21. Simplicity, Complexity, and Democracy

2014-04-02

It’s very easy to extrapolate large systems of thought from a few facts…and often dangerously wrong, especially for people who live in democracies. Find out why you should be wary of the Dunning-Kruger effect and its implications for how you think about complicated issues.

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The original Dunning-Kruger paper, entitled “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” - https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~suh/metacognition.pdf

A great piece on Plato’s geometric solids and theory of matter, part of a series titled “Beautiful Losers” - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2011/12/beautiful-losers-platos-geometry-of-elements/

Hank Green’s original vlogbrothers video about the truth resisting simplicity, where he quotes John’s coining of the phrase - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH28G0_vTpg

An article from Megan McArtle at the Atlantic about the dangers of trusting infographics (complete with infographic) - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/ending-the-infographic-plague/250474/

A perfect xkcd comic illustrating this phenomenon - http://xkcd.com/793/

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