Black-and-red alicorns, I mean soldiers, in Equestria · 6:14am Oct 11th, 2013
[Summary: Why do black-and-red alicorns get downthumbed, while human soldiers in Equestria get feature-boxed?]
There are three stories in the featured box about human soldiers who die and then find themselves in Equestria, armed and wearing full combat armor.
What is the appeal of these stories?
Equestria could be an interesting setting for a story about PTSD or reintegration into civilian life. But I don't understand the endless fascination bronies have with sending soldiers there to shoot up the place. I'd rather see stories about black and red alicorns. They're the same, except they cuss less and do more than just kill things.
One of them says the soldier "must learn to overcome problems with out the insane amount of gratuitous violence he is accustomed to", but it's tagged Gore. Oh, and the soldier also can do unicorn magic. And he's the author's OC. And the author has another story about the same OC whose description says "He is a dedicated Brony, but must decide how to live in a world of peace and friendship when he is in training to be a solider." (Hint: He shoots things.)
Why do red-and-black alicorns get thumb-bombed, but if you stuff them into fatigues, they get thumbs-up?
I haven't done more than glance at this last batch of stories about armed soldiers who die and find themselves in Equestria. Maybe there's more to them than that.
Maybe.
Because this is Merica!
Self insert power fantasies.
I always imagined that it had something to do with accessibility, as strange as that sounds. I guess some people find it easier to imagine... rather than a pony? I'm starting to give pity thumbs up to red and black alicorn fics just for not being soldier in equestria fics.
But you've intrigued me. I'm going to dive in and armchair psychoanalyze these guys and report back.
At least they're not celebrity in equestria fics...
EDIT: No idea, and I really want an explanation as much as you. I don't know how people can even handle that grammar. I REALLY don't understand how the trend is always popular. Remember the slew of 4k comedy fics with extended sexual inneundos we had for a month? Or the 3 weeks of celebrity in equestria fics? Those were fads, but I really don't see how someone could read one of these and then read more.
Nah, I doubt there's more to them than that. To be honest, I think the reason they don't get thumb-bombed is because the appeal of the stories is a bit wider, if that makes sense. I think a lot of bronies honestly like stories about soldiers shooting up Equestria and since they share the author's fantasy then they aren't hard on it. Alicorn OCs, though, are usually only appealing to the creator.
I dunno, just trying to rationalize it. Honestly, I loathe any story with modern soldiers coming to Equestria to shoot up the place, especially when they get incredibly popular. I've been tempted to write a story just to subvert these things, but I'm too lazy.
I think it's because there's a significant contingent of bronies who are in the military or are in some way involved, or at least fascinated by it. I don't begrudge them their fantasies, since everyone has them. They are, for better or worse, their own genre like Doctor Whoof or Twilestia stories (both of which I also dislike with a passion).
And, well, if you aren't in the military or otherwise preoccupied with it, there's also a significant contingent of bronies who like to fantasize about being "that guy" who comes to paradise scarred by death and horror and in need of healing by the doe-eyed, attractive, sensitive mares, of whom there are a lot.
Probably with hoof massages. And the feeding of grapes. And cuddles... lots of cuddles...
Ahem. Sorry, got a little distracted there.
Two of those are Halo crossovers. Teenage fans of those games will instantly give those a thumbs-up, regardless of how awful or generic they are.
I have no explanation for the last one though.
1410869
But red and black alicorn OCs do the same thing. That's why it doesn't make any sense. Most such OCs, when they aren't a parody, are just self inserts as well. So why do the human soldiers get a pass?
Because those kinds of stories are constantly allowed on the site, thus inspiring more people to write their own "totally unique yet utterly identical" soldier-in-Equestria story?
Or to have the Master Chief make it to Equestria.
I blame the startling youth of the fandom. The average brony age is somewhere around 15. These are the same people who buy the new CoD when it comes out every other month.
