Some deep part of me believes that people are only confident when they're very likely to be right, and I defer to confidence because *my own* bar for speaking confidently is pretty *damn* high.
but no, turns out, ppl say confident things with a low accuracy bar *all the time*!
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I'm slow on the uptake; so many times I've been pulled in by a very confident speaker confidently saying things I don't really understand - then when I check, turns out he's actually wrong about quite a lot. This is super disorienting and I don't understand that at all.
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If you're dealing with a really complex or nuanced system, you should get an allocation of 1 confident thing to say per year; everything else you say should be "I suspect" or "it seems like this indicates".
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But for ppl who are very confident, particularly about very difficult subjects, what is going on in their heads? It seems like they're doing a separate thing from truth-finding, which is something like... deliberately making particular maneuvers in social reality space.
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How do you determine confidence? Implying via tone of voice, or asking the speaker how confident they are about what they’re saying?
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Sometimes I say things just to figure out what I really believe. Obviously can’t do this in public.
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I think a lot of it has to do with confirmation bias. People hear things that fit the narrative for what they believe and just blindly believe it so much that for them it’s reality.
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I've recently learned about the Dunning-Kruger effect and now I take very few confident people seriously. Maybe I use their thoughts as a jumping off point but I'm definitely more wary about accepting things point blank.
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I just wonder if listener interpreted confidence could be different than actual speaker confidence in the accuracy of what is said
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One thing I think is key is that Joe or Jane Confidence is usually (not always) talking about a subject that's over their audiences' heads, and the audience buys into it and socially reinforces it among themselves. This is the part that's amazing to me.
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Confidence isn't about being correct. It's about believing you're correct (or at least knowing how to make other people think you believe it). You can be wrong as hell and still be confident about your answer.
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