--- In [email protected], obbajeeba <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Ah, this is true! What about the "poker face?" The one who > says nothing because of fear on what others may see?
What cracks me up is the thought of a not-so-bright hustler mistaking another hustler for a mark. That would be a very entertaining game to watch. There was a great article in the NYTimes this weekend entitled "Don't Blink! The Hazards of Confidence." It's mostly about stock-picking, but the conclusion may apply across a wide range of activities involving the use of intuition: "To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence?...Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities?... "Many of the professionals we encounter easily pass both tests, and their off-the-cuff judgments deserve to be taken seriously. In general, however, you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that they know what they are talking about. "Unfortunately, this advice is difficult to follow: overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=1&hpw http://tinyurl.com/5wvklv3 (Interestingly, the illustration on the first page of the article is of a smiling dude swimming confidently between two sharks.)
