Friday, Nov 20, 2020 9:00am EST - the eleventh installment of the Zoom WOD (workout of the day) with my friend Eli. This one began a half hour early, and included some truly epic chitchat. I also logged a personal running best for running around the block in 2:19 – a full 5 seconds faster than my previous fastest time.
The army crawl deters the cat from loitering on the upholstered chairs (out of frame/not pictured).
Sets & Reps
| Exercise | Set #1 | Set #2 |
|---|---|---|
| Jacks | 45 | 45 |
| Crunches | 30 | 40 |
| Pushups | 20 | 30 |
| KB Swings | 35lbs x 15 | 35lbs x 20 |
| Ring chinups | 5 | 10 |
| Run | 02:39 | 02:19 |
Taking it easy on the First set
My partner was a bit slow to return on his first run of our workout, so I asked him about it.
Eli, reacting to me questioning his “taking it easy” on the first tun. The second one was faster by a few minutes.
Chit Chat Recap
On the topic of expertise.
Eli: So it turns out the less you know about a topic, the less good you will be at recognizing how much you know about a topic.
Ben: [puzzled – not by the subject matter – but by Eli’s casual usage of phrase “the less good you will be”]
Eli: [without skipping a beat]… So if you talk to an EXPERT about climate change, they will talk about a lot of uncertainty about how “we know this, but we don’t know this… and THIS could be problematic about our model…” but if you talk to someone who knows NOTHING about climate change, they will be CERTAIN that they know everything there is to know about it.
Ben: [now catching up to Eli] Right, yeah. I didn’t know that had a name, but I’ve read about that also. Generally, the more informed you are, the more you caveat your statements and hedge.
Eli: And they did some sort of survey, and a lot of average guys said that they could beat Serena Williams at tennis.
Serena Williams has won 23 Grand Slam titles. 12.5% of randomly selected men claim they could score a point on her in a game of tennis.
Ben: [laughing]
Eli: The reason they think they can beat Serena Williams at tennis is BECAUSE they’re not very good at tennis.
Ben: Uh hah. [still laughing]
Eli: IF they were GOOD at tennis, they would be like “Oh No, she’s very good – I couldn’t beat her” because they would be better able to estimate her skill versus their’s.
ESTIMATION!!!
Ben: ESTIMATION! [pointing at the screen wide-eyed. I was working hard to come up with a reference to some related thought to poor estimation that I had read a couple months back in Daniel Kahneman’s book, but couldn’t dig it up]
Eli: And then they also did another study that if you look something up on the internet, it creates an illusion that you know more about everything.
Ben: Yeah! Headlee writes about that.
Eli: [nodding in solidarity] It’s so funny to me. So funny.
Ben: I love that part! It’s like… “How do tornadoes work? Well, let me tell you!”