Skip to main content

Home/ Critical Thinking/ Group items tagged wrong

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
David McGavock

Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong | Video on TED.com - 1 views

www.ted.com/...ryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html

behavior critical_thinking wrong failure TED wonder

shared by David McGavock on 28 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • So what I want to do today is, first of all, talk about why we get stuck inside this feeling of being right. And second, why it's such a problem. And finally, I want to convince you that it is possible to step outside of that feeling and that if you can do so, it is the single greatest moral, intellectual and creative leap you can make.
  • Augustine understood that our capacity to screw up, it's not some kind of embarrassing defect in the human system, something we can eradicate or overcome.
  • This attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to and causes us to treat each other terribly.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • But when it comes down to me, right now, to all the beliefs I hold, here in the present tense, suddenly all of this abstract appreciation of fallibility goes out the window -- and I can't actually think of anything I'm wrong about.
  • You know, we're already wrong, we're already in trouble, but we feel like we're on solid ground. So I should actually correct something I said a moment ago. It does feel like something to be wrong; it feels like being right.
  • according to this, getting something wrong means there's something wrong with us. So we just insist that we're right, because it makes us feel smart and responsible and virtuous and safe.
  • The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.
  • when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes.
  • And to me, if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, "Wow, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong."
  • most of us do everything we can to avoid thinking about being wrong, or at least to avoid thinking about the possibility that we ourselves are wrong.
  • So by the time you are nine years old, you've already learned, first of all, that people who get stuff wrong are lazy, irresponsible dimwits -- and second of all, that the way to succeed in life is to never make any mistakes.
  • The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they're ignorant. They don't have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they're going to see the light and come on over to our team.
  • trusting too much in the feeling of being on the correct side of anything can be very dangerous.
  • And the thing is," says Ira Glass, "we need this. We need these moments of surprise and reversal and wrongness to make these stories work." And for the rest of us, audience members, as listeners, as readers, we eat this stuff up. We love things like plot twists and red herrings and surprise endings. When it comes to our stories, we love being wrong.
  • This internal sense of rightness that we all experience so often is not a reliable guide to what is actually going on in the external world. And when we act like it is, and we stop entertaining the possibility that we could be wrong, well that's when we end up doing things like dumping 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, or torpedoing the global economy.
  • I've spent the last five years thinking about being wrong.
  • When that doesn't work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they're idiots.
  • David McGavock on 28 Dec 12
     
     if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, "Wow, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong."
Enrique Rubio Royo

The Adolescent Brain | Conversation | Edge - 1 views

www.edge.org/...the-adolescent-brain

neurociencia cerebro aprendizaje adolescentes plasticidad educacion docencia

shared by Enrique Rubio Royo on 08 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are
  • the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers.
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers.
  • e brain is so
  • e brain is so
  • e brain is so
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • Enrique Rubio Royo on 08 Jun 12
     
    "The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers."
David McGavock

Wanna Solve Impossible Problems? Find Ways to Fail Quicker | Co.Design - 2 views

www.fastcodesign.com/...lems-find-ways-to-fail-quicker

design solve problems thinking evaluate critical critical_thinking

shared by David McGavock on 11 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • a British industry magnate by the name of Henry Kremer wondered: Could an airplane fly powered only by the pilot's body? Like Da Vinci, Kremer believed it was possible and decided to try to turn his dream into reality. He offered the staggering sum of £50,000 for the first person to build a human-powered plane that could fly a figure eight around two markers set a half-mile apart.
  • A decade went by. Dozens of teams tried and failed to build an airplane that could meet the requirements. It looked impossible.
  • MacCready’s insight was that everyone who was working on solving human-powered flight would spend upwards of a year building an airplane on conjecture and theory without a base of knowledge based on empirical tests. Triumphantly, they would complete their plane and wheel it out for a test flight. Minutes later, a year's worth of work would smash into the ground.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The problem was the problem. MacCready realized that what needed to be solved was not, in fact, human-powered flight. That was a red herring. The problem was the process itself.
  • He came up with a new problem that he set out to solve: How can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours, not months? And he did.
  • MacCready’s Gossamer Condor flew 2,172 meters to win the prize. A little more than a year after that, the Gossamer Albatross flew across the English Channel.
  • So what's the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
  • David McGavock on 11 Apr 11
     
