Suggestions For Dealing with Know-it-Alls

In "How to converse with know-it-alls," Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay suggest techniques for dealing with know-it-alls. Know-it-allness is often caused by the Dunning-Kruger Effect (which the authors also call "the Unread Library Effect" and cognitive scientists call "the illusion of explanatory depth."

Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill; 2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others; 3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy; 4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

How do you show know-it-alls that they don't know as much as they think they know? Boghossian and Lindsay suggest that we ask them to explain their claims in detail.

[R]esearchers asked people to rate how confident they were in their ability to describe how a toilet works. Once subjects provided answers, experimenters had them write down as many details as they could in a short essay, and then they were again asked about their confidence. Their self-reported confidence dropped significantly after attempting to explain the inner workings of toilets. People know there’s a library of information out there explaining things — they just haven’t read it! Exposing the flimsiness of their knowledge is a simple matter of letting them discover it for themselves.

One most easily does this by asking know-it-alls to explain their claims in detail:

Whether it’s gun control legislation, immigration policy, or China trade tariffs — and have them provide as many technical details as they can. How, exactly, does it work? How will change be implemented? Who will pay for it? What agencies will oversee it? . . . People become less certain, question themselves more, and open their minds to new possibilities when they realize they know less than they thought they knew.

Just politely ask straightforward question and insist on answers that you can understand. Keep an open mind.  Perhaps they will convince you that they are correct! If you are not convinced, however, be patient and follow up with more questions.  If the conversation goes on and on, don't allow your fatigue to get the best of you.  Don't ever indicate that you understand when you don't.  That would not be helping anybody.

As I was reading the above article, I researched other ideas I could add to this post. The authors of, "An expert on human blind spots gives advice on how to think" discussed the DK effect with David Dunning, who warned of the First rule of the Dunning-Kruger Club: "people don’t know they're members of the Dunning-Kruger Club." These people lack "Intellectual Humility."  In other words, they assume they are correct, which means (to them) that there is no need to seek out and correct their intellectual blind spots.

Dunning offered this additional advice for dealing with people in the DK Club. One bit of advice is to challenge the know-it-all to think in terms of probabilities:

[P]eople who think not in terms of certainties but in terms of probabilities tend to do much better in forecasting and anticipating what is going to happen in the world than people who think in certainties.

Dunning warns that many people don't "make the distinctions between facts and opinion." People are increasingly creating not only their own opinions, but their own facts.

Yet another problem listed by Dunning is that people are increasingly unwilling to say "I don't know." Trying to get people to say that they don't know when they don't know is a serious and so far unsolvable problem. It would seem, then, that cross-examining the know-it-all as to the source of their information is critical.

Dunning also suggests a downside to getting things correct: "To get something really right, you’ve got to be overly obsessive and compulsive about it." In other words, it's not easy to get facts correct on a complex issue.  It takes work.  Those people who are more accurate take the time to ask themselves whether and how they could be wrong. "How can your plans end up in disaster?"  Know-it-alls fail to show this concern that it often takes a lot of work to get to the truth.

Finally, in a nod to John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, Dunning states that it's important to realize that one is better off to invite others to test one's ideas.  Dunning states: "We’re making decisions as our own island, if you will. And if we consult, chat, schmooze with other

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Dr. Diana Fleischman Discusses Sex Differences Between Men and Women

You are invited to join this lively discussion with Dr. Diana Fleischman. The topic: significant biological and psychological sex differences between men and women.

One of the most stunning differences discussed in this video was described in Attraction Explained: The science of how we form relationships, By Viren Swami:

In classic studies conducted by Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield between 1978 and 2003, college students were approached by a fairly attractive member of the opposite sex, who was really a confederate of the researchers. This confederate would hang around campus and, once a target had been selected, she or he would walk up to the target and say, ‘I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive’. Next, the confederate would ask one of three questions: (l) Will you go on a date with me? (2) Will you come back to my apartment? or (3) Will you have sex with me?

For the first question, there was no clear sex difference - across studies, 56 per cent of women and 50 per cent of men accepted the date. But for the other questions, which could be interpreted as questions about casual sex, there were clearer sex differences. For the question about going back to the confederate’s apartment, 69 per cent of men consented compared to only 6 per cent of women. And for the final, 75 per cent of men agreed to sex, while not a single woman said yes to sex. In fact, every time the study was repeated, not a single woman agreed to sex at any time. In a more recent study, fairly attractive psychology students approached a member of the opposite sex in public places in four cities in Denmark and asked: (l) Would you go on a date with men tonight or during the week/weekend? (2) Would you come over to my place tonight or during the week/weekend? or (3) Would you go to bed with me tonight or during the week/weekend? When individuals in relationships were excluded from the count, 68 per cent of men and 43 per cent of women agreed to a date, 40 per cent of men and 21 per cent of women agreed to go to the student’s place, and 59 per cent of men but none of the women agreed to casual sex.

There are many other differences between the sexes discussed by Dr. Fleishman. It's important to add some context to these sex difference studies, however.  Yes, there are differences, and many of these seem dramatic, but men and women are not from different planets.  They are extremely similar in many ways.  How many?  Hundreds of ways, as documented by Donald E. Brown.  All of us are mostly the same. 

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Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying Discuss the Intersection of Transgendering and Biology

I've been struggling to understand the contours of the recent dispute involving J.K.Rowling's tweets regarding transgendered persons. This issue caught my interest in that I know several people who transitioned and one who is transitioning as a 30 year old adult after being in a marriage. In the process of trying to understand the issues, I've read about a dozen articles from varying perspectives plus hundreds of tweets, many of them claiming to be authored by transgendered persons.

Interestingly, those postings claiming to be authored by transgendered persons seem to be much more sympathetic to J.K. Rowling. Many of the postings on social media are intense reads, leading me to wonder whether there is any way to satisfy all of the sides to the dispute. I doubt it and I think I now better understand why after watching the attached video featuring two evolutionary biologists, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. I found their comments on gender ideology and biology quite helpful to understanding these issues. I especially appreciate that their comments are well founded on biology, but also sensitive to the need to treat transgendered persons with kindness. I also appreciate that they both deal head-on with the political aspects of this issue, including the need to recognize over-stepping by the authoritarian left.

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Higher Cognitive Abilities Correlate with Openness to Exchange Ideas

John Stuart Mill would say "I told you so."  Support of free speech correlates with intelligence, as one would expect, because exposure to challenging ideas serves as good check on confirmation bias. The challenging ideas of others tend to cause us to reexamine our own beliefs.  Here are excerpts from "Freedom of Speech: A Right for Everybody, or Only for Like-Minded People?" by Jonas De keersmaecker:

[W]e sought to explore whether higher cognitive ability was associated with more principled positions on free speech. . . .  The series of studies suggest that cognitive ability is related to support for freedom of speech for groups across the ideological spectrum.  . . .  [I]ndividuals with higher cognitive ability are more appreciative of the free flow of divergent ideas by groups at various places on the ideological spectrum. Indeed, even when these groups voice ideas that they don’t like.

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