I don't think I've ever seen a Vietnam soldier in Equestria fic. If one was to do that, with him dealing with PTSD and leaving the horrors of Nam only to confront the overly goodness of Equestria, that'd be an interesting perspective change and potential for a good story. But instead of realistic soldier fics, we get Halo crossovers or trigger happy OCs. Whoopy.
1410875
Easier to relate to? I really don't know. The only vibe I really get from these stories is Humans Are Better Heroes Than Ponies. They're basically stories about humans showing off. They play down the abilities of ponies, or just outright give them to the humans.
I checked the comments on the soldier in equestria fic to see if anyone else was bothered by all the word-confustion and grammar and punctuation mistakes.
Of course, the only comment talking about was one complaining about the difference between clips and magazines...
I actually have a weird soft spot for historical figure crossover fics. There was one a while back about Patton getting sucked into Equestria with a tank crew... Unfortunately it was crap...
Why are they all crap?!
I almost always avoid HiE stories. I usually read the synopsis and roll my eyes at some one inserting themselves or aspects they're aware of in human form into the MLPverse. I'll skim a chapter or two and depending on who they're putting in be it: soilders, video game characters like those from the Assassin's Creed francise, or Samus Aran I just can't get into it like I do straight pony stories.
I get that it's not that much more different than putting in OP OC's but still, it just strikes a nerver.
To date I've only read two HiE stories that I actually like and one doesn't count because he stays a pony while in Equestria and only turns back into a human shape while in the other dimension that is earth. But TotallyNotABrony is rather prolific in his Equestria only story settings.
The other being the one about Voltaire in Equestria, and it was done with such a gentle hand I couldn't stop reading the full novel sized story.
I avoid those like the plague. Even more than regular HiE fics, which just aren't really my cup of tea, with a few exceptions.
I want to read about pretty pastel ponies doing things, not humans. Sometimes those things are bright and cute and fluffy, and sometimes those things are dark and violent and horrifying.
I like Equestria. I like its innocence. I also, occasionally, like to watch its innocence brutally taken from it and burned in a fire while Evil dances and laughs maniacally.
But I don't want to have somebody just come stomping in from another world and destroy it. Especially not when the logic is, "Because I can."
1410902
Sturgeon's revelation: "ninety percent of everything is crap."
Combine that with clueless readers who give a thumbs up and fave to any fanfic whose concept they like - regardless of how its written.
Or even without bothering to read it first.
One reason could be 'Cute Anger' .
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/science-says-adorable-animals-turn-us-aggressive
There are many conflicting theories about what this documented aggression response to cute things is caused by. One reason suggests that it is frustration of the nurturing drive. Another possibility is that too much cute causes an overstimulation that results in negativity.
A very real possibility is a clash between the social definition in western culture versus what is seen as a feminine behavior or reaction. Cute Anger seems to occur primarily to western people raised on a concept of 'machismo' - which is interesting because the phenomena affects some few women too.
I suspect, therefore, that what drives all the stories of soldiers murdering ponies is sexual immaturity. Most of the people here on Fimfiction are young males in their twenties, and this demographic is beyond well known for sexual and emotional immaturity. A culture steeped in stoic, emotionless, male role models who define their dominance through murderous aggression not only makes 'being a brony hard' on these poor little boys-into-men...
...I think it also causes them to have inner conflicts as well. They fear society judges them for liking something that was created for little girls - I offer that first, they are judging themselves, inside, and that inner negative judgement drives stories about rough, tough, uber-macho soldiers murdering ponies and acting like assholes in Equestria.
I suggest these underdeveloped boy-men are working through their own internal conflicts - their own self-judgement which is based on how they assume (probably correctly) that the general society feels about them. 'Ugh! Bronies! Eww!'
And boy howdy do some bronies - male bronies - complain about how much they suffer in society for liking MLP. You'd think they were suffering bigotry like gay men do, or something.
