Totally useless information/trivia

[BOF]

Dunning–Kruger effect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

The Dunning–Kruger effect was put forward by Justin Kruger and David Dunning. Similar notions have been expressed – albeit less scientifically – for some time. Dunning and Kruger themselves quote Charles Darwin ("Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge") and Bertrand Russell ("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."). W.B. Yeats put it concisely thus: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." The Dunning–Kruger effect is not, however, concerned narrowly with high-order cognitive skills (much less their application in the political realm during a particular era, which is what Russell was talking about.) Nor is it specifically limited to the observation that ignorance of a topic is conducive to overconfident assertions about it, which is what Darwin was saying. Indeed, Dunning et al. cite a study saying that 94% of college professors rank their work as "above average" (relative to their peers), to underscore that the highly intelligent and informed are hardly exempt. Rather, the effect is about paradoxical defects in perception of skill, in oneself and others, regardless of the particular skill and its intellectual demands, whether it is chess, playing golf or driving a car.

I love these little nuggets Mike. It makes absolute sense and is something I've long thought, but just couldn't articulate sufficiently.

[drat01]

Spanish prostitutes in Lleida have to wear yellow fluorescent bibs while "at work"

Bibs info

[mjmooney]

Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes spelled mamihlapinatapei) is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate.

It describes "a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that they both desire but which neither one wants to start."

Wikipedia

We've all been there.

[mjmooney]

TOP TEN UNSOLVED PROBLEMS IN PHYSICS

1. Are all the (measurable) dimensionless parameters that characterize the physical universe calculable in principle or are some merely determined by historical or quantum mechanical accident and uncalculable?

2. How can quantum gravity help explain the origin of the universe?

3. What is the lifetime of the proton and how do we understand it?

4. Is nature supersymmetric, and if so, how is supersymmetry broken?

5. Why does the universe appear to have one time and three space dimensions?

6. Why does the cosmological constant have the value that it has? Is it zero and is it really constant?

7. What are the fundamental degrees of freedom of M-theory (the theory whose low-energy limit is eleven-dimensional supergravity and that subsumes the five consistent superstring theories) and does the theory describe nature?

8. What is the resolution of the black hole information paradox?

9. What physics explains the enormous disparity between the gravitational scale and the typical mass scale of the elementary particles? In other words, why is gravity so much weaker than the other forces, like electromagnetism?

10. Can we quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement in quantum chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap?

Link

Come on VTers, get to it.

[chrissmith921]

The answer to all unexplained questions is 'to make and eat bacon'.

[Chindie]

Dynamite causes a medical condition called 'bang head' - sustained handling of it gives the handler a banging headache, leading to the belief that the chemical constituents in dynamite may also have some relation to the chemical trigger for migraines.

[leviramsey]

It's a shame the stats dont tell us how many unique users visit VT, or what the record number of people online at the same time is.

Most users ever online was 685 on Aug 09, 2010 - 11:41 AM

(the time is probably in my time zone so 1541 GMT)

[The_Rev]

That stat is not true. We had about 3000 online when O'Neill resigned.

[leviramsey]

VT lies!

[Xela]

Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes spelled mamihlapinatapei) is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate.

It describes "a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that they both desire but which neither one wants to start."

Wikipedia

We've all been there.

I'm there now!

[mjmooney]

Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes spelled mamihlapinatapei) is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate.

It describes "a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that they both desire but which neither one wants to start."

Wikipedia

We've all been there.

I'm there now!

Well there's your line, then.

As you reach across to pour her a glass of wine, murmur: "Doesn't this seem like one of those.... mamihlapinatapai.... moments...?"

[leviramsey]

That stat is not true. We had about 3000 online when O'Neill resigned.

According to the sidebar?

The sidebar is not a reliable gauge (especially if the site is under heavy load).

[AVFC-Prideofbrum]

Pretty awkward if his sister is a specialist in the Yaghan language of Tierra del fuego though

[Chindie]

Newlyn in Cornwall is the place used to set the UK's mean sea level.

[theunderstudy]

West bromwich Albion are the only Premier League side not to concede a header this season.

[Stevo985]

All of Liverpool's goals this season have been set up by or scored by Fernando Torres or Steven Gerrard (note: I'm not sure if this stat includes yesterday's game or not)

[ED]

It doesn't (MOTD FTW)

[Stevo985]

Yeh just saw that. The stat is now even more useless than it originally was!

[mjmooney]

Panda pornography (or Panda porn) refers generally to movies depicting mating pandas, intended to promote sexual arousal in captive Giant Pandas. Under zoo conditions, the animals have in general proven unenthusiastic about mating, placing their species in danger of extinction.

The method was popularized following reports of an experiment performed by zoologists in Thailand, in which they showed several captive Giant Pandas at Chiang Mai Zoo a number of pornographic videos featuring other Giant Pandas. Though the researchers behind the project state that they believe in a successful mating due to usage of pornographic movies for animals, such success so far has not been achieved outside of China, where 31 cubs were born over a ten month period following commencement of the experiment.

Other methods, including the use of Viagra, to stimulate pandas have thus far been unsuccessful.

Wiki

[leviramsey]

The perfect place to murder someone is in the portions of Yellowstone National Park in Idaho and Montana.

Now I Know"]

If you live in the United States, you're probably familiar with some of the basic rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights -- for example, freedom of speech, religion, the press; the right against self-incrimination; and the right for alleged criminals to be tried in front of a jury of their peers. But do you know what that last one means? It's more complicated than one would think, and because of a strange legal wrinkle involving a very big national park, it may have created the perfect crime scene. At least, that's what law professor Brian Kalt of Michigan State University College of Law argues in this paper. (If you're a lawyer, law student, or law geek generally, it's a fun read.)

How does it work?

Let's say you, heaven forbid, are charged with a crime. The Constitution itself (Article III, Section 2 for those who wish to look it up) requires that the "Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed." Pretty straight forward. The 6th Amendment requires that the jury must be "of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." Again, pretty clear. The only confusing part, unless you're a lawyer, is probably the term "district."

The U.S. Federal Courts are divided into zones called "districts" which correlate almost perfectly with states themselves. Connecticut has one district: the District of Connecticut. New York has four, using ordinal directions, e.g. "Southern District of New York" which includes Manhattan, the Bronx, and six counties in the state. Wyoming has one, as well, which includes the entire state -- and, in addition, the parts of Yellowstone National Park which are in Idaho and Montana. And that's where the perfect crime scene appears.

So that crime you're charged with? Imagine you committed it in the part of Yellowstone which is actually in Idaho. Where would your jury come from? It would have to be from the state (Idaho) and district (the District of Wyoming) in which the crime was commited -- in other words, from that same part of Yellowstone which is in Idaho. The population of that area?

Zero.

Good luck finding that jury.

(murder is normally a state matter (and thus not automatically covered by Article III), but as the crime occurs on federal property, state law does not apply and thus it must be a federal crime in order to be prosecuted)