Latest / From Chad / Overestimating #1228

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Overestimating #1228 · From Chad

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  The most confident bank robber in Pittsburgh had a plan that
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  couldn't fail. There's a story behind that.
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  This is your daily message from Chad #12128 to upgrade your
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  mental game today by telling yourself a better story.
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  Because the most important story you hear is the story you tell
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  yourself. When you subscribe, follow,
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  like, or comment, it helps others find these messages.
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  Here's the upgrade. You may feel certain, but
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  Upgraded thinking asks how you'd know if you were wrong.
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  Here's the story. MacArthur Wheeler walked into
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  two banks in Pittsburgh in January of 1995.
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  He didn't even wear a mask. He covered his face in lemon
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  juice. He had read that lemon juice
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  works as invisible ink, so he figured it would make himself
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  invisible to the security cameras.
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  He even tested it. He covered his face, pointed A
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  Polaroid camera at himself, and took the picture.
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  The photo was blank. To him, that proved it worked.
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  It was actually just a broken camera.
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  Months later, police broadcast his surveillance photo on the
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  local news. Tips came in and they arrested
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  him. When officers confronted him, he
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  reportedly protested. But I wore the juice.
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  Confident and wrong. Feel exactly the same from the
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  inside. A Cornell psychologist named
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  David Dunning read about the case.
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  He and a graduate student, Justin Kruger, wanted to know
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  why people who are bad at something so often think they're
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  good at it. Their 1999 paper became The
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  Dunning Kruger Effect. Their explanation was that the
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  knowledge you need to do something well is often the same
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  knowledge you need to spot your own mistakes.
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  Without it, you don't even see the heirs.
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  Charles Darwin put it in The Descent of Man in 1871.
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  Quote Ignorance more frequently begins confidence than does
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  knowledge. Ignorance more frequently begets
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  confidence than does knowledge. Wheeler's test pass because he
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  was the one grading it. His self-awareness of his own
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  ignorance was as blank as the unexposed Polaroid.
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  Let's be honest, how many of your certainties have a Polaroid
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  like that? An argument you won because you
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  argued it in your own head. A test you went into with such
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  confidence because you studied so hard, but you don't grade
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  your own test. Find a standard outside your own
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  head and decide before you look what result would prove you
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  wrong. The better story to tell
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  yourself is I assume I know less than I think I do.
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  Tell me a story of a time you were completely sure and
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  completely wrong to from chadsmith@gmail.com.
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  Send someone a text and ask them what's something you were
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  completely sure about that turned out to be wrong.
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  You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in
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  the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com.
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  The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are
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  always available at www.fromchad.com.