Confidence is Risky

Dunning-Kruger effect?

Life is risky.

Quoting Wheatley

I wholeheartedly agree with the aphorism: "question everything"

What if over the long run this heuristic is detracting from life, but it's hard for you to notice because your focused on the trees and not the forest.
Quoting Wheatley

There are dangers to being confident.

There certainly can be. There are dangers in not being confident. There is a lot of 'it depends' in this. But I think it is a good goal to be confident. Not some armoured version of it, where feedback and mistakes and threats cannot be noticed.

Quoting Wheatley

If you act confident and get good feedback, you become more confident; on the flip side, if you act confident and get bad feedback, you become less confident.

That is the hardest part of being an entrepreneur or anybody else pursuing his own thing.

It is preferable to take feedback only from people with skin in the game. For example, if none of your prospective customers wants to buy your new product, then their feedback is relevant. From anybody else, their feedback is actually irrelevant.

So, you have to carefully consider that most feedback is actually worthless.

Furthermore, we had better be aware of the fact that we will generally receive lots of unsolicited feedback from bystanders who are merely sitting on the fence. Their ideas are usually not even really theirs. They are often merely repeating mainstream propaganda.

Quoting Wheatley

If you act confident and get good feedback, you become more confident; on the flip side, if you act confident and get bad feedback, you become less confident.

I would say that someone who responds in such a way to negative feedback is not actually confident.

True confidence isn't just about believing in one's own capabilities, but also the acceptance of one's own imperfections.

Quoting TheMadFool

Dunning-Kruger effect?

Everyone needs to start with some confidence to play the game, hence the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Quoting Coben

What if over the long run this heuristic is detracting from life, but it's hard for you to notice because your focused on the trees and not the forest.

What if my confidence in that heuristic just went down? :joke:

Quoting alcontali

It is preferable to take feedback only from people with skin in the game.

Quoting alcontali

Furthermore, we had better be aware of the fact that we will generally receive lots of unsolicited feedback from bystanders who are merely sitting on the fence. Their ideas are usually not even really theirs. They are often merely repeating mainstream propaganda.

Really good points.

Quoting Tzeentch

I would say that someone who responds in such a way to negative feedback is not actually confident.

There are many different conceptions of confidence.

Quoting Tzeentch

True confidence isn't just about believing in one's own capabilities, but also the acceptance of one's own imperfections.

Isn't that called humility? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Quoting A Seagull

Life is risky.

It sure is.

Reply to Wheatley LOL
but it's your net confidence and how well your confidence fits the context - your skills in particular area, you ability to assess threats and more - that matter.

Quoting Wheatley

Everyone needs to start with some confidence to play the game, hence the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I find the confidence-risk association best illustrated by the Dunning-Kruger effect. An incompetent person acts with confidence and that, in my humble opinion, can land the person in trouble, put faer in risky situations. A competent individual too acts with confidence but faers competence will probably offset the risk involved effectively.

What could be the basis of confidence anyway? As far as I can see, given a set of assumptions subject to logic, we can be certain/confident, to varying degrees, that some conclusion is entailed. However, every assumption we make is a sitting duck to the skeptic; any edifice of knowledge is ultimately built on a foundation of doubt as the skeptic will happily point out.

Confidence shouldn't exist; skepticism will not allow it and skepticism is the essence of philosophy and life itself in general. How many times have you heard people advise their friends, "don't believe everything you're told".

Quoting TheMadFool

Confidence shouldn't exist

Sounds like analysis paralysis:

Quoting Wikipedia on analysis paralysis

Analysis paralysis (or paralysis by analysis) describes an individual or group process when overanalyzing or overthinking a situation can cause forward motion or decision-making to become "paralyzed", meaning that no solution or course of action is decided upon.

Quoting TheMadFool

What could be the basis of confidence anyway?

The fact that you have to survive anyway and that you could as well excel at doing so.

Quoting TheMadFool

skepticism is the essence of philosophy and life itself in general

We have to believe something.

If nothing is assumed, then nothing can be concluded.

Hence, it is our basic beliefs that drive our rational thinking. From these basic beliefs, we can derive an entire system of conclusions. Therefore, it is faith in basic beliefs that propels life forward.

