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Old 06-22-2014, 12:44 AM   #1
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Default What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

A few things I've observed:

1. Arrogance and bragging are social taboos in white, upper middle class environments. It's especially taboo to mention your differences in ability in things people care about, like IQ scores. (This could be specific to the middle class environments I've been in, but maybe not.) They are not taboos as a cultural universal, i.e. there are some places where they are not considered bad things.

2. Arrogance is sometimes considered having a falsely high opinion of oneself, which would suggest it's only a problem if your opinion of yourself is false.

3. However, at other times arrogance is considered having a high opinion of yourself period. Perhaps some people believe everyone is equal and it's wrong to consider yourself above others because that's against equality. ("People in an IQ society for the 99th percentile are arrogant," despite that to be in such a society you'd legitimately have to score that high.)

4. Bragging can be tolerated if there is some kind of social sugar coating to make it such (humblebragging, or if it's regarded as some kind of universal accomplishment.)

Questions for discussion:

- What do you think arrogance is, first of all -- is it a false opinion of yourself? Is it a high opinion of yourself period? If you are legitimately one of the best at something as confirmed by rankings or whatever, and say you are, is this arrogance?

- Why do you think arrogance/bragging is taboo in some places but not others?

- Let's put the question in reverse: if you're one of the best at something and act humble, e.g. your behavior doesn't reflect how good you are, is this dishonest? Are you painting an inaccurate picture of yourself?
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Old 06-22-2014, 01:13 AM   #2
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

There are lots of things to discuss if were to go into detail, but I think almost everything can be covered by general points, all pertaining to one central idea: context.

- What is the point of bragging?

If bragging is used to rub some point into someone's face (so to speak) then that's probably why it's looked down upon. If I don't like baseball, then I don't care about who is good at baseball, and if someone was trying to explain to me how good they are at the sport (or even worse, use that as a measure of self-worth to make himself seem better than me), then I don't care and he would be annoying.

- If one presents a high opinion of oneself, what will it accomplish?

If you're trying to get a job in order to do something productive with your talents and abilities, of course you would need to sell yourself, as that is the only way you'll successfully present yourself to people who are looking for talent and skill. In general, "bragging" in order to accomplish something productive (such as convincing someone you're the right person for a task) shouldn't be looked down upon.

- Being humble is a good image, so it's fine to do so if there is no reason to brag.

People generally like those who are humble (for many reasons you could further discuss), so if there's no reason to brag, then there is no need to, even if you know you are the best at something. It doesn't mean you think you're worse than you actually are, it could just be an acknowledgment of the fact that this is only one particular thing that you are good at, and you don't want people to forget that you're "the same as everyone else", that you don't necessarily want special treatment just because you're better at something.
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Old 06-22-2014, 01:27 AM   #3
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

Arrogant adj - having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities.

- What do you think arrogance is, first of all -- is it a false opinion of yourself? Is it a high opinion of yourself period? If you are legitimately one of the best at something as confirmed by rankings or whatever, and say you are, is this arrogance?

If you act as if you are the best at something, regardless of whether you are or not, I'd say you're arrogant by definition. Rankings, standings or anything else that is meant to compare skill to some extent are usually subjective so I don't know where that was going.

- Why do you think arrogance/bragging is taboo in some places but not others?

Sportsmanship is real. The atmosphere competitions create when they're friendly mean a lot to the players and the crowd. That can be applied to casual play too for any game or event.

There can be other reasons, but I feel this is a big one.

- Let's put the question in reverse: if you're one of the best at something and act humble, e.g. your behavior doesn't reflect how good you are, is this dishonest? Are you painting an inaccurate picture of yourself?

This is a no. If I'm rich, does that mean I have to walk around in a suit all the time? Yes, some people do but you don't have to flaunt about how good you are at something to be good at it. You are not "painting an inaccurate picture of yourself" by not showing, stating etc... your skill or anything else that someone would consider arrogance.
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Old 06-22-2014, 01:56 AM   #4
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

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"Arrogant adj - having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities.
"

If you act as if you are the best at something, regardless of whether you are or not, I'd say you're arrogant by definition.
But by definition, arrogance is an exaggerated sense of your abilities. If your sense of abilities is accurate, e.g. not-exaggerated, and you act as if you're the best (or one of the best, or better than others) and you are, how is this still arrogant?
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Old 06-22-2014, 04:33 AM   #5
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

On a personal level, I don't think it matters how justified your assets, personality, and talents/abilities are to dictate how you act towards others. Nor do I believe that you're falsely advertising yourself by acting modest. I believe it comes down to relating yourself with others that is the important thing here. We act modest not because we're trying to misrepresent our abilities, but because understanding, getting along, and relating with others is a social coping mechanism that most people prefer.

