From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 11 2001 - 07:50:49 MDT
At 05:11 AM 7/11/2001 -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> > To me one of the great tragedies of the human condition is
> > that the young largely ignore advice from the old.
>
>This is easily explained by the problem that one cannot transmit
>(with full emotional impact) the realizations associated with
>personal experiences, e.g. (a).
This only explains it if the young are so consistently stupid that
they cannot realize that they have this bias and consciously
overcome it. Did you fail to learn physics because the text
did not transmit with enough emotional impact? How about typing?
> > Another tragedy is that people are overconfident in their own
> > wisdom relative to that of other people.
>
>If you are "alive", your own wisdom has proved itself to be a
>"reliable" guide. One has no certainty that the acceptance of
>other's wisdom would be so successful.
The other people are alive too.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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