Faith is actually very powerful. We achieve things, first and foremost, because we believe that we can.

Skepticism obviously has its place.

However, skepticism about basic beliefs is just a silly and worthless exercise in infinite regress. It is obvious that from within a system, we cannot justify the basic beliefs from which the system itself is constructed.

Quite a bit of philosophy is indeed like that and revolves around questioning basic beliefs. That kind of philosophy achieves absolutely nothing. It is based on a complete misunderstanding of what rationality -- derivation of conclusions that ultimately rest on basic beliefs -- is supposed to be. It is ultimately the failure to rationally understand why the existence of basic beliefs is inevitable.

Reply to alcontali Indeed I accept the necessity for what you call basic beliefs if we're ever to claim any kind of knowledge at all. Skepticism doesn't deny the possibility of knowledge, just certain knowledge. Confidence, the way I understand it, is based not on knowledge itself but on the certainty of knowledge. Ergo, being confident is always a flaw for, as the skeptic reminds us, certainty is impossible.

Quoting TheMadFool

Ergo, being confident is always a flaw for, as the skeptic reminds us, certainty is impossible.

I suppose it is possible confidence is problematic is one is specifically waxing philosophical. But in general there are many situations where confidence improves your chances of success. Even something as simple as the act of walking requires confidence that the ground is there, that you can manage to walk, and so on. And the more challenging the walk, the more important fundamental certainties are. Which would include confidence in one's own ability to notice anomalies in the terrain that might be dangerous. There are all sorts of skills/activities where one does not want to have thinky doubts while performing them, this can be dangerous. Of course if you do not have enough skills to be safe, then doubting the wisdom of certain acts is healthy, but once engaged lack of confidence can be problematic. There's a difference between pondering potential metaphysical exceptions and what might be illusions on certain occasions. The action of investigating ontology or whatever when one has the luxury of a safe environment and no physical goals and one is interested in doing that is not at all appropriate in many types of situations. A baseball players making sure to include some Zeno inspired doubt about the possibiity of motion while standing and the plate waiting for a pitch is reducing his or her chances of getting a hit. Factory workers would be increasing their risk of injury. And so on.

Humans must have a diverse set of heuristics and context is important. Asterisks and doubt are not appropriate things in many situations. Confidence is pretty much a must for any type of new knowledge creation or top range performance. Likely it is good in times of training and mulling to have moments of epistemological caution about certains specific conclusions - is my training program the one best fitting me? or whatever - but if one is trying to invent something new, especially paradigmatically knew fostering doubt is something that needs to be set aside for long long periods of time. And to truly excel, you need to have high volumes of periods where you are confident.

Quoting Coben

I suppose it is possible confidence is problematic is one is specifically waxing philosophical. But in general there are many situations where confidence improves your chances of success. Even something as simple as the act of walking requires confidence that the ground is there, that you can manage to walk, and so on. And the more challenging the walk, the more important fundamental certainties are. Which would include confidence in one's own ability to notice anomalies in the terrain that might be dangerous. There are all sorts of skills/activities where one does not want to have thinky doubts while performing them, this can be dangerous. Of course if you do not have enough skills to be safe, then doubting the wisdom of certain acts is healthy, but once engaged lack of confidence can be problematic. There's a difference between pondering potential metaphysical exceptions and what might be illusions on certain occasions. The action of investigating ontology or whatever when one has the luxury of a safe environment and no physical goals and one is interested in doing that is not at all appropriate in many types of situations. A baseball players making sure to include some Zeno inspired doubt about the possibiity of motion while standing and the plate waiting for a pitch is reducing his or her chances of getting a hit. Factory workers would be increasing their risk of injury. And so on.

Humans must have a diverse set of heuristics and context is important. Asterisks and doubt are not appropriate things in many situations. Confidence is pretty much a must for any type of new knowledge creation or top range performance. Likely it is good in times of training and mulling to have moments of epistemological caution about certains specific conclusions - is my training program the one best fitting me? or whatever - but if one is trying to invent something new, especially paradigmatically knew fostering doubt is something that needs to be set aside for long long periods of time. And to truly excel, you need to have high volumes of periods where you are confident.

