Posted on 02/19/2011 7:10:05 PM PST by dennisw
Charles Darwin observed “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” That was certainly true in 1995 when a man named McArthur Wheeler boldly robbed two banks in Pittsburgh without using a disguise. Security camera footage of him was broadcast on the evening news the same day as the robberies, and he was arrested an hour later. Mr. Wheeler was surprised when the police explained how they had used the surveillance tapes to catch him. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled incredulously. He seemed to believe that rubbing his face with lemon juice would blur his image and make him impossible to catch.
In movies, criminal masterminds often are geniuses, James Bond villains in volcano lairs. But the stereotype doesn’t apply to actual cons, at least not the ones who get caught.
Studies show those convicted of crimes are, on average, less intelligent than non-criminals.
Sixty-six-year-old Samuel Porter tried to pass a one-million-dollar bill at a supermarket in the United States and became irate when the cashier wouldn’t make change for him. All these people seem to have been under what we call the “illusion of confidence,” which is the persistent belief that we are more skilled than we really are — in this case, that the criminals were so good they would not get caught.
This tendency for the least skilled among us to overestimate their abilities the most has more serious consequences than an inflated sense of humor or chess ability. Everyone has encountered obliviously incompetent managers who make life miserable for their underlings because they suffer from the illusion of confidence. And as the joke reminds us, the people who graduate last in their medical school class are still doctors; what is less funny is that they probably believe they are still the best ones.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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OK...
Smart ones don't get convicted. QED.
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Wall Streeters don't get convicted ....
It ain’t lemon juice which produces invisibility, it’s “Takeela”. In my youth I was sometimes invisible for hours.
I supervised a guy with vast quantities of unjustifiable self-esteem. He was arrogant, untrainable, a chronic liar and a thief. He was and incompetent employee and an even worse thief.
Ten years after I fired him for theft, I saw him working behind the counter at McDonalds. No doubt, he thinks he’s the best employee McDonalds has ever had.
The “bullet-proof” magic is actually pretty common. The Ghost Dancer Indians in 1890s America and the Boxers in China around the same time believed the same thing, among others around the world.
It always turned out the evil white man’s bullets hadn’t got the news.
“I’m going to try that lemon juice trick. I think maybe either he didn’t rub it all over his face or he didn’t say the magic words. Invisibility is one of my most prized assets.”
Don’t forget that the lemon juice might not have been entirely fresh, either. Or he might have used lemons that were on the verge of spoiling, or maybe they weren’t ripe enough. I suspect this lemon juice thing might be a tad trickier than it appears on its face.
Level 1 – Unconscious Incompetence
(You Don’t Know that You Don’t Know)
Level 2 – Conscious Incompetence
(You Know that You Don’t Know)
Level 3 – Conscious Competence
(You Know that You Know)
Level 4 – Unconscious Competence
(You Don’t Know that You Know – It Just Seems Easy!)
Interesting. Sounds like it merits a read.
B I N G O !!!!!!
One reason I loved Simon so much was that he was absolutely honest with those contestants. Maybe part of the problem is that people of marginal abilities are praised, rather than being instructed on how to self-assess and thus determine how to do things better. (Although with singing, if a person can't carry a tune, no amount of coaching is going to help.)
This is the problem that coaches have all the time.
Overconfidence. The belief that you can’t be beaten or replaced.
In competitive athletics, unlike academia, one eventually discovers his true abilities, or lack thereof.
I was constantly fighting the urge to tell my close friend that his kid just wasn’t that good (he thought his kid was a superstar who was being shafted by the coach.) Eventually his kid quit the basketball team because he wasn’t starting. His dad, my friend, had urged him to quit. The ironic thing is, due to injuries from other players, his kid would have ended up starting. So my friend shafted his own child.
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