Meet inside The Shops at Waterloo Town Square - we will congregate in the seating area next to the Valu-Mart with the trees sticking out in the middle of the benches at 7pm for 15 minutes, and then head over to my nearby apartment's amenity room. If you've been around a few times, feel free to meet up at my apartment front door for 7:30 instead. (There is free city parking at Bridgeport and Regina, 22 Bridgeport Rd E.)
Readings
This week we'll be investigating ideas that we think we know better than we do, and practicing noticing confusion.
This is a fun and readable paper that's important enough to have a Wikipedia page. In short, the researchers got yale undergrads to rate like on a scale of 1-7 how much they think they understood something, and then asked them to explain it in detail, and then asked them to rate it again. The second time around the students give lower ratings (like, 4 compared to 2.5). I think Dan Luu might have reinvented the concept of explanatory depth somewhat, but also his idea is for midwits and the paper is for everyone :P
Activity
Along with general discussion of the reading, I was hoping to do a variant of the activity from the paper. Let's see if knowing about this phenomenon beforehand saves people from falling to the same fallacy >:)
Secondly, let's share what cocktail party tier ideas our own professions/hobbies/interests tend to be subject to, and what the actual realities tend to be.
Meet inside The Shops at Waterloo Town Square - we will congregate in the seating area next to the Valu-Mart with the trees sticking out in the middle of the benches at 7pm for 15 minutes, and then head over to my nearby apartment's amenity room. If you've been around a few times, feel free to meet up at my apartment front door for 7:30 instead. (There is free city parking at Bridgeport and Regina, 22 Bridgeport Rd E.)
Readings
This week we'll be investigating ideas that we think we know better than we do, and practicing noticing confusion.
Required: Cocktail party ideas (Dan Luu, 2022)
Dan's website formatting sucks, consider using reader view on Firefox or its equivalent on another browser.
Optional: The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth
This is a fun and readable paper that's important enough to have a Wikipedia page. In short, the researchers got yale undergrads to rate like on a scale of 1-7 how much they think they understood something, and then asked them to explain it in detail, and then asked them to rate it again. The second time around the students give lower ratings (like, 4 compared to 2.5). I think Dan Luu might have reinvented the concept of explanatory depth somewhat, but also his idea is for midwits and the paper is for everyone :P
Activity
Along with general discussion of the reading, I was hoping to do a variant of the activity from the paper. Let's see if knowing about this phenomenon beforehand saves people from falling to the same fallacy >:)
Secondly, let's share what cocktail party tier ideas our own professions/hobbies/interests tend to be subject to, and what the actual realities tend to be.