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UNDERTHINK

                                       April 24, 2011

There seems to be a trend in
current thinking among               There seem to be periodic
intellectuals to justify             waves like this...
anti-intellectualism.

There's practically an entire
genre of books like this... no
one knows anything, so you should
just *go for it*, trust your gut,
show up those damn eggheads for
daring to doubt your daring feats             DARK_HOPE
of intuitive leaps...
                                        BLACK_SWAN


   There's that "Wisdom of Crowds"
   result, that purports to show that     Somewhat tempered by
   an average of guesses from the         recent results showing
   un-trained out performs an average     that even a small amount
   of experts.                            of social "contamination"
                                          produces a group-think
                                          effect, and queers the
                                          advantage of the "crowd".



   Similarly, Philip Tetlock argues that
   "Foxes" are better than "Hedgehogs" in
   their forecasts of the future, and he      (But doesn't that make him
   also has data to back up the point.        one of the Hedgehogs who we
                                              shouldn't trust to get
                                              anything right?)



       Dreyfus and Kelly in           David Brooks,
       "All Things Shining"           "The Social Animal"
       *say* that they don't          ref
       want to be encourage
       the Confident Man, but
       how could they not?
                                      ALL_THINGS_SHINING


                     And there's that
                     Malcolm Gladwell book,
                     "Drink".  I mean, "Blink".



                                                   Stupid is the new smart.


                                                   UNINTENDED



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