{"id":96,"date":"2006-06-21T23:38:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-21T23:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=96"},"modified":"2006-06-21T23:38:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-21T23:38:00","slug":"mistake-of-the-week-the-unknown-unknown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=96","title":{"rendered":"Mistake of the Week: The Unknown Unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"
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And how is not this the most reprehensible ignorance, to think that one knows what one does not know? But I, O Athenians! in this, perhaps, differ from most men; and if I should say that I am in any thing wiser than another, it would be in this, that not having a competent knowledge of the things in Hades, I also think that I have not such knowledge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Shtetl-Optimized’s Mistake of the Week<\/a> series finally resumes today, with what’s arguably the #1 mistake of all time. This one’s been noted by everyone from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to some toga-wearing ancient dude, to the authors of the paper Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties In Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rather than give examples of this mistake — where would I start? where would I stop? how often have I made it myself<\/a>? — I figured it’d be easier to give an example where someone didn’t make it. Today I received an email from a graduate student who had proved a quantum oracle separation, and wanted to know whether or not his result was too trivial to publish. I get fan mail, I get hate mail, I get crank mail, I get referee requests, but this is something I almost never see. After telling the student why his result was, indeed, too trivial to publish, I wrote:<\/p>\n

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There’s no shame in proving things that are already known, or that follow easily from what is. Everyone does it, the more so when they’re just starting out … The very fact that you cared enough to ask me if your result is trivial bodes well for your proving something nontrivial.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And how is not this the most reprehensible ignorance, to think that one knows what one does not know? But I, O Athenians! in this, perhaps, differ from most men; and if I should say that I am in any thing wiser than another, it would be in this, that not having a competent knowledge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mistake-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}