Wonderfest discusses the complex of human overconfidence and the frailty of knowledge.
While self-confidence is a prized human attribute, too much confidence can be obnoxious, pernicious, and even deadly. This audience-participation skeptalk will present a simple 10-question quiz to measure an important aspect of individual self-confidence. With analysis and discussion of these measurements, audience members will be better able to calibrate properly their personal levels of self-confidence. The ultimate goal will be a "healthier skepticism" toward one's own depth of knowledge about the world.
Presented in collaboration with the Bay Area Skeptics
Marilin Colon is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at California State University, East Bay.
Tucker Hiatt is the executive director of Wonderfest, and a visiting scholar in the Stanford chemistry department.
California State University, East Bay psychology lecturer Marilin Colon argues that overconfidence causes arguments that have fostered the potentially harmful belief that autism is caused by vaccination.