I'm reading a good book right now, The Black Swan, where the author ruminates about (among other things) how artists tend to become too safe over time and to start listening to their market instead of to their inner voice. Probably a good thing for me to read.
Interesting. I just heard about this book a couple days ago, on another discussion board I regularly read. Here is the post from the Motley Fool, which I found compelling:
Have you read "The Black Swan" from Taleb? If not, you have to read it. You will love it.
Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance would not be too visible, like shy people are underrepresented at cocktail parties. We are not inclined to have respect for humble people, those who make an effort to suspend judgment. Now contemplate epistemic humility: Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He exhibits, on the surface, a lack of courage of the “all-knowing” assertive idiot yet has the rare guts to say “I don’t know” and the courage to write about the properties of what he doesn’t know. He does not mind looking like a fool, or, worse, an ignorant. He introspects, introspects, introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion. It does not necessarily mean that he lacks personal confidence; just that he holds his own knowledge in some suspicion.
Taleb:
"You may be able to explain why your paper on mathematical optimization on transaction costs in the determination of neoclassical equilibrium is important, but not why the subject should be important. It could be nonsense but you can show your prowess: the paper, in sum, is not always a contribution to knowledge but a contribution to your status. Try to write like Montaigne, without the tone of certainty, and not only you will be denied tenure, but you will be thrown out of the University."
Alas, one cannot claim authority by accepting his own acute fallibility. Simply, you need to be blinded by your knowledge: we are made to follow leaders who can gather people together because of the advantages of being in groups have been greater than the disadvantages of being alone. In our heritage, because of the physical weakness of the human race, it has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the correct wrong. Those who followed the assertive idiot over the introspective wise person gave us some of their genes. It shows in the following social pathology: psychopaths (e.g. Hitler) rally followers.
Once in a while, you encounter members of the human species with so much intellectual superiority that they can effortless manage to change their mind upon being supplied with evidence, without experiencing the smallest tinge of shame. But those kind of people are rare...very rare.