Can you think of anyone who has changed history who wasn’t a little overconfident? Steve Wozniak and Linus Torvolds—but no one nontechnical.
Could it be that overconfidence is most important when you need other people’s cooperation?
The confidence calculation in Neo’s example can also be made about other people, with similar circular logic. Imagine you have an option to either support someone, in which case they have a 17% chance of huge success, or not support them, in which case (suppose they have no other option) they have a 0% chance. If they succeed to convince you that the chance is 100%, they will actually get the 17% chance; if they fail to convince you, and you decide that a 17% chance is not worth your investment, they get 0%.
And sometimes the best way to convince other people is to believe it yourself.
Nobody likes phonies. [...] When you combine enough competence with enough confidence, the drawbacks of slight overconfidence (like arriving late to an airport) get lost in the noise.
On a competence ladder, it is easy to distinguish between people who are below you or at the same level as you… but everything above you seems similar.
If you are at level 10, “phony” refers to someone at level 9 pretending to be at level 12. But if you meet someone at level 12 pretending to be at level 20, how would you know? Your only pieces of evidence are “they say they are at level 20″ and “I see they are at level above 10”. (If you are careful, you will also notice the base rates: “people at lower levels are a priori more likely than people at higher levels”.) And maybe someone at level 13 might tell you this person is a phony, but from your perspective, it’s a word against word, who knows.
Which suggests that the optimal strategy depends on your level and the levels of people whom you are trying to impress. If you are at lower or same level, be honest about your abilities. If you are at higher level, pretend you are at least twice as high—they can’t tell the difference anyway.
And even if someone sees you fail, they can’t know whether it is a 1:1000000 situation, or 1:10. Unless they can observe you long enough to collect enough data. But by that time, everyone knows that you are the best.
Could it be that overconfidence is most important when you need other people’s cooperation?
The confidence calculation in Neo’s example can also be made about other people, with similar circular logic. Imagine you have an option to either support someone, in which case they have a 17% chance of huge success, or not support them, in which case (suppose they have no other option) they have a 0% chance. If they succeed to convince you that the chance is 100%, they will actually get the 17% chance; if they fail to convince you, and you decide that a 17% chance is not worth your investment, they get 0%.
And sometimes the best way to convince other people is to believe it yourself.
On a competence ladder, it is easy to distinguish between people who are below you or at the same level as you… but everything above you seems similar.
If you are at level 10, “phony” refers to someone at level 9 pretending to be at level 12. But if you meet someone at level 12 pretending to be at level 20, how would you know? Your only pieces of evidence are “they say they are at level 20″ and “I see they are at level above 10”. (If you are careful, you will also notice the base rates: “people at lower levels are a priori more likely than people at higher levels”.) And maybe someone at level 13 might tell you this person is a phony, but from your perspective, it’s a word against word, who knows.
Which suggests that the optimal strategy depends on your level and the levels of people whom you are trying to impress. If you are at lower or same level, be honest about your abilities. If you are at higher level, pretend you are at least twice as high—they can’t tell the difference anyway.
And even if someone sees you fail, they can’t know whether it is a 1:1000000 situation, or 1:10. Unless they can observe you long enough to collect enough data. But by that time, everyone knows that you are the best.