The scientific explanation of why adolescents know everything!

The central proposition in our argument is that incompetent individuals lack the metacognitive skills that enable them to tell how poorly they are performing, and as a result, they come to hold inflated views of their performance and ability…. the way to make incompetent individuals realize their own incompetence is to make them competent.
– Kruger and Dunning (1999): Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (pdf)

If you don’t know what you’re doing, then it’s quite likely that you don’t know that you don’t know. Kruger and Dunning (1999) did a set of interesting studies to show this to be the case. It explains why people with the least information and knowledge about a subject may feel the most confident to opine about it.

It kind of explains why adolescents know everything. I know that I knew everything when I was 12, and ever since then I’ve been knowing less and less.

Of course there are the less typical teenagers who don’t express the same unaware overconfidence. They can be extremely competent at a particular thing (let’s call it a domain), like writing to take a purely random example, yet are extremely unconfident of their ability.

Well Kruger and Dunning (1999) have an explanation for that too. Competent people tend to think everyone else is competent too, so they tend too underestimate their ability relative to everyone else.

Teachers can easily fall into a similar trap, because we will often, quite unintentionally and unconsciously, assume students know more than they do. This is one of the reasons peer-teaching works so well. Students are more likely to know where their peers are coming from, and what they know to begin with.

The NY Times’ Errol Morris has a great interview with one of this study’s authors.

I’ll end with the most wonderful concluding remarks, which really put this whole study in perspective:

In sum, we present this article as an exploration into why people tend to hold overly optimistic and miscalibrated views about themselves. We propose that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Although we feel we have done a competent job in making a strong case for this analysis, studying it empirically, and drawing out relevant implications, our thesis leaves us with one haunting worry that we cannot vanquish. That worry is that this article may contain faulty logic, method- ological errors, or poor communication. Let us assure our readers that to the extent this article is imperfect, it is not a sin we have committed knowingly.
Kruger and Dunning (1999)

Great Britain: a theocracy

The question of the role of the British monarchy always comes up when we talk about government types, so it’s nice to have a good, clear explanation. C.G.P. Grey explains the difference between the UK and Great Britain, and untangles the relationship between Britain and its former (and current) colonies.

It’s a fascinating piece of world history. Apparently, Britain is technically a theocracy, because all power is vested in God, and God’s delegate is the monarch. The state religion is Anglicanism.

Update

Grey also has a nice Venn Diagram.

Why Revolutions are so often a Surprise

Patrick Appel, at the Daily Dish, points out a (paper) in the journal Public Choice on why some major revolutions, like Egypt’s, so often come as a surprise to everyone.

Kuran (1989) posits that people tend to hide the fact that they are opposed to the government, especially repressive governments, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Then when some odd thing, which might seem unrelated to anything, happens, and the opposition to the government starts to look like it might be able to win, then everyone piles onto the bandwagon and a revolution occurs.

Unlikely though the revolution may have appeared in foresight, it will in hindsight appear inevitable because its occurrence exposes a panoply of previously hidden conflicts.
Kuran (1989) in Sparks and prairie fires: A theory of unanticipated political revolution.

Two weeks ago, practically everyone thought that Egypt was too stable, and Mubarak too entrenched to by ousted. A lot of commentators wished the Egyptian regime would go after Tunisia’s, but they pretty uniformly agreed that it was too strong.

at least 1 million people sang egypt's national anthem. Image and caption from Al Jazeera English (Feb 4th, 2011)

Student blog update

Well, I’ve made sure that everyone who wants one has a blog, and I’m still finding that the girls are the ones who’re updating them while the boys are not.

This is a small class, so we can’t have any statistical confidence in this observation, but for now at least, the trend continues.

I have also noticed that some of my bloggers are using their Personal World time to blog. I did not require this, or even suggest it, but I think this is great because they’re doing exactly the type of self-reflection that Personal World is intended to elicit.

Seeing Egypt in Ankh-Morpork

Anti-government protesters guard their barricade at the Kasr al-Nil bridge entrance into the square. They erected a complicated defense wall, strung a heavy electrical cable around 10 meters in front of the wall, and scattered lines of debris another 10 meters ahead of that to break up any attacks. (Image and caption from Al Jazeera English)

Following the ongoing convulsions in the Egyptian streets, I’m becoming more and more impressed by the research and thought that Terry Pratchett must have put into his novel Night Watch.