There are times, as stargroup has said, that you do want to highlight your abilities as much as possible, but there are still ways to do this without sounding arrogant. You can list a number of impressive things you've done without negatively implying something about the person you're telling this to. To be arrogant is IMO to be condescending, which to me often implies that said person you're talking to would not come close to achieving your level of highness. Tone of voice and wording makes a difference.

So:

1) I think arrogance is having a lack of consideration towards others. Not being able to relate to others, sense of entitlement. This is independent of how accurate your abilities are to your proclaimed bragging rights. No one cares to implicitly hear how much better you are to them.

2) There are occasions when bragging is acceptable because there are times when the context asks for it (e.g. score threads on this site). This alone I don't consider as arrogance, however.

3) If you're being modest, this isn't really dishonesty as it is a way to relate to others (again is context-dependent - oftentimes people aren't asking to show off your importance). I see what you're saying when you believe that not revealing your true abilities is a form of lying, but IMO you're interpreting the definition far too concretely.

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Old 06-22-2014, 10:29 AM   #6
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I can make fun something a friend did such that we both laugh about it. There are some people, however, with whom I can't do that with, even friends. What's the difference between these situations? I have a very hard time describing it. The difference between when I can do that and when I can't do that is very similar to when bragging or otherwise saying arrogant things is going to be acceptable. I can't pinpoint the specifics of it easily, but it's quite few situations, IMO, where this can happen.

To be humble about something and then have someone praise you for something is a lot more meaningful, because they think of it completely on their own. In that sense it's much more selfish to be humble. Yet it still works out better for both you and for the other person.

Arrogance is not taboo in some cultures because arrogance is largely culturally defined. To describe how arrogance is different from one culture to another where the same actions come across completely differently is not really describing how arrogance, itself, is different.

Arrogance is not something defined easily. I see it as a general coming across as 'I am better than you' in mannerisms, whether they are better or not. But even with that description, there are many people who, when someone else calls them arrogant, I'd have to agree, but their actions don't bother me in the least. Probably because I don't interact with them such that I care about what they think enough for me to label them with something negative.
The certain subset of people that can get under my skin the most are intelligent, arrogant people who perceive differences between how I, or others, are from them as a difference in intelligence rather than a difference of perspective. This is infuriating because those people come off as closed-minded. Like, nothing I say or do will actually affect their own opinions because they perceive that their view is the best view to have.
Someone who is arrogant comes off to me as they are closed-minded as well. I think necessarily being more closed-minded is part of the definition of it, actually, thinking about it more. Like, because they think so highly of themselves, true or not, they will weigh their own opinions and ideas as above someone else's just because they are their own. Then if this is someone who is good at debating or is generally intelligent will then be able to back up their perspectives well, even though there's often plenty of cracks in their perspective.

Like, pretend you're arguing with someone who's stupid but arrogant. It quickly becomes obvious that you cannot get through to them about a given topic because they perceive that they just know better. Now make that same person smart, and when you find a hole in something they've said, they are quickly able to weave around it and argue against it. They will change their perspective to actively defend their position in such a way that in order to get them to see that they have this error, you have to refute all of these other, only loosely connected problems. And then, if you CAN'T break down their arguing for whatever reason, it just reinforces their perception of their intelligence, and also their perception of their not-quite-right opinion, when the reality is that they're just fucking stubborn but are smart about it. Like, people like that are the types who can actually think that genocide is alright and then can also make it happen.

I value open-mindedness a lot, and ability to see things from someone else's perspective as very important. Because perspective, even though there are more true and false perspectives one can have of some aspects of the world, they are all ultimately false, inaccurate, poor representations of truth.

And then there's the fact that in order to be better than someone else, you are basically going to be insulting them because that's dichotomy for you. That's another reason why humbleness exists. People don't like being told they are not good at something.

I'd suspect in cultures where people go around bragging and that is expected, it's probably a sign a weakness to not be bragging. It also might play a more important role in that person's actual safety, since I think (and I could be wrong here) cultures where that common practice, there's little effective policing and such. Think of being in a gang. The moment anyone sniffs weakness, you're dead. In our shared culture though, you are not weak if you do not brag.

As to the final point, is being humble an inaccurate representation of oneself, that depends. If you're sitting there trying to hold your tongue and not brag, then yes. If you are naturally inclined to not say anything about yourself, then no. This ties into personality more than an anything else though.
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Old 06-22-2014, 10:59 AM   #7
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

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I can make fun something a friend did such that we both laugh about it. There are some people, however, with whom I can't do that with, even friends. What's the difference between these situations? I have a very hard time describing it. The difference between when I can do that and when I can't do that is very similar to when bragging or otherwise saying arrogant things is going to be acceptable.
I know what you're talking about, but I think even that's too limited of an idea of arrogance. Arrogance itself can be a form of humor. Anthony Jeselnik does this sometimes.

