The Illusion of Information Adequacy

journals.plos.org

29 points·omk··7 comments

> they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation

Is this not the Central Limit Theorem[1] ?

Nobody this side of Eternity is working with a full data set.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem

Isn't this just restating the Dunning-Kruger effect?

Without sufficient domain knowledge you don't even know you don't have the right data, perspectives, or even know the apparent obvious paths that are actually blind alleys in a subject. Every field of human knowledge is full of these.

Yeah. It made me think of anosognosia -- a condition in which a person with a disability is cognitively unaware of having it (due to an underlying physical condition). Taking the Latin more literally, it's basically "ignorance of one's ignorance". Which is applicable to any number of human endeavors (maybe all of them).

My interpretation: Illusion of information relates to adequacy when evaluating if you have all the necessary information, leading to potential misunderstandings or misinformed decisions because of unseen gaps in knowledge.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is about misjudging your own abilities, leading to overconfidence in tasks or self-rated knowledge of domains.

Both tries to explain why people make mistakes, but one through the lens of cognition and information processing, the other to through arrogance and level of domain expertise.

If these concepts are useful is another matter.

Telling someone they have the illusion of information adequacy is how smart people call people dumb.

There used to be a difference between stupidity and ignorance. Modern usage seems to blur them.

And make themselves that way, recursively.

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