Simple Logic

The difficulties of Self-assessment

"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision".--Bertrand Russell said this in 1951.

There are some studies that show that most people do not judge their own abilities all that accurately. I feel the most famous one showed that the MAJORITY of people thought they were "better than average" drivers. In fact, the 30% of drivers who were the worst were most convinced they were better than average.

Likewise, people who do poorly on logic and reasoning tests tend to rate their abilities much more highly than the people who really DO excel on those tests.

This reminds me of the categories of people someone talked about recently on Facebook 1) People who are dumb and know they are 2) People who are dumb but who do NOT think they are 3) People who are smart but don't think they are and 4) People who are smart but don't think they are.

I am sure we all know people who have an inflated idea of their own ability to do something. But do we see that about ourselves? Not so much. Whereas we are just as likely to underestimate ourselves in other areas.

Confused? Good. I am not. This is because I am less confused than most people. I think.

All of this leads us back to the lines of Scottish poet Robert Burns, who concludes one poem with:

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!