Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Daniel Kahneman on confidence

From Don't Blink! The Hazards of Confidence:
“The confidence we experience as we make a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right. Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence. An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.”
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This also reminded me of something Peter Bevelin mentioned in one of my interviews with him:
On the other hand, when reading, we must constantly watch out for the sensemaking trap (19 in my book) since we are so easily influenced when we are told stories or given information in a “story-format.”