The Effects of Overconfidence on War Preparation

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Overconfidence is a really powerful force in our lives and when it comes to You know wars and military planning it's absolutely catastrophic. So there are just two examples of intellectual vices that that that caused serious practical difficulties. These are all examples of let's call let's call them intellectual defects or intellectual failings or intellectual flaws That had a major impact on the conduct of the war, you know had a big impact on the way War preparations were made. I Suspect most listeners to this to this podcast won't have much difficulty in thinking of Examples of this thing.

All of us have been wrong about things from time to time. But sometimes it was a simple, forgivable mistake, while other times we really should have been correct. Properties that systematically prevent us from being correct, and for which we can legitimately be blamed, are “intellectual vices.” Examples might include closed-mindedness, wishful thinking, overconfidence, selective attention, and so on. Quassim Cassam is a philosopher who studies knowledge in various forms, and who has recently written a book Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political. We talk about the nature of intellectual vices, how they manifest in people and in organizations, and what we can possibly do to correct them in ourselves.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Quassim Cassam received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford University. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He previously held faculty positions at Cambridge University and University College London. He has served as the president of the Aristotelian Society, and was awarded a Leadership Fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.