I would go so far as to say that - behind every story of ponies being ultra-murdered is an insecure little boy-man who is terrified that liking ponies means he 'isn't really a man' - and by the terms of the culture he was raised in, he knows he is right in this. He just isn't mature enough to shrug and go - 'fine, I'm whatever I am. Screw macho crap. I like cute ponies. I love cute ponies.'
Which, ironically enough, would actually be the most stoic (and thus western cultural man) thing they could do.
That's my two bits.
In summer 2011, "Article 2" was posted to EqD. It was very possibly the first story of this kind, ever. It was advertised as "Human in Equestria, but apparently the opposite of what we normally see."
Oh, if they had only known. A couple of years later, the market is saturated, and you can still hardly find any good ones.
So, anyone else excited to find out what the next overused story type will be?
Then you ain't Tom Clancy.
…
Then you ain't Tom Clancy!
1410960
That source seems to completely ignore cognitive dissonance; a major player in seemingly counter-intuitive thoughts. It's highly likely that the same thing that makes you think of hurting a cute animal is exactly what makes you imagine pushing a loved one when stood atop a high building, not something special called "cute anger".
By that logic, looking at a picture of a hamburger would give me "hunger anger", or seeing an amazing statue online would cause "awe anger". I'm not convinced.
Also, popping bubble-wrap =/= aggression. A huge thing about popping bubble-wrap is it's both fun and relaxing. Seeing a cute picture and doing something fun and relaxing at the same time hardly indicates high levels of aggression. So yeah, that's too pseudo-sciency for my tastes.
Arguable. The majority of people on this site, I believe, are actually under twenty. If I had to estimate the average age of a user, I'd plump for around 17, although I'd love to see some stats that might confirm this.
And I don't see how the popularity of Soldiers in Equestia would be caused by sexual immaturity. More like wish-fulfilment, or—in the case of Halo Crossovers and the like—love of a specific character/franchise that they're already familiar with. A bit sad that they're unwilling to try something new, but hardly an example of sexual deviancy.
A common misconception, actually. I've had to review a fair few HiEs for the various groups I'm involved in (and I've read some others out of curiosity) and almost all of them feature the solder being a gentle giant sort of character. Like a BFG. Maybe there would be some conflict at first, but it gets swiftly dealt with and is either initiated by the ponies reacting to a strange intruder, or the soldier would be confused and immediately stop once he realised that the pastel-coloured equines posed no threat.
This seems more like them wanting to believe that everyone they know and/or care about would love ponies, if they gave it a chance.
Again, that misconception.
I had a brief scan of the three stories in the feature box at the time of Bad Horse's blog. This one, this one and this one. None of them feature violence against ponies in any meaningful way (at least in what I saw. The third one is a bit big to skim). I'd like to see one of these "ultra-murdered" stories, actually. I don't think I've ever encountered one.
I have a feeling you're focussing unnecessarily on their youth and gender. Not everything a young man does is rooted in sex.
But aye, I'm sticking with my argument: They're young. They like ponies. They like guns. Two rights can only ever make something extra-right, in their minds.
1410880
Dan's_Comments did a story about a WW2 veteran with PTSD, Cultural Artifacts.
He also did the most depressingly realistic HiE story so far, Hot Zone.
My personal point of 'wait what?' is all the lone wanderer or courier in Equestria fics... or pony in wasteland.
Now, I don't mean FO:E fics. Those are fine. But why do so many people feel the need to stuff generally non-established characters into Equestria? Master chief is only a worse offender, because his lack of establishing characteristics at least left you with his actions to work with. But with the protagonists of FO games, you've got... umm... their profession? where they grew up? Yeah, not a whole lot to work with.
The best way to dislodge these things from the featurebox is to do better. Not only can better stories directly remove them, they also serve as positive examples. Part of doing better is not only writing stories, but also highlighting the good in the fandom. Make blog posts about stories you greatly enjoyed. Set up recommendation boxes on your user page. Remember to vote on stories. (I know you already do these things, Bad Horse; I'm making this comment for the benefit of other people reading the thread.)
