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Forwarded from Yevhenii Archating
Forwarded from Axis of Ordinary
"It's like a radioactive tracer shot through global academia, briefly revealing a lower bound on how much garbage "research" is out there."

— gwern

https://twitter.com/gwern/status/1689450163469717509
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Forwarded from /корfwеh/ 🦥
Forwarded from Just links
Bayesian Flow Networks https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.07037
The Cynical Genius Illusion: Exploring and Debunking Lay Beliefs About Cynicism and Competence

Abstract:

Cynicism refers to a negative appraisal of human nature — a belief that self-interest is the ultimate motive guiding human behavior. We explored laypersons’ beliefs about cynicism and competence and to what extent these beliefs correspond to reality. Four studies showed that laypeople tend to believe in cynical individuals’ cognitive superiority. A further three studies based on the data of about 200,000 individuals from 30 countries debunked these lay beliefs as illusionary by revealing that cynical (vs. less cynical) individuals generally do worse on cognitive ability and academic competency tasks. Cross-cultural analyses showed that competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment. Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that-at low levels of competence holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others’ cunning.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146167218783195