I have a form of humor where I phrase things in a way that sounds way more self-centered than they are. I think regarding flappy bird I said "you're going to have a hard time making me play a game that doesn't let my facebook friends know how much better I am than them." We all know it's completely silly to be influenced by a facebook game ranking system -- no one is going to admit it -- and yet people kind of are anyway, so they laugh at this.

I have another joke that frames giving money to the homeless as "a really affordable way to be better than other people." The bit basically gives a line by line description of altruistic things as essentially extremely selfishly motivated behaviors.

Also, one of the funniest people I know is also one of the most egotistical, but his ego is backed by real competence, so I don't think I'd call it arrogance.

It seems like most of what you dislike about arrogance is intellectual arrogance, which refers to a real epistemic phenomenon of (1) underestimating possible opposing viewpoints or possible flaws in an argument, (2) jumping to conclusions based on insufficient evidence.

I think if I couldn't break down someone's argument as per your example, though, I would just modify my current perspective to match theirs if I felt their reasons were strong enough, and/or concede that I don't have sufficient evidence to refute them at the moment. "Knowing" that they're wrong may not actually be knowledge. I had to do this once when I argued with my friend's dad, a lawyer who used to be on admissions for Penn IIRC. He knew a lot about how to discredit sources, but he didn't know how to evaluate statistics; when I mentioned ".5 correlation" about SAT data he thought this was equivalent to a coin flip in causality among other errors, so I left the argument as "I'm possibly wrong, and feel I'm right, but regardless I need to know my information better if I'm to refute this." (Eventually I got to the point where I could, but that was long since I stopped talking to him.)

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And then there's the fact that in order to be better than someone else, you are basically going to be insulting them because that's dichotomy for you. That's another reason why humbleness exists. People don't like being told they are not good at something.
This is what I thought too, but it sounds too simple because it's so obviously transparent in motive: "I don't like knowing that someone is better than me at X, so I will make it taboo to discuss differences or successes in X in a very direct way." It's just a way to delude oneself that people better than you don't exist -- like having sex with someone who is a virgin so that you're their only basis of comparison.

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Old 06-23-2014, 04:03 PM   #8
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

Arrogance is believing you are better than others on some level and having that come across in your interactions with others. The crux and issue with it is that belief that you are better at someone else will make you less open-minded. If you go into a conversation believing that you are more intelligent or knowledgeable about something, you are setting yourself up to fall into fallacies. If I go into a conversation and believe, however, that the other person is neither more intelligent or less intelligent than me, then I can weigh their discussion based on what they say. If I get into a discussion believing that they are smarter or stupider than I am, then that will actually alter my perception of what they say. To be as objective as possible, I must remain as neutral as possible regarding how I perceive myself compared to someone else.

The biggest problem with arrogance from your perspective, is that people are notoriously bad judges of their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to comparing it to others. Like, not all arrogant people actually can back themselves up to the level of their boastfulness. But they still, of course, think that they do or else they wouldn't BE arrogant. For the most part, actions or events that these individuals think proves their superiority, don't. They likely downplay when they're found to be inferior, and up-play when they're found to be superior.
Arrogance itself is a psychological phenomenon, regardless of actual skill or ability of the arrogant individual. And someone who can fully back-up their arrogance are still going to be passing down smugness to people around them. It causes tension and dislike for the arrogant person.

There's no delusion to humbleness. There's a HUGE difference between knowing you're not particularly good at something, and having that fact constantly on your mind because the person you're spending time with constantly is letting you know. The same goes for someone who is smarter than someone else...you can know it, but why is it always there at the forefront of your mind such that other people are viewing it as arrogance? There is no delusion to not thinking about a fact that you know all the time; we are not omniscient.

Furthermore, to always be focussed on what you're not good at is going to result in some sort of psychological and emotional damage. That's why, for instance, so many girls and women have body image issues. They are constantly bombarded and made to look at women who are prettier than them, they are always being reminded that they don't look as good as that person does. The problem is not actually that they're not very pretty or even hideous, it's the constant reminder of it making them feel badly. And just like how arrogance works, some downright beautiful people will think they're ugly, because of self-delusion, poor self-perception of how you fit in compared to others.

Arrogance is a psychological phenomenon, and it's a problem due to the psychological nature of it.


