Book Reading #49 - Why We Make Mistakes

Title:
Chapter 10: We All Think We’re Above Average
Chapter 11: We’d Rather Wing It

Reference:
Hallinan, Joseph.  Why We Make Mistakes.  Random House, Inc.c New York.  2009

Summary:
Chapter 10: We All Think We’re Above Average

This chapter focuses on the human nature of overconfidence.  We tend to always overestimate our abilities and underestimate our failings.  Examples given are short putting greens in pro shops, people and health centers, credit cards, and diet programs.

Calibration is the extent to which one has an accurate self-representation.  A person with good calibration would be able to estimate within good bounds their ability.  Weather casters have good calibration concerning their weather predictions.  Hallinan points this in part to the strong feedback.  If they predict rain tomorrow, they will know whether or not their prediction was correct.

We have an illusion of control that we can manipulate our situation above our ability.  We also tend to think that more information is good.  This just leads us to be more confident in our choices.  It was shown that it does not always lead to better decision making.

Chapter 11: We’d Rather Wing It

This chapter discussed the case that we would rather do it on our own without instructions or guidance and in our own configured way than either follow instructions or think of a different way of solving the problem.  It explained how it has been concluded that experts have over 10,000 hours of time clocked on their activity of expertise.  This being the case, they have "libraries" of information in their head based upon patterns of their activity.  For example, chess players have a bank of valid positions of a chess board one could be in. 

Discussion:
I would agree that we as humans are very overconfident.  We often boast about things that we can or have accomplished only to find that this is not in fact the case.  A question I have is how this overconfidence affects our moral judgments.  Do we see ourselves like more of a good person being confident in our abilities and less like a good person if we feel (from a realistic point of view) that we cannot indeed do all we set out to do?

The idea of having a library of patterns in my head really interested me.  It gives good insight into the idea of practicing in order to hone certain skills in order to be able to recall them during experiential cognition to put it in terms of Donald Norman.