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Conclusion

In this chapter we have focused on the human propensity to overestimate knowledge and underestimate complexity, which we believe to be significant hurdles in efforts to promote intellectual humility.

Knowledge miscalibration is a particularly difficult overconfidence chal­lenge to address because we believe it is the product of an adaptive way in which humans seek to understand the world around them. The world is just too complex for any individual to understand in much detail. The paradox is that, in order to promote openness to new knowl­edge, people might first need to be made aware of their ignorance and generally oversimplified models of the world. Of course, when it comes to our own understanding of the complexities of human cognition, intellectual humility, and encouraging more productive public discourse, we have just begun to scratch the surface.

Note

1 It should be noted that Moore and Healy argue that there is a negative overall relationship between overestimation and overplacement because the difficulty of a task affects the two phenomena in oppo­site ways.

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Source: Alfano Mark, Lynch Michael P.. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility. Routledge,2020. — 514 p.. 2020

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