"I had to do this once when I argued with my friend's dad, a lawyer who used to be on admissions for Penn IIRC. He knew a lot about how to discredit sources, but he didn't know how to evaluate statistics; when I mentioned ".5 correlation" about SAT data he thought this was equivalent to a coin flip in causality"
*sigh* Just what I need, reminders that people less competent than me are gainfully employed in positions I'd like to have.

Psychologically and emotionally speaking, people who view themselves slightly above their actual competence tend to be the most stable, or something along those lines. It's a study I remembered reading/learning about a decade or so ago.

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Old 06-24-2014, 06:05 AM   #9
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

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Arrogance is believing you are better than others on some level and having that come across in your interactions with others.
This seems to say that even if your belief is *warranted* (say, "I can bench 500lb and therefore I am probably better at the bench than anyone I know" or any other hierarchical position verified by external measurement) then it would be arrogant. (Anyone who could do this could make this claim based on data btw, since a few people have analyzed this and found that 300lb bench presses are like a 1-in-200 to 1-in-1000 accomplishment. 500+ is ridiculously rare.) I'm not sure the concept has any kind of usefulness at that point, since it'd be indistinguishable in that case from having a true view of your abilities and having that view come across in your actions.

I don't think it would be necessarily true that this would make you less open minded. I think your adherence to methodology (or how much you care about adhering to methodology) determines this. For example, I strongly feel like I know more about strength training my aunt and will go into conversations with her holding this belief, but if she happened to reference a study or give me good reason to believe I was wrong about something related to strength training, then I'd modify my belief.

Intelligence is a wildcard, but I think you can believe you are more intelligent than someone and still believe you can be wrong and that person can be right if you have a good grip on (a) in what areas you are superior in this way, (b) what would take to make you right/wrong.

Perhaps is you believed that intelligence is in some way connected to whether you're right and then you also believed you were more intelligent than someone else, then yeah I could see that strongly predisposing someone to believing they'd be right all the time if they believed someone else was less intelligent. But I don't think it has to be that way or more importantly I don't have reason to believe it must be that way.

I do agree that people are notoriously bad judges of their own abilities. You specialized in some area of psychology (I think) and anyone who has taken even a survey undergraduate course knows there are way, way too many human biases for self-overestimating. However I think this doesn't take into account the use of external measurement or tools to measure ability. For instance, guy A might say he is amazing at math with no basis and guy B might say he is amazing at math because he won math olympiads and got a perfect score on the GRE subject test for math. I don't think guy B is being especially biased, or wrong, or even arrogant, since this is founded in something.

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There's no delusion to humbleness. There's a HUGE difference between knowing you're not particularly good at something, and having that fact constantly on your mind because the person you're spending time with constantly is letting you know.
This seems to take humility as the frequency with which you think you're superior rather than the belief that you actually are. Could you elaborate on your definition (or criteria if it's multifaceted) for humility so that I'm not misunderstanding you?

Perhaps arrogance does cause tension. I'm not sure how psychologically harmful (or not) it is to view yourself as superior, or whether this creates tension or smugness. For the purposes of this thread I am chiefly concerned with whether this constitutes arrogance even if it's true, or if arrogance can be defined in some other way, and whether it's still wrong to believe you're superior if you have external evidence of this.

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Old 06-24-2014, 06:20 PM   #10
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I haven't really parsed this rigorously or anything. Just dumping out what comes to mind:

When you brag, much of the time you are really saying "I need you to acknowledge my elevated status," which can be emotionally draining. You're placing an implicit expectation on the audience to give you praise, special treatment, etc, whether they agree with your assessment or not, and whether they're emotionally able to supply you or not. It's "needy" behavior.

This is different from confidence, where you don't have to advertise your strengths. You show, rather than tell. There is no expectation put on the audience -- they are free to come to their own conclusions rather than be told what to think. That annoying sense of neediness is not present.

Maybe you are the absolute best bench-presser in the world, and perhaps this is a claim you can back up with hard data... but when would you ever need to bring this up in conversation? Much of the time, I would suspect that it is unprompted -- hence the connotation of neediness.

There is also the issue of advertisement in itself. If you feel the need to advertise something, it implies that you're demanding elevation for something that you wouldn't gain elevation for naturally. Thus, the act of bragging may automatically make people skeptical: "If you're so great, then why are you going out of your way to tell me? You must be compensating or exaggerating."

This is why being humble is usually seen as a good thing. There's a lack of neediness, and perhaps an emphasis of such (e.g. the person who undervalues their talents when asked). Sometimes there's a supply given outward, such as praising the performance of others even if you're the best. It's also nice when someone gives off an impression of "I am not superior to you as a person just because I am really good at X, Y, Z, etc."