    "Wanna Solve Impossible Problems? Find Ways to Fail Quicker A case study in how an intractable problem -- creating a human-powered airplane -- was solved by reframing the problem. " So what's the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
Julie Shy

3rd World Farmer: A simulation to make you think. - 4 views

www.3rdworldfarmer.com/index.html

simulation interactive social_studies_elementary social_studies_high_school social_studies_middle_school

shared by Julie Shy on 10 Apr 12 - Cached
  • Julie Shy on 10 Apr 12
     
    3rd World Farmer is a new kind of game. An experiment in the genre of Serious Games, it simulates some of the real-world mechanisms that cause and sustain poverty in 3rd World countries. In the game, the player gets to manage an African farm and is soon confronted with the difficult choices that poverty and conflict can cause. As a farm and family management game it has an emotional impact on many players because usually these types of games play out in much easier settings, where it's always possible to prosper by playing cleverly and making the right game choices. It's not always like that in 3rd World Farmer. Just like real people are dying from starvation in desperate situations that they never asked to be put in, all it takes for things to go wrong in this game is one bad harvest, an unfortunate encounter with corrupt officials, a raid by guerillas, a civil war, a sudden fluctuation in market prices, or any of the many other game events, that might never happen to families in industrialized countries. By letting players experience this - albeit in a harmless, fictional setting - we hope to open their eyes to the problems and to motivate them to make positive social change. Our aim is to have everybody play the game, reflect, discuss and act on it. The game is a great starting point for discussions of 3rd World issues, so we encourage teachers to use it in class.
David McGavock

A Speculative Post on the Idea of Algorithmic Authority « Clay Shirky - 1 views

www.shirky.com/...-idea-of-algorithmic-authority

shirky trust authority community evaluate critical_thinking crap detection

shared by David McGavock on 10 Feb 11 - Cached
  • people trust new classes of aggregators and filters, whether Google or Twitter or Wikipedia
  • algorithmic authority
  • do I have certification from an institution that will vouch for my knowledge of Eastern Europe?
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The social characteristic of deciding who to trust is a key feature of authority
  • information that can’t be evaluated independently
  • information that is correct by definition
  • authorities making untestable propositions
  • Why would you feel less silly getting the same wrong information from Britannica than from me? Because Britannica is an authoritative source.
  • Like everything social, this is not a problem with a solution, just a dilemma with various equilibrium states, each of which in turn has characteristic disadvantages.)
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 10 Feb 11
       
      "Not a problem with a solution" - there's something very freeing about that idea. So often we try and fix nature and our social "states" but they are too dynamic for a fix.
  • Algorithmic authority
  • it takes in material from multiple sources, which sources themselves are not universally vetted for their trustworthiness, and it combines those sources in a way that doesn’t rely on any human manager to sign off on the results before they are published.
  • just an information tool.
  • people come to trust it.
  • produces good results
  • people become aware not just of their own trust but of the trust of others:
  • his is the transition to algorithmic authority.
  • spectrum of authority
  • Good enough to settle a bar bet
  • Evidence to include in a dissertation defense
  • he criticism that Wikipedia, say, is not an “authoritative source” is an attempt to end the debate by hiding the fact that authority is a social agreement,
  • David McGavock on 10 Feb 11
     
    "Algorithmic authority is the decision to regard as authoritative an unmanaged process of extracting value from diverse, untrustworthy sources, without any human standing beside the result saying "Trust this because you trust me." This model of authority differs from personal or institutional authority, and has, I think, three critical characteristics. "
1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20▼ items per page