speaker 1: you know, you can have your mug that says world's
Speaker 1: greatest dad and nobody's gonna call you on that. What
Speaker 1: you can get out your dad ruler and measure me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So I think we've we've reached the end
Speaker 1: of our discussion here for the week on over confidence,
Speaker 1: but clearly there's a there's a lot of material here.
Speaker 1: It will be interesting to hear back from listeners because
Speaker 1: I think we all have some perspective on this. We
Speaker 1: all have experience with with over confidence in others, or
Speaker 1: certainly in over confidence in ourselves or the management of
Speaker 1: overconfidence in ourselves, and so we we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: everyone's thoughts on this. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check other episodes of stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: You can find them wherever you find your podcasts. If
Speaker 1: you go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com,
Speaker 1: that will lead you over to the I heart listing
Speaker 1: for our show, but you can find us anywhere and
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. Just make sure you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. That really helps us out huge Thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other to suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hey, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart
Speaker 1: Radio is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows by Trappers charges us
Speaker 1: by bur