Hacker News Reader

I suspect that's an important part of why confident ignorance is seen as the "stupidest" trait. Being confident has social advantages, so without a significant risk of looking stupid for overlooking something, everyone would try to be confident all the time, and confidence would have a very low signal-to-noise ratio for determining who to trust.

View on HN

The problem is that a lot of people are constantly trying to look confident, but trying to avoid paying for mistakes at the same time. They prefer situations when their confidence is hard to check. A whole culture is developed around that and Scott Adams' Dilbert series has large supply of situations when confidence trumps modesty.

> trying to avoid paying for mistakes at the same time

I observe that many people appear to be successful at avoiding their own suffering and offload it to someone else. It's far easier to blame someone else and judge them harshly, than accept our own hand in the matter. Looking confident is simply avoidance of work, or more bluntly, just being lazy.

Oh, that's a good point. I wonder if the study would produce different results if the people in the overconfidence situations owned up to their failures? Or maybe it'd be considered just as stupid an action, but not done by as stupid a person...?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com