1 Soul Bound
1.2 Taking Control
1.2.1 An Icy Welcome
1.2.1.11 Sharpe Lecture: know thyself
She remembered the lecture where she’d first heard about unknown unknowns.
Hanging above the door as she’d entered had been a long cardboard sign with the inscription “γνῶθι σεαυτόν”. Various people inside had their electronic devices out and were trying to search the net to find out what it meant. Most were sitting, waiting for Dr Sharpe to tell them. He didn’t.
“How much do you know?” he asked, and then paused, to give them time to think.
“It’s a tricky question, isn’t it? If I asked you how high you were, you could give a numerical answer because there are scales with well defined units. But it is harder to put a number upon knowledge or ignorance. If you restrict yourself to talking about a particular subject, such as the wonders of the ancient world, you could say how many you can name.”
“Let’s give it a try. Get out a piece of paper. In a moment I’m going to ask you to write down 2 numbers between 1 and 9 inclusive. The first number is a measure of how much you know about the wonders of the ancient world, where 0 would be total ignorance, and 10 would be total knowledge. The second number is your best guess at what the average of the first number will be for the people on your row. You have 30 seconds. Start now.”
[...]
“In the year 2000, two scientists, Dunning and Kruger, carried out a similar experiment to the one we’ve just done. They gave students a test and, before they handed back the actual marks, they asked each student for their perceptions: what they thought they’d scored. From this they were able to calculate how much each student thought there existed to know about the topic, and from there, how much each student thought remained still to be learned. Unsurprisingly, those who knew least about a subject, were also the least accurate in estimating how much there was to know about the subject. But what they didn’t expect to discover was just how extreme the effect was.” He brought up a slide:
Actual
Score
Actual
Total
(AR) Actual
Remaining
Perceived
Score
Perceived
Total
(PR) Perceived
Remaining
Ratio
AR / PR
Confidence
10
100
90
55
18
8
11.25
absurdly over confident
20
100
80
57.5
35
15
5.33
very over confident
30
100
70
60
50
20
3.50
very over confident
40
100
60
62.5
64
24
2.50
over confident
50
100
50
65
77
27
1.85
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
over confident
60
100
40
67.5
89
29
1.38
over confident
70
100
30
70
100
30
1.00
accurate
80
100
20
72.5
110
30
0.67
underconfident
90
100
10
75
120
30
0.33
very underconfident
“On average, those in the bottom 10% believed themselves to be in the top 30%.”
“They also noticed that a second effect was taking place. Let’s again take the wonders of the ancient world as our example. While there’s a well known list of 7 wonders, the places on it didn’t stabilise until the Renaissance. Earlier versions omitted some that are on the modern list, and added others, such as the walls of Babylon. And of course there’s much more to know than just what their names were. Where were they? Who built them and when? What did they look like? Who wrote each version of the list and what criteria for inclusion did they use? Whole books and theses have been written on this subject.”
“Dunning and Kruger replicated their results over more than a dozen different domains, from wine tasting to medical knowledge. And what they found was that the very top students were aware of more about the subject than the test was designed to measure. Indeed, so familiar were those students with the subject that they didn’t properly grasp how unaware many of the other students were of how much there was to know about it. Perhaps because they tended to hang around or discuss the subject mainly with other top students who found it similarly interesting. They over-estimated the knowledge of those who claimed to know lots and so, by comparison, under-estimated their own knowledge.”
“Dunning and Kruger weren’t the first to notice these effects, just the first to quantify them:”
“The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” --Socrates
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” --Darwin
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” --Shakespear
"There's always more to learn." --many sources
“Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.” --Pratchett
"Don't get cocky." --Han Solo
He waited until the laughter told him they’d reached the end of his slide before continuing.
“So what does this have to do with taking effective political action?”
“Being aware of how much relevant data you’re missing affects everything from military strategy, to resisting manipulation or interrogation, to planning reforms.”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” --Sun Tzu
“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” --Rumsfeld
“Once there is somebody out there, a system out there, an algorithm out there, that knows you better than you know yourself, the game is up. You can do something about it, not just by withholding data, but above all by improving your own understanding of yourself. The better you understand yourself, the more difficult it is to manipulate you.” --Harari
“Consider a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’ “--Chesterton
This time Dr. Sharpe carried on talking straight away.
“So how do we gain knowledge of ourselves and of the side we are upon? How do we measure the accuracy, depth or completeness of that knowledge, and compare it to what our opponents know of us?”
“The traditional answer is to judge by deeds not words. Test yourself and your side, under conditions that are as realistic as possible, to see how your skills and resolution stack up in practice.”
“This has the advantage that the more a person invests in supporting a cause, the more likely they are to believe in that cause’s rightness. Yes, the causality does flow in that direction. It’s a result of what’s known as the ‘Sunk Cost Fallacy’ which also leads people into throwing good money after bad, in the vain hope of getting at least something back from the money they’ve invested so far.”
“It’s an answer that’s been used in places ranging from Myanmar to El Salvador, to turn groups of idealistic students into hardened fighters, but it also has a number of drawbacks. Firstly, using real skirmishes to test for combat suitability leads to unnecessary fatalities. Secondly, there’s a temptation for leaders to send their forces on missions that are not as important as the leaders claim, to keep them active and deepen their commitment. When all you’ve got are hammers, every problem starts to look like a nail. Thirdly, it isn’t very good at detecting infiltrators and other traitors. The knowledge it produces is too focused.”
“The alternative approach is based around social data. Form networks, provide opportunities for individuals to get to know each other, set a culture from the start where people accept that they are expected to take responsibility for and upload data about their teammates and especially the new members they sponsor, so the group is aware of their skills, their training needs, their personality, etc. and can provide advice on where the individual can be most effective. Treat people as individuals rather than manipulate them, but set up need-to-know permission-based controls over access to information, and look for patterns that stick out. Let people opt into role or skill-slots needed for specific operations, and devolve the power to initiate ad-hoc operations to take advantage of local opportunities. Retain flexibility, and reduce the potential harm caused by bad actors. If you identify a mole she can be shifted into a position where false information can be fed to her.”
“This approach aims to improve self-knowledge through peer-feedback, more along the lines of a mentor-apprentice initiatic schooling than the less personalised mass-education and mass-testing that traditional large organisations like armies tend to go for.”
“In the ancient Greek view, Apollo and Dionysus weren’t really opponents; they complemented each other. Similarly, these two alternative approaches to answering the question are not mutually exclusive - they can be combined.”
It had been one of his more obscure lectures. He’d gone on to talk about the wisdom in always assuming there’s someone out there who is more skilled than you are, and that this might include the skill of hiding their true abilities and how many resources the side opposing you really had. She eventually realised why he thought not getting cocky was so vital for political activists when he started talking about lines of retreat and contingency planning, and how to balance it against the risks from not committing strongly enough, like when the Greek cavalry retreated during the Battle of Corinth, leaving the infantry to be slaughtered, thus dooming the Greeks City States to get taken over by the Roman Republic.
It was Wellington who found out later that the inscription above the door was a maxim from the courtyard of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the Pythia delivered her oracular messages. Dr. Sharpe liked dropping hints. Bungo suggested it was his way of sending home the message that people don’t know as much as they like to think they know. Personally, Kafana suspected that Bulgaria just really liked ancient history and mythology, but she didn’t know for sure. She hoped that knowing she didn’t know was a start, at least.
Translated, the maxim read: “Know Thyself”.