stupid unix

[root@barney tmp]# rm isomnt
rm: remove directory `isomnt'? y
rm: cannot remove directory `isomnt': Is a directory

a scientician writes...

I've been reading this paper that tongodeon referred to recently: "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Grossly paraphrasing, the authors are attempting to prove that the dumber you are, the less likely you are to realise that you're dumb. The paper's interesting, even if the statistical notation is beyond me, but I do like the style. In addition to the whole bit about asking comedians to rate jokes in order to establish a baseline, there's this:

Participants. Four to six weeks after Phase 1 of Study 3 was completed, we invited participants from the bottom- ( n = 17) and top-quartile ( n = 19) back to the laboratory in exchange for extra credit or $5. (my emphasis)

I like that. I don't know if it's par for the course when you're explaining how you motivated people into participating in your study, but it certainly amuses me to see it put that bluntly.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I've actually learned something useful out of this aside from the main theme of the paper: the "false-consensus effect". This is where you underestimate something like your percentile rating on a test because you're assuming that your peers were at least able to get the same things right that you did. This has interesting implications in, for example, my line of work where I'm unconciously drawing on more than ten years of messing about with Unix systems; things that seem obvious to me, and which I assume others have already accounted for, may not in fact have been addressed at all. Mind you, I was already kinda taking that approach anyway.