Of course, you may get into "humblebrag" territory where you're trying to praise others or show humility, but you're also demanding elevation for yourself in the process (thereby pulling in that neediness factor again).

As for arrogance... I usually define this as a sort of hard-headed, exaggerated sense of self-superiority or entitlement. I think you can be arrogant without being a braggart. For instance, it's not arrogant to know that you're the current-best at something, but it is arrogant to assume that it makes you "better than everyone else in the general sense." Usually people who are arrogant will simply treat you poorly / treat you as inferior / disregard your opinion / etc even when the situation doesn't merit it.

I'll stop here for now but those are my current thoughts.

Last edited by Reincarnate; 06-24-2014 at 09:09 PM.. Reason: rewording a sentence i typed shittily
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Old 06-24-2014, 06:33 PM   #11
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

FINALLY

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Old 06-24-2014, 07:50 PM   #12
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

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For the purposes of this thread I am chiefly concerned with whether this constitutes arrogance even if it's true, or if arrogance can be defined in some other way, and whether it's still wrong to believe you're superior if you have external evidence of this.
The belief of being superior in and of itself is a necessary part of arrogance, but the part of arrogance that is notable and what makes it arrogance is how the person acts with that self-belief. Whether it's factual or not is irrelevant. Again, it's a psychological, perceptual thing, not a factual thing. It seems that it should be possible to believe that you are superior, actually be superior, and not be/act arrogant/ly.

Someone who is provably better than someone else at something who still acts arrogant is someone who I feel is likely to be closed-minded, because arrogance is a behaviour that seems to strongly relate to that matter.

As to the matter of humility, I think others have addressed it better than I have. It's not really about the amount you believe something, but the seeming necessity for other people to acknowledge your superiority.
The idea that I was getting at is that if you're not actively thinking you're superior to anyone, there is a much lower chance that you are going to be acting arrogantly at any given moment in time. Humility, just like arrogance, is a perception of how others see you, and how you act is a summation of individual encounters you have such that the more you act one way, the more that that is representative of who you are.
Of course, I was assuming that how someone acts is representative of what they're actually thinking and how they think they're coming off, which itself is a pretty risky assumption. People can come off differently than they think they do, for some people this happens a lot more often than others.
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Old 06-24-2014, 09:53 PM   #13
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

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For the purposes of this thread I am chiefly concerned with whether this constitutes arrogance even if it's true, or if arrogance can be defined in some other way, and whether it's still wrong to believe you're superior if you have external evidence of this.
If we're gonna talk about the word "arrogance" in itself, you probably have to look at it in context, as I'm sure different people use the word differently, at least pertaining to the slightly different definitions we're presenting in this thread.

But independent of how the word is actually used, there are (I think) pretty easy and clear ways of defining the different definition cases we have for the word. (god that was awkward to say, w/e)

Rubix and I (as well as others here and there) already touched upon when it's wrong to believe you're superior. It matter less about whether or not you ACTUALLY are superior, it's whether or not you have a valid reason to communicate this, and your intentions. Obviously, if you really are better at something then it's not "wrong" (subjective morals, but I still think it's pretty clear) to believe what you are. It's about implications, whether or not this belief influences you to be a kind, open-minded person. Pretty much everything you've been talking about so far, most of the issues are answered by this general point, so I'm beginning to believe you could be overthinking the issue.

I don't necessarily blame people for over- or underestimating themselves at something, however. It's kind of a meta problem: How would you determine/describe how good you are at something? You'd have to potentially compare yourself with something better and something worse, and it's difficult to do so if you don't understand this something in the first place. This is basically a description of Dunning-Kruger effect. In addition, there's the issue of search space. Even if you are good or bad at something, it doesn't necessarily make it any easier to determine your skill when approached from different angles or similar related things. It's kind of like predicting the future; it's difficult for any system to describe the range of the system itself. (If you could predict the future, you could then avoid it and it wouldn't be the future anymore.)
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Old 06-26-2014, 08:45 PM   #14
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I don't necessarily blame people for over- or underestimating themselves at something, however. It's kind of a meta problem: How would you determine/describe how good you are at something? You'd have to potentially compare yourself with something better and something worse, and it's difficult to do so if you don't understand this something in the first place. This is basically a description of Dunning-Kruger effect. In addition, there's the issue of search space. Even if you are good or bad at something, it doesn't necessarily make it any easier to determine your skill when approached from different angles or similar related things. It's kind of like predicting the future; it's difficult for any system to describe the range of the system itself. (If you could predict the future, you could then avoid it and it wouldn't be the future anymore.)
That's not a description of the kruger-dunning effect, that's the description of it that some guy made a video of that got lots of hits on youtube, and now everyone thinks that it's somehow strongly experimentally validated. It's not. What you described is merely one explanation, and not in my mind the most obvious one either, of the results of the experiments they've done.
There've been counter studies that support other explanations of the experiments. Mostly though, I really think they broke down the data quite poorly. They grouped people into 4 groups then took averages of those 4 groups and then compared those 4 groups, prolly used paired t tests or something. They specifically compacted data, essentially losing it, in their analysis. They should have done a regular ANOVA.
Furthermore, the fact that some people who were, apparently, shown exactly how bad they were in comparison to others on whatever measures they were using, yet they still rated themselves not as bad as they actually were, speaks to me more of a psychological barrier to perceiving that they can be bad at something, unless they're just overall unable to understand the concept of 'you're worse than 80% of people at this', which seems highly unlikely given that their subject pool was probably undergrad psychology students.

