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Overprecision is a property of thinking systems
1Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.
Abstract:
Overprecision is the excessive certainty in the accuracy of one's judgment. This article proposes a new theory to explain it. The theory holds that overprecision in judgment results from neglect of all the ways in which one could be wrong. When there are many ways to be wrong, it can be difficult to consider them all. Overprecision is the result of being wrong and not knowing it. This explanation can account for why question formats have such a dramatic influence on the degree of overprecision people report. It also explains the ubiquity of overprecision not only among people but also among artificially intelligent agents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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