Anti-government protesters anticipating an attack man the barricade at the Kasr al-Nil bridge entrance into the square, where they had arranged complicated defense walls and stockpiled rocks to throw at pro-Mubarak men. (Image and caption from Al Jazeera English).

In typical Pratchett fashion, Night Watch has an amalgamation of influences, from fictional sources like Les Miserables, to historical events, like the Peterloo Massacre of 1819; however, the book follows a character immersed in the events that are remarkably parallel to what’s going on Egypt right now, especially with the Army trying to sit out events and things becoming somewhat medieval.

A man sells koshari to anti-government protesters for three pounds a cup (around 50 cents) inside the barricade at the Kasr al-Nil bridge entrance into Tahrir. (Image and caption from Al Jazeera English).

This is the first time I’ve been able to follow a revolution so closely, and it’s largely thanks to the volumes of raw reports streaming across the twitterverse, blogosphere and media websites. Pratchett gives us the wonderful characters that highlight the inherent conflict in the revolution: the police with their conflicting allegiances; the secret police that have to be dealt with; the idealists whose high hopes are bound to be dashed on the rocky shoals of human nature; and even down to the men selling food to the protesters behind the barricades.

Night Watch

I think I’m going to have to add this book to our reading list for next year.

At the end of Night Watch, the protesters win, and barricades come down when the old dictator is deposed. However, he’s replaced by a new dictator, who turns out to be just as bad as his predecessor. To paraphrase Pratchett, they’re called revolutions because they go round and round.

In the center of the square, anti-government protesters sat around campfires and talked - as they have for the past nine nights of demonstrations. (Image and caption from Al Jazeera English - Feb 4th, 2011)

What is “Natural”?

The Trans Alaska pipeline. The bend is due to the fact that it's sitting on a faultline. (Image via the USGS)

Back in 1991, Jay Anderson wrote and interesting article (free pdf) on how exactly to go about measuring “naturalness”.

After all, anywhere you go in this world, you’ll find it has been impacted by humans to some degree: agriculture in Brazil is affecting rainfall patterns in the remotest parts of the Amazon basin; and soot and anthropogenic chemicals gently, and subtly, contaminate the remotest Antarctic Ice Caps.

Anderson came up with three things to look at, but I think the two key are:

  1. how much things would change if you removed people,
  2. how many native species there are compared to how many their were in the past.

I think it’s important to try to at least better define what we mean by the word “natural” as we think about conserving the environment.

The World without Us by Alan Weisman

Anderson’s first point, about how much things would change if you removed the people, also brings to mind Alan Weisman’s book, The World without Us, which imagines what the world would look like if humans disappeared: what would happen to the cities and artifacts we leave behind?

Footprints in the sand of a small bay on the northeastern coast of Trinidad.

The Battle of Tahrir Square: Getting Medieval

Anti-government protesters prepare catapult that will fire flaming debris. Image from Al Jazeera English.
This ID is of an undercover security officer who tried to start a fight, he was apprehended but not hurt, however, he said he was paid to come and start trouble. (via Al Jazerra English)

Anti-government protesters, who’ve been occupying Tahrir Square for the last week, fought off pro-government protesters yesterday in a vicious turn to the insurrection in Egypt. The army stood out of the way, and the police were no where to be found, except for reports that some captured pro-government rioters had police identification cards on them.

Although there was some shooting, the battle was mostly fought with impromptu weapons: rocks, Molotov cocktails, knives, and swords. Then there were the horses, camels and catapults.

Pro-government camel-man charges photographer and anti-government protesters. (via the Daily Dish)

A number of horsemen were pulled off by the anti-government portesters and beaten (WARNING: the video below is quite vicious).

A main street leading into Tahrir Square by the Egyptian Museum was completely covered in broken rocks, which had been used as weapons. (via Al Jazeera English).

More pictures from Al Jazeera English’s Flickr page.

Taking ownership

Progressive approaches to education focus on students taking ownership of their education. It works in education, it works in economics, and it works in politics too.

Protesters are also working with students and the army to protect the priceless antiquities at the Egyptian Museum and the books at Bibliotecha Alexindrina.