Or was I supposed to say, “first?”

You sound very confident about this claim.

You know who does? Fox News. They claim to be an objective news source. That is their claim. Fair and balanced.

How do you think they are performing on that claim? Why not tell them? Let us know how you go.

It makes you want to shake them by the collar and scream about how stupid they are. But evidence shows that’s not the best strategy.

Do they then go on to explain what the best strategy is? Because I’m going to go postal if I get in too many more arguments with climate change denialists or IDers.

An adult leads by example, confident in his knowledge that he doesn’t have to prove everything to an impetuous child, because they will learn for themselves eventually, or prove that they never could have been convinced anyway by failing to adapt in the face of failure. What better way to prove Darwinian Evolution than to quietly allow those who are correct to prosper and those who are incorrect to flounder?

Second, they’re both regarded as inarticulate, barely-educated idiots by virtually everyone except their US partisans.

Third, there’s a difference between citing individual examples of idiocy and lobbing epithets willy-nilly at democrats/republicans/liberals/conservatives.

Well, for the love of Shatner what is the best strategy (besides throwing millions of dollars at a professional PR firm to astroturf the opposition)? I know I can present evidence and studies and reasoned debate till I’m blue in the face, but that’s pretty boring stuff. I’ve learned by experience that there’s no way to drill through the truthiness of pop culture conspiracy theories because they’re romantic and exciting. Lots of people think science is boring stuff for eggheads and pocket protectors and playing D&D (of course, I live in Virginia so this is to be expected). Like Nero Wolfe, I cannot open their skulls to remove the offending brain cells.

In particular I remember footage of a class taught at a top-flight management school(Harvard i thynk)wherein the ‘managers’ were taught to make snap decisions and refuse to budge to evidence; also a class in which ‘lawyers’ were taught to make credible sounding noise in defense of briefs they had not read. I came away from these revelations thinking about the Guillotine.(i may be harboring a bit of ‘hostility’)

I am forced to agree with those who assert that this wisdom is both old and ubiquitous among the wise in any time. I will not be calling it by the names of these two researchers unless it is a rhetorical requirement in an argument. They taught me this in Sunday school; I learn it again and again as I study philosophy; As I argue with my drunk friends I get the lesson trod deeply across my floors.

There are dimensions to this which we are not noticing. This is why I am nonplussed at this new ‘research finding’; to me the drive for overconfidence is connected with sex more than with competence at work. I believe that we have allowed these to become conflated and we will now suffer a decline as a result. When the whims of every person matter according to the noise they make, sex swamps out all things in importance. In that instance, cocksure is the *right* thing(right ladies?)and in a society that cares about nothing but sex we can expect the thoughtful to be edged out of positions of power.

critiquing the research on this – and more so, the blogging/press about it. Subsequent papers cast doubt on the effect, but they don’t get nearly as much coverage.

(found this via Vaughan Bell http://twitter.com/vaughanbell of the excellent Mindhacks blog)

Perhaps he was missing “the juice”…

If you put the two together, it goes a long way towards explaining why life in Corporate America is like Dilbert.

Doubt seems like a useful heuristic for self-evaluation and for further learning: but I’ve yet to see a talented person who overindulges in doubts about their competence, skills, etc. work either very happily or well. A reasonable and hard-earned confidence is a gift to oneself, and to others: it allows us to be productive and joyous, two not-bad things in this difficult world.

My trick is to use information, terminology, sources, etc that they’ve already put in the trusted pile. Tough to do, because you have to know the person pretty well. And you are not going to get them to change their mind. But you can, for just an instant, get them to see both sides. It’s a start.

Take for instance the 6000 year earth. They take that as a sign of God’s power. I remind them of biblical quotes of God’s disregard for time. And I point out that creating the earth in 7 days and only having it up and running for 6000 years is weak compared creating the universe with a single act 14 billion years ago and planning ahead by that much time to produce us today. That’s omnipotence. Are they saying God is weak?

Arguments like that

–W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”