How Your Brain Figures Out What It Doesn't Know

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 18, 2010 @06:15AM from the identifying-the-dunning-kruger-zone dept.

hex0D passes along an article at NPR about a study that examined the biology behind the self-assessment of knowledge. Quoting: "We isolated a region of the prefrontal cortex, which is right at the front of the brain and is thought to be involved in high-level thought, conscious planning, monitoring of our ongoing brain activity,' Fleming says. In people who were good at assessing their own level of certainty, that region had more gray matter and more connections to other parts of the brain, according to the study Fleming and his colleagues published in the journal Science."

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Mostly, it doesn't by flaming+error · 2010-09-18 06:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

In The Science of Fear (a book I heartily recommend), Daniel Gardner claims the strength of our "feeling of knowing" generally has no statistically significant correlation with factual reality. Humans are not very good at "knowing." and our most cherished concepts of "truth" may be unverifiable or demonstrably false.
Which is why, paradox intended, a person who knows he knows nothing is wise.