Dev showed me some youtube link about it a few months ago and it got me all riled up that unproven things were found to be proven and that because of the popularity of the video and that it actual went into some details about the studies, it came off as strongly evidence supported when, actually, it's not.

Last edited by Cavernio; 06-26-2014 at 08:52 PM..
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Old 06-27-2014, 05:11 AM   #15
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

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Originally Posted by Cavernio View Post
...speaks to me more of a psychological barrier to perceiving that they can be bad at something...
Wikipedia:

"Unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude."

"If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent. […] the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is." - David Dunning


Not only do I think this is exactly the psychological barrier you're talking about, but everyone keeps telling me that this is not what Dunning-Kruger is, but unless the Wikipedia article is totally wrong, I don't see how I could have misinterpreted this. It's a very straightforward description and makes perfect sense. And even though everyone keeps telling me about how I'm mistaken about what Dunning-Kruger effect is, nobody proceeds to explain what it actually is either.

If you can't tell the difference between good art and bad art, how can you tell how good of an artist you are? If you cannot distinguish good and bad art, but you have your opinions, how can you tell whether your mental distinctions are based upon understanding, skill, and knowledge, or nothing but your own opinion? This seems like a concept that is so painfully obvious that I would go so far as to call it a priori knowledge, as denying this is almost a contradiction. In what sense am I wrong?

EDIT: RationalWiki seems to further substantiate the idea that I have not misinterpreted what this is: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect Are both of these sources incorrect?

"The idea that people who don't know enough also don't know enough to realise that they don't know enough ("Dunning-Kruger effect" is so much simpler to get your tongue around) isn't particularly new."
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Old 06-28-2014, 11:05 AM   #16
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

The quote from Dunning is different from the quote from Wikipedia. The one from Dunning implies, as I read it, that there is an intellectual barrier to ever knowing that you are bad at something. The Wikipedia quote can be construed to be saying more what I was getting at with the whole 'psychological barrier' thing, although it could also be referring to an intellectual inability.

There is nothing wrong with this idea, it IS very base. Like, the idea that someone mentally retarded may not know they're mentally retarded has existed in my mind for a long time. That I've used a fairly extreme example is purposeful on my part though, because I think that the point at which someone is that actually unable to discern their own ability is quite low. Maybe I'm wrong about this though.

The psychological barrier I'm alluding to is not due to complete and utter lack of skill, but rather a lack of ability to perceive oneself as poor at something, regardless of actual ability. This is also the same sort of thing that I feel applies to arrogance.

What I'm actually bothered by is that people are calling this effect the Kruger-Dunning effect as if to say their experiments have proven it when they haven't. Their experiments themselves are too full of holes, alternate explanations, and mangled data to prove anything. The most they do is not disprove the existence of this effect, and even that that's not even necessarily true.

And yeah, there's something else I just thought of too. If someone is just unable to perceive that they're bad at something, why would they therefore think they are good or decent at it at it? If they are that terrible at it, then there's still got to be something that pushes them to thinking they're decent at it. Utter inability to not know that you're good at something wouldn't automatically mean you'll think you're at one skill level or another unless there's some sort of default that everyone possesses in terms of how they perceive themselves.
Which, I think, is more close to what I thought the KD experiments showed, they show that nearly everyone, regardless of skill level, think's they're slightly above average on any given task. That people who are really bad at the task still perceive this, showing there's a larger discrepancy between ability and perceived ability, is simply an artifact of having poor ability. There is nothing, from what I've read on a couple of their experiments, to show that a large difference in perceived ability is directly attributable to something that only exists in people who are actually bad at that task.
Again, they've clumped people into quartiles, not treating them as individuals; they've not shown any individual data for anyone. They could be hiding that there exist godawful people at a given task yet they still know they're bad at it, but they were just clumped into an average.

