I agree somewhat... but I notice the emphasis in your reply is mostly about how YOU felt, what YOU thought. Optimism is often delusional... confidence can be unfounded... and yet they are both useful and productive emotions. If we assessed the world exactly as it is and fully apprehended our chances of success many of us would never do much. It's often better to think you CAN do something (even if the supporting data is weak) than to calculate that you probably can't, and act accordingly. Similarly, it could sometimes be useful, I'm sure to over-estimate how much you know and to act and speak and THINK with that misplaced confidence.
But when we're dealing with others, when your confidence leads you to be dismissive and arrogant... I would argue that's almost never productive. My essay was really about people who are contemptuous of other people based mostly on their beliefs/political affiliations when they haven't even really examined those beliefs. That can be extremely toxic. We should take the opinions of other people seriously because we must if we want to change their minds, and because they have some degree of worth and influence, but mostly because they probably know a lot of things that we don't. So I would argue that epistemic over-confidence could definitely work in a person's favor but if it leads to them disrespecting or dismissing or dominating the beliefs of other people it will almost certainly be maladaptive.
That can be a hard needle to thread, I'm sure, but that's life.
I agree somewhat... but I notice the emphasis in your reply is mostly about how YOU felt, what YOU thought. Optimism is often delusional... confidence can be unfounded... and yet they are both useful and productive emotions. If we assessed the world exactly as it is and fully apprehended our chances of success many of us would never do much. It's often better to think you CAN do something (even if the supporting data is weak) than to calculate that you probably can't, and act accordingly. Similarly, it could sometimes be useful, I'm sure to over-estimate how much you know and to act and speak and THINK with that misplaced confidence.
But when we're dealing with others, when your confidence leads you to be dismissive and arrogant... I would argue that's almost never productive. My essay was really about people who are contemptuous of other people based mostly on their beliefs/political affiliations when they haven't even really examined those beliefs. That can be extremely toxic. We should take the opinions of other people seriously because we must if we want to change their minds, and because they have some degree of worth and influence, but mostly because they probably know a lot of things that we don't. So I would argue that epistemic over-confidence could definitely work in a person's favor but if it leads to them disrespecting or dismissing or dominating the beliefs of other people it will almost certainly be maladaptive.
That can be a hard needle to thread, I'm sure, but that's life.