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Daily Archives: October 21, 2024

People think they already know everything they need to make decisions

Ars Technica: The world is full of people who have excessive confidence in their own abilities. This is famously described as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how people who lack expertise in something will necessarily lack the knowledge needed to recognize their own limits. Now, a different set of researchers has come out with what might be viewed as a corollary to Dunning-Kruger: People have a strong tendency to believe that they always have enough data to make an informed decision—regardless of what information they actually have. The work, done by Hunter Gehlbach, Carly Robinson, and Angus Fletcher, is based on an experiment in which they intentionally gave people only partial, biased information, finding that people never seemed to consider they might only have a partial picture. “Because people assume they have adequate information, they enter judgment and decision-making processes with less humility and more confidence than they might if they were worrying whether they knew the whole story or not,” they write. The good news? When given the full picture, most people are willing to change their opinions.

Modernizing Congressional Data – Senate Legislation and Amendments on Congress.gov

In Custodia Legis: “Continuing our series on modernizing the legislative data exchange behind Congress.gov, we are going to look at the next phase of the project – modernizing the exchange of Senate measures and amendments data. The Legislation collection is comprised of bills and resolutions, along with associated actions (including Action Codes), titles, sponsors, cosponsors, and committee-related activity. Legislation text… Continue Reading

The 37signals Guide to Internal Communication

The how, where, why, and when we communicate. Long form asynchronous? Real-time chat? In-person? Video? Verbal? Written? Via email? In Basecamp? How do we keep everyone in the loop without everyone getting tangled in everyone else’s business? It’s all in here. Rules of thumb, and general philosophy – Below you’ll find a collection of general… Continue Reading