Also, if I were to support the level of this KD effect (I refuse to call it by those guys' names as if to support their experiments as validating the effect!!), since I believe it only affects people who are on the extreme low-end of the scale in terms of some sort of strictly defined 'inability', I would require in my experimental group people who were knowingly on the low end of the scale.

Since I don't think the Kruger Dunning experiments support the KD effect, and because I think there are multiple factors at play when a person erroneously thinks they're better at something than they are, I can't even use KD as a term for the explanation because the KD effect doesn't encompass both factors: a psychological factor based on self-preservation or somesuch, and a complete inability to know you're good at something. Also, the former seems like it still must be involved in people who have the latter, so I don't know how you would separate those 2 effects experimentally to find them without finding an ulterior measure of whatever psychological factor is at play and then run an ANCOVA or MANOVA if you found multiple other measures.

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Old 06-28-2014, 10:37 PM   #17
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I think stargroup is mostly right about Dunning-Kruger.

Caverino, I think you're reading of the Dunning-Kruger effect is off. I don't think anyone (not even Dunning and Kruger themselves) suggested it was as extreme as
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cavernio View Post
an intellectual barrier to ever knowing that you are bad at something
since an exact quote from the paper: "We do not mean to imply that people are always unaware of their incompetence". makes it clear that you're misunderstanding something.
Rather, its simply that because the skills needed to be good at something are mostly the same as the skills needed to judge that thing, people who are bad at something don't have the skills to accurately judge their abilities.


They also did sub-experiments specifically to separate the effect from some other effects. So your comments there (specifically, you claim they only showed the above average effect, and that there was nothing to show it only effeted those with less skill, etc.) betray that you never read the paper or even a decent summary of it. In fact, the popular video you mentioned probably mentioned it as well if its the video I'm thinking of so it sounds like you didn't even finish that much.
While everyone initially rated themselves a little above average, there was another test where the people were allowed to see a few other people test answers before rating themselves.
So if people with less skill fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, their ratings will be unaffected since they don't have the skills to judge the tests. At the same time, the people with more skill should be able to judge other people's tests accurately against their own to see more accurately how skilled they are.
In this test, the people who did poorly still rated themselves above average, but people that were more skilled rated themselves more accurately.
There was also yet another test, where former participants were invited back for another test after minimal training and were all able to better predict their performance after the training.
The first sub-experiment rules out all effets that would affect both skilled and unskilled participants since only the unskilled failed to accurately judge, and the second rules out all effects due purely to the individuals involved since merely increasing their skills made them as good at judging their performance as the people who had high skills to begin with.
At the very least, this is perfectly consistent with the DK effect, and not easily explained otherwise. (there have been some notable attempts to pin everything on regression to the mean, task difficulty, and a few others, but they've all been debunked since like 2008)

You also seem to think DK claims to be more than it actually claims to be. They go out of their way in the paper to make it clear that the DK effect is not the only effect in play so questions like "If someone is just unable to perceive that they're bad at something, why would they therefore think they are good or decent at it at it?" are adresed trivially by other well known effects such as the above average effect which you seem to already be aware of.

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Old 06-29-2014, 01:15 AM   #18
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

honestly I think the study is ridiculous in the first place because it's so obvious

I only use the name to refer to it with fewer words
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Old 06-29-2014, 11:53 AM   #19
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

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Originally Posted by kaiten123 View Post
I think stargroup is mostly right about Dunning-Kruger.

Caverino, I think you're reading of the Dunning-Kruger effect is off. I don't think anyone (not even Dunning and Kruger themselves) suggested it was as extreme as

since an exact quote from the paper: "We do not mean to imply that people are always unaware of their incompetence". makes it clear that you're misunderstanding something.
Rather, its simply that because the skills needed to be good at something are mostly the same as the skills needed to judge that thing, people who are bad at something don't have the skills to accurately judge their abilities.
You are misreading what I've said then, or I've not explained myself properly. Kruger Dunning has not coined this idea. I have my own idea with regards to what they say, and it differs somewhat from how they present the idea.


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They also did sub-experiments specifically to separate the effect from some other effects. So your comments there (specifically, you claim they only showed the above average effect, and that there was nothing to show it only effeted those with less skill, etc.) betray that you never read the paper or even a decent summary of it. In fact, the popular video you mentioned probably mentioned it as well if its the video I'm thinking of so it sounds like you didn't even finish that much.
Just because you don't understand my position or that my position differs from the authors or yours does not mean I'm ignorant or that I've not actually read their papers.

