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WIP video about Overconfidence, urgently requesting feedback! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-11-11 13:07:20
Edited:
2026-08-31 14:34:37
Imported:
2026-09

Content

DEADLINE FOR FEEDBACK - 12/11 11AM UK TIME Elements of Truth Prelaunch - https://prelaunch.veritasium.com/We've got an exciting video coming out very soon!

We'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions as we wrap up this video all about overconfidence!

It's a little rough around the edges as we still need to finish some animations (as stated in the video) and some are mistimed so please look at the content rather than the timing, but as always we appreciate you watching and reviewing this cut!

Is there anything wrong? Any other questions? Anything more you'd like to see? Explanations you don't think do a good enough job or lack depth? Let us know! Thank you so much!

-Team Ve

Files

Comments

Philip Russell

A simple observation that you did not talk about, but to which all would relate, is overconfidence in the run-up to exams at school. Often, students with the least ability tend to believe that they know far more than they actually do, and therefore don't revise enough. Many students who are getting the highest marks will still work the hardest but tell others they haven't so as not to seem different.

TTST

On the graphs showing a 1:1 slope as reference, consider making the aspect ratio also 1:1 even though the video frame isn’t. Also relevant in many graphs where both axes have the same range of values. Love the topic. Have you considered incorporating the connection between overconfidence and ideological extremes? See, eg, Ortoleva & Snowberg 2015 “ overconfidence in political behavior”

ae1764

A small suggestion that could help folks with attention span problems: most of the times prof. Moore is speaking, especially like at 6:48, if possible, speed up his speaking a little; not only because it is slower, but because his speech rate is way different than the rest of the video. The discrepancy is enough for me to notice; i have never had that kind of problems with Veritasium content, even though I have ADHD. Content wise, instead: a little but interesting analysis that could be added, is how much overconfidence might be behind human successes, and not only failures (if it is at all, I'm not confident about it at this point ;) Another possible point: is confidence (as defined at the very end of the video) always discernible from *over*confidence? Or, worded more strongly: can confidence (ever?) be called so, if there are situations of which one could not know *how much one doesn't know*? ("There are unknown unknowns" cit.) A final interesting missing comparison could be done with the rest of the animal kingdom: do animals exhibit the same problem?

Karl

My reaction may not be very helpful, but to me this video addresses about five different psychological fallacies or tendencies, labeling them all as overconfidence. All the incorrect huge market bets overlap quite a bit with gambling and gambling addiction psychology, denial as a coping mechanism, yada yada. That is properly speaking a separate video. You also provide only failures, whereas there are great examples of people who took huge risks that went against the wisdom of crowds and still succeeded. Charles Lindburgh being a great example of this; his success was essentially down to having a huge amount of piloting experience and technical intuition that others lacked. So I think studying highly proficient people and talking to them about how they decide that they are capable of difficult or new tasks based upon their insight is really the type of behavior to promote. Talk to Travis Pastrana about managing risk. I just think you need to cone down and turn this into several videos for it to be very illuminating.

Steven J Garner

I have some confidence in saying that I feel the video needs to be simplified to be more relatable. For example, I think leading with the part about natural selection earlier in the conversation might be beneficial - and perhaps even re-framing that natural selection conversation. e.g. in looking at the evolution of over-confidence, humanity moved from hunter gatherer into agriculture and specialization of tasks ( farmer, blacksmith, soldier, etc) - each had the confidence in the other to produce their result (food, weapons, security), and in order to perform their own specialty each human had to have the confidence or trust that the others would perform their tasks. Generally, that trust would only be violated in outlier situations (e.g. famine from pestilence or climate change, collapse in availability of raw materials, invasion of a superior army, etc). These events did not happen with the frequency to mitigate trust or confidence, so participants who were overly confident became more successful. I don't know if any of this is true (I do not know what caused the evolution of over confidence), but some kind of bringing the conversation back to first principles is where Veratasium excels. Then all your other anecdotes of over-confidence could be brought back to an evolutionary rubric, strengthening your story.

