Our Flawed Self-Assessments

[Jenny A]

In all seriousness, one of the signs of depression is more accurately assessing your own self worth and odds of good things happening to us in general.

[abaris]

...and odds of good things happening to us in general.

Which aren't that good when a depressed mind tries to assess them, as I can tell from personal experience.

[Jenny A]

...and odds of good things happening to us in general.

Which aren't that good when a depressed mind tries to assess them, as I can tell from personal experience.

Indeed. But they are, unfortunately, more accurate.

[Minimalist]

For example, ask people whether their driving skills are better than average, and 85% of respondents will say "Yes;" same goes for sense of humor, leadership talent, and singing ability.

People are a piece of work, eh?

[Rayaan]

Another interesting thing that I've learned is, the inconsistency and flaws that show up in our self-assessments neatly matches with the limitative theorems of mathematics which prove that it is not possible for any self-referential system to be able to accurately describe itself. Such a limitation has been most resoundingly made known by Godel's incompleteness theorems.

When applied to humans, the philosophical implication of this is is that self-knowledge is, fundamentally, incomplete. In other words, there is a critical point at which man's knowledge and assessments of his own self starts to become less and less reliable. There is an unsurpassable limit to exactly how far he can peer into the depths of his inner reality.

Here's a quote from an article that sheds light on the crux of this interesting idea:

Gödel’s theorem universally states that the formal systems that can make self reference suffer from an inherent incapability to comprehend the “self.” A formal system cannot be sure that it is consistent because the theorem “This formal system is consistent” cannot be proven inside the system, which makes the system incomplete. In fact, the existence of such a theorem is the sole source of inconsistency. Consistency and completeness are required in a formal system to reach reality. Therefore, with the ability to reflect upon itself, a formal system cannot decide on the true nature of its own reality and lacks a complete understanding of itself. The Gödelian argument applies only to systems that are rich enough to have self reference, and interestingly richness of the systems brings about its downfall. It is analogous to the concept of “critical mass” in nuclear physics. A radioactive substance will blow up only beyond a critical mass; otherwise it will stay stable.

Similarly, Douglas Hofstadter, in Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, wrote:

All the limitative theorems of metamathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Church’s Undecidability Theorem, Turing’s Halting Theorem, Tarski’s Truth Theorem — all have the flavour of some ancient fairy tale which warns you that "To seek self-knowledge is to embark on a journey which … will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on any map, will never halt, cannot be described."

[Tonus]

In all seriousness, one of the signs of depression is more accurately assessing your own self worth and odds of good things happening to us in general.

I think research has indicated that it's just what happens when we swing the pendulum too far in the other direction. We apparently are absolutely awful at viewing anything realistically. Those of our ancestors who survived passed along a brain wired to survive, and that means making snap decisions based off of an amazing amount of processing that our brains do subconsciously. More interesting is that most of our decisions are made in those first couple of seconds, regardless of how much time we spend considering our options afterwards.

Or at least, that's what the latest research is leading towards. The next thirty years should be that much more fascinating, IMO.

[CapnAwesome]

We humans tend to feel fairly confident in how we perceive ourselves.

But in the field of psychology, it's been demonstrated that, whether we like it or not, we are most likely far worse at self-assessment than we think we are. Our ability of self-assessment, although maybe it is superior to that of other animals, is one that has shown to be flawed in interesting (and even quite surprising) ways.

For example, one thing is that we tend to overestimate our positive qualities and underestimate the negative ones. This is known as "illusory superiority," or the "above average effect," amongst various other names.

"Illusory superiority is a cognitive bias whereby individuals overestimate their own qualities and abilities, relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests, and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits. It is one of many positive illusions relating to the self, and is a phenomenon studied in social psychology." - Wikipedia

A more specific case of the illusory superiority bias is the Freddy-Krueger effect. What?! Whoops, my bad. I apologize. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect:

"The Dunning-Kruger effect, named after David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University, occurs where people fail to adequately assess their level of competence — or specifically, their incompetence — at a task and thus consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. This lack of awareness is attributed to their lower level of competence robbing them of the ability to critically analyse their performance, leading to a significant overestimate of themselves. Put more crudely, they're too stupid to realize they're stupid." - RationalWiki

Here are some of the original materials on the subject:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

Flawed Self-Assessment: Implications for Health, Education, and the Workplace


Come to think of it, what would ever make anyone perceive that perhaps we are all confident idiots?

No wonder there was all this fervor about "Know thyself" for the ancients.

It's so obviously true, I mean for everybody else at least, I really am awesome at everything.

[Rayaan]

The dark side of high confidence and the bright side of low confidence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3_1DkXnQsc

[ManMachine]

We humans tend to feel fairly confident in how we perceive ourselves.

But in the field of psychology, it's been demonstrated that, whether we like it or not, we are most likely far worse at self-assessment than we think we are. Our ability of self-assessment, although maybe it is superior to that of other animals, is one that has shown to be flawed in interesting (and even quite surprising) ways.

For example, one thing is that we tend to overestimate our positive qualities and underestimate the negative ones. This is known as "illusory superiority," or the "above average effect," amongst various other names.

"Illusory superiority is a cognitive bias whereby individuals overestimate their own qualities and abilities, relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests, and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits. It is one of many positive illusions relating to the self, and is a phenomenon studied in social psychology." - Wikipedia

A more specific case of the illusory superiority bias is the Freddy-Krueger effect. What?! Whoops, my bad. I apologize. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect:

"The Dunning-Kruger effect, named after David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University, occurs where people fail to adequately assess their level of competence — or specifically, their incompetence — at a task and thus consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. This lack of awareness is attributed to their lower level of competence robbing them of the ability to critically analyse their performance, leading to a significant overestimate of themselves. Put more crudely, they're too stupid to realize they're stupid." - RationalWiki

Here are some of the original materials on the subject:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

Flawed Self-Assessment: Implications for Health, Education, and the Workplace


Come to think of it, what would ever make anyone perceive that perhaps we are all confident idiots?

No wonder there was all this fervor about "Know thyself" for the ancients.

I enjoyed the humour at the end of the Kruger-Dunning paper.

"Let us assure our readers the to the extent this article is imperfect, it is not a sin we have committed knowingly."

MM