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Confidence vs Competence

Entry 2362, on 2024-09-10 at 21:26:31 (Rating 2, Comments)

I think there are two things which people could do to make themselves better. The first is to be critical of their own ideas, and to recognise that they could be wrong; and the second is to not be afraid of changing their mind when they realise that they were wrong. It's relatively easy to change your mind after a previous idea becomes untenable, but it's a lot harder to understand that from the every beginning that you could be wrong, and to have the humility to listen to criticisms.

I see this a lot in politics. For example, the Labour Party in New Zealand is often quite enthusiastic about centralisation and reducing the influence of private enterprise, but it was that same party in 1984 which confidently pushed through the biggest changes the country has seen in recent times, and introduced a privatisation and decentralisation agenda.

So were they wrong now or then? I mean, if massive neoliberal changes were the right thing to do in 1984 then why are those same changes being criticised now as being poorly considered and harmful? Sure, it's possible that the background political and economic situation has changed in 40 years, but that's not the way this is being portrayed. Most people on the left are saying those policies were inherently wrong.

Here's another example. My friend Fred (not his real name) works in a large, bureaucratic organisation and his department went through massive changes a few years back. More recently, the management looked at what had happened in horror and wondered what they were thinking at the time. Many of the changes were reversed and put back to a similar form to what they were previously.

But when the first lot of changes were proposed there was a lot of criticism from workers which was ignored because the management were "fully confident the new system will work well". Now, even they admit that wasn't the case.

So my point here is that after an existing system has been shown to be problematic, often the leaders propose a new system which they say will fix all the current problems. But that's exactly what they said when the older system was introduced. Why do they not have the self-awareness to realise that they were wrong then and are probably just as wrong now?

I'm not saying that all change is bad. I think that a lot of what was done during the 1984 economic "revolution" has been helpful, but if that is true then the wish to undo all of that now must be wrong, and if the new proposal is right then the previous one was wrong. Either way, they are or were wrong.

I think it is important to try out new ideas, but I would suggest that the people making the changes should be sufficiently self-aware to realise that they have been wrong in the past, and could just as easily be wrong again, especially when a significant number of the people affected by the changes are pointing out the problems.

I have mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect in several previous posts, but I will quickly give an informal definition of it for you here. It is a psychological phenomenon which states that some people are sufficiently skilled to think that they know what they are talking about, but not skilled enough to understand that they probably don't.

When you listen to a true expert they are rarely certain about anything. They understand that there is rarely enough information to make absolute statements about anything, that our understanding of phenomena changes over time, and that even experts can be fooled by logical fallacies like confirmation bias.

So those politicians and managers who say they know best and they know for sure that a new system is going to work fine, despite the objections of people of lower status who might have a more direct understanding of the change, are almost always wrong. Someone who is less certain and open to listening to alternative views while implementing changes is probably less confident because they are more competent.

So, in some ways, confidence and competence are inversely related. This is only a general rule, and shouldn't be taken too seriously in every case, but I think it has some merit. Whenever I hear anyone speaking confidently in absolute and simplistic terms, I usually assume they are wrong. If I hear someone indicating uncertainty I often think they are probably sufficiently skilled to understand the true complexity of the situation.

I say this: forget confidence, give me competence instead!

Comment 1 (7716) by Dad on 2024-09-11 at 09:40:10:

The only problem is that the people who think that they are competent have only reached this decision because they they are confident they are correct.

Comment 2 (7717) by OJB on 2024-09-11 at 12:22:39:

Exactly. Confidence is the enemy of competence. Not in every case, because confidence can be helpful, but I have seen far more cases of confident people being incompetent than I have seen the opposite.

Comment 3 (7718) by Anonymous on 2024-09-14 at 14:37:35:

Confidence Is not the problem. Over confidence is the enemy.

Comment 4 (7719) by OJB on 2024-09-14 at 17:43:23:

Yeah, sure, I can go with that. But overconfidence is kind of like confidence for incompetent people. Also, "overconfidence or competence" doesn't sound quite as catchy as my title.

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