Thanks for your comments and I believe it reveals, in a very narrow sense, a fundamental problem with confidence. The word "confidence" in the OP is being used as a specific counter to skepticism: the OP reads "I wholeheartedly agree with the aphorism: "question everything".. That being the case my position is that skepticism, herein meant as an attitude of doubt, not only has benefits in terms of maintaining good standards of truth but also defies any solution; after all, we can always ask the question "is this claim true beyond a shadow of a doubt?" The answer will depend on your standard of truth but the problem is that such a standard itself is subject to doubt and with the fact that all that you know is subject to this standard we have: the problem of the criterion. I believe there are ways to get around this difficulty but I'm not aware what exactly they are. As of the present moment then I consider skepticism an irrefutable position.

Coming to the issue of confidence, my interpretation of the concept is, hopefully in line with its lexical definition, that confidence is nothing more than the belief, whatever this belief causes,that what one knows is not only true but also certainly true. This state of mind, confidence, requires for there to be a solution to the problem of the criterion which, to my knowledge, isn't the case. Ergo, confidence is unjustified.

As for the instances you mention for the necessity for confidence at some level even in the simple acts of walking, playing baseball, etc. I agree that it's true. However, the requirement for confidence in such cases makes sense only if it's the case that the skeptic will be paralyzed in these situations, faers doubts blocking every thought and every action. This isn't true: we may doubt, even radically so, but we can, without the slightest difficulty, walk, talk, play baseball, etc

Quoting TheMadFool

As of the present moment then I consider skepticism an irrefutable position.

I think you are acknowledging the problem that this sentence presents, but I am not sure. To me context is important. Being skeptical as an activity, since positions are actually activities, can be good or problematic. It depends. I could spend 40% of my day wondering if my wife is as nice as I generally assume. I think that's way too much. That I once in a while consider that there is a problem I am not willing to look at in the relationship, that she is responsible for, could be useful. Running around telling people our love is perfect might also be problematic. To me without presenting a context, an assertion like the one I quoted above isn't clear and probably is misleading, since it avoids the whole issue of application. But perhaps this is what you meant by 'the problem of the criterion'. And I do appreciate the probing, exploratory feel of your post.Quoting TheMadFool

This isn't true: we may doubt, even radically so, but we can, without the slightest difficulty, walk, talk, play baseball, etc

Not at the same time. If you doubt and play baseball at the same time you will play it worse. That's pretty much scientifically demonstrated. If you are engaged in the activity of doubting while doing a vast range of things, you will perform them at a lower level.

I think there are a couple of reifications going on here. 'I am a skeptic.' or 'Scepticism is irrefutable' have open and hidden reifications. In fact being skeptical is an activity and no skeptic engages in it all the time, and good for them not going this. In fact if all they were was skeptical they could certainly never decide skepticism was a good thing, since they would be engaged in an infinite regress. For the purposes of their skeptical evaulation of something, they would have to accept certain things as given: such as my memory is generally accurate, my evaluations of logic and evidence are generally accurate. And so on. I think there is a confusion of an occasional epistemological position taking with what one is all the time. or what one is doing all the time. These are actions, not states. And if you take the action of being skeptical while doing all sorts of things, you are in for all sorts of problems. If you very rarely are confident in your assumptions, you will have all sorts of problems. I can walk on the baseball field or into an office or an argument and be confident, not doubt myself - and professionals must do this to perform well. Later at other times they can reflect on their decisions. Only very rarely needs they wonder if we are actually brains in vats or if some other assumptions might be false. I certainly don't want my surgeon mulling over that stuff if she's performing a tricky bypass on my heart or even second guessing as a rule her decisions. Confidence is a must for all sorts of high skill stuff. But here's the thing, so many things we do and take for granted are high skill activities, many we have tremendous trouble managing to get machines to perform.

I think people often imagine their philosophical positions in the abstract. Here in situ we be skeptics all the time, and on many issues we need not have any doubt the vast majority of the time. Some details and portions are good to reflect over

at
other times.

But in action, confidence is a must.

I am complex. Belief is not binary. I can be totally confident in a situations and then later be skeptical about the assumptions even though they worked so well.