“People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The
authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these
domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make
unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4
studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and
logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the
12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration
to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically,
improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them
recognize the limitations of their abilities. ”

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
Justin Kruger and David Dunning

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

Same goes for recreational drugs, fast cars and fast times and street racing and rock climbing and glue sniffing and bongs of all versions/contexts. REAL is not that different from imagined when the two meet virtually.

Context is blurred and it is not all on for the experienced gamer or head or adrenalin junky… it is for the newbie that got a whiff of what was going on and wants in….

Now you – as a gamer AND parent AND brother or sister of a newbie are connected to a new experience you haven’t had a chance to work in a game… give it a name if it suits you but tell me, “how does it feel?”

Agreed! I was merely pointing out the fact of how easy and useful as an investigative technique to input something into Wolfram Alpha and start teasing out relationships.

Very little in life is direct causation and correlations are pretty easy to come by.

what’s more fun to think about is it the rise in carbon emissions that indicates a cause for the GM revenue inclines. that is, as we burned more fuel in industry did we put all our money back into GM as a result of cheap fuel?

FUN!

carbon emissions US vs mcdonald’s revenue. Carbon has risen faster than McD revenue, but that’s because of the environmental feedback loop in which humans expel extra gas after eating McD sandwiches …

Let’s be very careful not to confuse correlation with causality! Unless I’m missing something, W|A is showing correlation, not causality.

That said, I suspect there’s causality in your graph.

I agree with you, though, that there is some sort of higher order visual processing that the human brain can do … some people do have a sort of knack for glancing at the pieces and putting it together fast.