Bernardo

Good video. Thank you for making it! I wouldn’t necessarily change anything (although I like TTST’s idea about making the graph a square so that the meaning of the 1:1 slope is clearer). But, if you insist, here is a suggestion. The paper by Dunning and Kruger includes a second take-away that has impacted my life much more than the well-known idea of “The least competent people over-estimate their competence the most”. The insight is that experts over-estimate how commonly-known various concepts and facts are. Most experts, while teaching, might say something like “So you all know this fundamental fact [A], and it’s obvious if you think about it for a second that [B], and you all learned last semester that [C], so, keeping those three things in mind, you can see how you can put them together and you get [D]”… while in fact most people will not know [A] and [B] and [C], or will have a shaky understanding of at least one of them, so; No, we cannot see how [D] follows naturally from them. But experts forget what a small fraction of the population, or even of the people learning from them, have an understanding of concepts that the expert sees as fundamental. Some experts realize this and correct for it, making them good teachers… but many do not, especially if they work outside of an academic setting. Two important consequences of this are (1) The best teacher is often someone who just learned the topic, who will naturally and genuinely say things like “Now, this part will seem counter-intuitive” and “This won’t make any sense unless you thoroughly understand [A] and [B] and [C] so, at the risk of boring some of you, let’s take a step back for a minute”… …and (2) When an expert - especially outside of an academic setting - explains something to you, they will probably use vocabulary and/or refer to concepts or facts that you’re not familiar with. If that happens, it’s not because you’re stupid or because you missed something earlier; It’s because the expert forgot that this knowledge is not common, not even in the industry, especially not for newcomers. So as a newcomer, the best thing to do is to say “You mentioned [blah], but actually, I’m not sure I know what that’s all about; Could you help me appreciate it / think about it the right way?” or confess “I have to admit, I had never heard of [blah] before”. The WORST thing to do is to nod your head to make it seem like you understand, then go try to look stuff up later, which may or may not be possible (especially for knowledge that is not well-documented, which is common in many industries). This gets into the whole Growth Mindset thing, of course… …and it had a HUGE impact on my life. Early in my career, I was struggling with a fixed mindset. One of the things that helped me to break out of it was learning about this lesser-known Dunning-Kruger effect, and saying to myself “Remember, you’re not in school anymore; You can and should tell the expert ‘I don’t know what that means’!”.

Mike Mitchell

I loved this. First of all, it describes what I estimate as a primary factor underlying the current state of politics. I have also become far less confident in my own understanding through a lifetime of humbling experiences. As a matter of fact, I have come to know that even my understanding of Dunning-Kruger is remedial. The ability to learn is contingent upon curiosity and intellectual humility. One of my favorite examples of this is Richard Feynman. I very much respect the accomplished intellectuals who are quick to admit the things they don't understand.

Judson R

Yes -- but what about the upsides to overconfidence? Every start-up company that made it -- every restaurant owner who took the leap -- every job/product/project etc. that in hindsight was too difficult is arguably the product of someone's overconfidence. Sure it can have clear negative consequences. But as your recent evolutionary video shows, perhaps some traits have developed for the betterment of the species -- overconfidence to forage in the woods or plains with dangerous predators -- overconfidence to set sail for new lands -- etc. -- in many cases they don't pay off, but in many cases they do.

Jordan Singer

I think this video has a major problem: It does not distinguish between overconfidence and risk-taking which, in hindsight, ends badly. The former is about predicting a positive outcome. The latter is about accepting the possibility of a negative outcome. Apollo 11 moon landing being an example.

RichD

I have physical statics demo that baffles most engineers. BTW i am a BSME PE Retired

Dorus Peelen

I might have missed something, but is there an ad-free version of the final version of this video somewhere?

James

flexibilidad

James

mobilidad