Consider a survey of nearly one million high school seniors. When asked to judge their ability to get along with others, 100 percent rated themselves as at least average, 60 percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent, and 25 percent considered themselves in the top 1 percent. And when asked about their leadership skills, only 2 percent assessed themselves as below average. Teachers aren’t any more realistic: 94 percent of college professors say they do above-average work. — Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior The human brain is a better lawyer than scientist. A scientific brain would form hypotheses, test them against the evidence and reject the ones that don’t pass. The lawyer brain starts with a conclusion that it wants to be true, formulates supporting arguments and discounts evidence to the contrary. Studies show that people with the most accurate self-perceptions tend to be… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Leonard Mlodinow
Illusions of Patterns and Patterns of Illusion
In 1978, [Leonard] Koppett revealed a system that he claimed could determine, by the end of January every year, whether the stock market would go up or down in that calendar year. [Koppett’s system] worked for eleven straight years, from 1979 through 1989, got it wrong in 1990, and was correct again every year until 1998. But although Koppett’s predictions were correct for a streak of eighteen out of nineteen years, I feel confident in asserting that his streak involved no skill whatsoever. Why? Because Leonard Koppett was a columnist for Sporting News, and his system was based on the results of the Super Bowl, the championship game of professional football. Whenever the team from the (original) National Football League won, the stock market, he predicted, would rise. Whenever the team from the (original) American Football League won, he predicted the market would go down. Given that information, few people would argue that Koppett was anything but… Read more →