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Flames a fanning...
Jul. 23rd, 2012 05:18 pmOver at the Scalzi place. He posted something about the people and services he'd relied on in his life. It took a little while before the angry libertarian mob turned up, which was interesting and they're now starting the usual rhetoric.
I don't know what spurred his post, I suspect it's the current Brouhaha about what President Obama did or didn't say about businesses. But, to put my spin on that, if you think the President said you didn't build your own business then you're a fucking moron. It was quite obvious what he said and about as controversial a statement as "the sun rises in the east" or "night follows day" - but fuck wits abound and a lot of them seem to be Libertarians and/or Objectivists.
I'm minded of a problem I had with a certain J.Bassior and his ilk some years ago in conjunction with a discussion of the Dunning Kruger effect. I was posting a list of things I'm not good at. Now in the discussion a while back, I got a drive by flaming from various people sent via JB to explain how I was basically a fucking moron for not being able to do X or Y - which amused me no end, given what the D-K Effect describes.
One of the things I'd mentioned I'm not good at is welding. In the drive-by some guy called FordPrefect42 explained how anybody could weld. Really? Funny because I know a few people who weld for a living and there's quite a bit of a difference between welding a couple of bits of metal together and actually doing it well. For the record, I can Gas and Arc weld with the worst of them and if your sole goal is to stick a couple of chunks of mild steel together for a while, then it's actually pretty straight forward. If you want to do it well, however, and you need to work with stuff that isn't just mild steel, then it's years of experience and training you need. There's multiple different types of welding which can be used in different circumstances... then there's the behaviours of different metals as you weld them - for the record Aluminium and Stainless Steel are not easy to weld at all.
And all this comes back to the kind of Cognitive Dissonance I'm starting to see over on Scalzi's Blog when it comes to people feeling that they have succeeded because of nothing but their own abilities or actions, it's usually because they're missing a few steps or just overlooking things that they used. I think Monty Python summed it all up perfectly with "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
On a last note, I think it has been remarked that to become truly good at something needs something like 10,000 hours of effort at learning and doing - that's 5-8 years for most humans of full time effort. Even then, in some disciplines you'll probably only then be in a position to know what you're good at AND what you're bad at. The problem the D-K Effect sufferers have is they only know what they think they're good at or how they got there, not the stuff they're bad or dangerous at.
For the record, I'm a damn good salesman and an excellent cook. One of these days I'll get good at other things, like writing. But being really good at 2 things? I'll live with that and the knowledge of the things I need to seek professional help on.
I don't know what spurred his post, I suspect it's the current Brouhaha about what President Obama did or didn't say about businesses. But, to put my spin on that, if you think the President said you didn't build your own business then you're a fucking moron. It was quite obvious what he said and about as controversial a statement as "the sun rises in the east" or "night follows day" - but fuck wits abound and a lot of them seem to be Libertarians and/or Objectivists.
I'm minded of a problem I had with a certain J.Bassior and his ilk some years ago in conjunction with a discussion of the Dunning Kruger effect. I was posting a list of things I'm not good at. Now in the discussion a while back, I got a drive by flaming from various people sent via JB to explain how I was basically a fucking moron for not being able to do X or Y - which amused me no end, given what the D-K Effect describes.
One of the things I'd mentioned I'm not good at is welding. In the drive-by some guy called FordPrefect42 explained how anybody could weld. Really? Funny because I know a few people who weld for a living and there's quite a bit of a difference between welding a couple of bits of metal together and actually doing it well. For the record, I can Gas and Arc weld with the worst of them and if your sole goal is to stick a couple of chunks of mild steel together for a while, then it's actually pretty straight forward. If you want to do it well, however, and you need to work with stuff that isn't just mild steel, then it's years of experience and training you need. There's multiple different types of welding which can be used in different circumstances... then there's the behaviours of different metals as you weld them - for the record Aluminium and Stainless Steel are not easy to weld at all.
And all this comes back to the kind of Cognitive Dissonance I'm starting to see over on Scalzi's Blog when it comes to people feeling that they have succeeded because of nothing but their own abilities or actions, it's usually because they're missing a few steps or just overlooking things that they used. I think Monty Python summed it all up perfectly with "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
On a last note, I think it has been remarked that to become truly good at something needs something like 10,000 hours of effort at learning and doing - that's 5-8 years for most humans of full time effort. Even then, in some disciplines you'll probably only then be in a position to know what you're good at AND what you're bad at. The problem the D-K Effect sufferers have is they only know what they think they're good at or how they got there, not the stuff they're bad or dangerous at.
For the record, I'm a damn good salesman and an excellent cook. One of these days I'll get good at other things, like writing. But being really good at 2 things? I'll live with that and the knowledge of the things I need to seek professional help on.