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Originally Posted by kaiten123 View Post
While everyone initially rated themselves a little above average, there was another test where the people were allowed to see a few other people test answers before rating themselves.
So if people with less skill fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, their ratings will be unaffected since they don't have the skills to judge the tests. At the same time, the people with more skill should be able to judge other people's tests accurately against their own to see more accurately how skilled they are.
In this test, the people who did poorly still rated themselves above average, but people that were more skilled rated themselves more accurately...[This] first sub-experiment rules out all effets that would affect both skilled and unskilled participants since only the unskilled failed to accurately judge,
Right, I alluded to this in my very first post regarding Dunning Kruger, and I've discussed this since then as well. This part of the experiment does not, I believe, show what people say it shows...the general ability gauge where you fit into a group, when you are directly and specifically shown that you are worse than other people in that group, is not measuring the ability that the test is measuring. It's measuring a more general ability to perceive where oneself fits in compared to others, and my theory is that it is largely irrelevant to whatever skill is being measured. The refusal to acknowledge that you are bad at something is a psychological phenomenon.
If you take my interpretation of what they tested, this part of the experiment furthermore does not separate the skilled and unskilled group as you say it does, because it itself seems like it would be a phenomenon of refusal to admit that you're actually that bad at something. Take a person who performed mid-range or higher on this test and compare them to someone who scored near the very bottom; the exact same mechanism could work in both people except that because the first person did better on the test, they still do not have to admit that they are actually bad at it. Whereas the person who is bad at it, in order to be accurate enough, would have to.
This explanation of the results of that study, I feel, makes a lot more sense than the KD is.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kaiten123 View Post
There was also yet another test, where former participants were invited back for another test after minimal training and were all able to better predict their performance after the training.
and the second rules out all effects due purely to the individuals involved since merely increasing their skills made them as good at judging their performance as the people who had high skills to begin with.
This does support the KD effect as far as I can tell, I don't remember it being address in the study of theirs that I read. Was it a statistically significant difference?

Quote:
Originally Posted by kaiten123 View Post
At the very least, this is perfectly consistent with the DK effect, and not easily explained otherwise. (there have been some notable attempts to pin everything on regression to the mean, task difficulty, and a few others, but they've all been debunked since like 2008)
Have you found something that addresses what I suggest though? I haven't, not that I spent a whole lot of time looking. Nor would I say that those studies were 'debunked'. They just also have issues with them, like KD studies do too. That's generally how good research goes, people critique the shit out of it so that eventually we'll hopefully take into account all possibilities that explain the results.
Nor, again, have I found any Kruger Dunning study that doesn't not clump people into quartiles. This is my most serious concern with their studies because ultimately, as long as they only analyze effects when they do this, I will not ever say that their studies are good support what the internet now calls the KD effect.
Like, it would be really interesting to see how those few individuals who are horrible at something and who say that they're horrible at something with relatively good accuracy, differ from those other individuals who are also bad at the given skill but who rate themselves much more favorably. Because I'm 100% positive that there exist some people in these studies who know and report that they are bad at something. I'd wager that some sort of general test that measures personality traits or emotional states, like arrogance, self-confidence, self-esteem, etc, would find a significant difference b/w these 2 groups of poorly scoring people.
Whatever factor separates these poor judges of their poor score from the good judges of their poor scores, we can then measure that factor in everyone else in the group and see if scores of that factor differ significantly for everyone else who are in the top 3 quartiles. Like, if 90% of low scorers have a lot of self-confidence, would 90% of the rest of the participants also have high self-confidence.

There's so much that I think needs to be teased apart. And my theory, again, is that the KD effect is probably only significant at the lowest end of ability on a scale.


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You also seem to think DK claims to be more than it actually claims to be. They go out of their way in the paper to make it clear that the DK effect is not the only effect in play so questions like "If someone is just unable to perceive that they're bad at something, why would they therefore think they are good or decent at it at it?" are adresed trivially by other well known effects such as the above average effect which you seem to already be aware of.
I've said it twice now what I'm complaining about, and I'm not complaining at what Kruger and Dunning say in their paper(s). I'm complaining about people who perceive that the Kruger Dunning studies show strong evidence in support of what is now known as the KD effect.

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Old 06-29-2014, 12:04 PM   #20
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Default Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

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Originally Posted by stargroup100 View Post
honestly I think the study is ridiculous in the first place because it's so obvious

I only use the name to refer to it with fewer words
Just to make sure you understand how the kruger dunning studies work, the measurement is not the ability to rate oneself, but on how well an individual thinks they do in comparison to everyone else. I think this is an important distinction.
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