I can understand why they're written; self-insert wish fulfillment, which of course includes the red-and-black alicorn variety of story.
What's harder to understand is why they managed to become so popular. I won't say they're universally terrible, but they're pretty close.
As for who writes them, it seems to run the gamut. Some are obviously written by people with military experience, while some just as obviously aren't.
Some day, someone will write a soldier-in-Equestria story that manages to follow the spirit of the show: they discover that friendship is more powerful than their assault rifle. I'm not sure I'll bother reading that fic when it appears (as it will still probably feature the terrible writing and plot that characterizes HiE fics), but at least it will be noteworthy.
1410869 Self-insert power fantasies that don't even bother giving the appeal of pony-like emotive expression.
1410887 Likewise, heck, even the earth ponies are nothing to flick one's nose at, four (or was it six) of them pull a bloody locomotive, and one of them drags a house behind them. Yet another one manages to literally demolish a carnival strength test by smashing the bell on top.
And that's not even speculating on what effect their 'connection with nature' (By word of Faust) has. Blowing stuff up is all fine and dandy, but when you can point to the rations that keep that soldier going and say "I grew that yesterday, what did you produce?" can be rather cutting to said soldier.
1410912 Yeah, "The Best of All Possible Worlds" by McPoodle probably is one of the best HiE's, and best fics on this site. Wry humor and tie-ins to both human and Equestrian history, all with the writer of my second-favorite writer of all time weaving his way through court intrigue. I love politics.
1410960 Bloody heck! I didn't know you followed Bad Horse as well! Although with regards to the article, you drew in "Cute Anger seems to occur primarily to western people raised on a concept of 'machismo'" without an additional source/citation. Along with many of the things 1411014 said. Sometimes popping bubbles is an expression of anxiety, which ties in with the idea that it's relaxing.
As for 'murder-everything' stories, I've seen a few as well, and quite frankly it's a little sad, but not in the moved-to-action-pity kind of way, just the kind that makes me shrug and think 'how bland' and then go back to my own writing, knowing that friendship is magic, and that every story is going to have to face this in some form or another, even if it's simply 'friendship can be hard'.
1411321 Very true.
Personally, if I'm going to punt a soldier into Equestria, I'd make sure they face down the nitty gritty monsters that'd require the descendant of an Olympian god to defeat, and subsequently show said soldier that no, they are not in fact Hercules, and shoving a grenade up that hydra's cloaca is only going to make it angry and farty.
1411046
And then there's The Youth in the Garden, in which the soldier is from the Union army.
1410968 "So, anyone else excited to find out what the next overused story type will be?"
I hope it will be well-written adventure stories in the spirit and style of the show, slightly more mature* in nature. Yeah... not holding my breath.
-----
* Not THAT sort of mature.
One possibility for why soldiers are used so often as the human who's cast into Equestria is because they're more plausible "survivor-types" than most. I can easily imagine the thought process behind it; the author is throwing a protagonist into a tough situation but doesn't want him to die right away, so he's got to have the skills and tools to survive it. It's not an inherently bad approach, either - a couple of my favorite inject-a-human stories involve soldiers. "Quantum Castaway", "Thessalonica Legacy", "Into the Black", "Stardust", "ARTICLE 2", probably some others that slip my mind.
Of course, it's far from necessary to do that. Some of my other favorite fanfics have involved folks quite untrained for wilderness survival. "A Voice Among Strangers" had an ordinary woman who fails utterly at the "survive in the wild" part, "God Particle" has a physicist, "Written in Dust" had an urban spelunker. There's even a case of a blatant wish-fulfilment brony-in-Equestria that's IMO been written surprisingly well: "The Audience" has a human protagonist who's overweight, needs a cane, has a heart condition, and is a self-admitted failed-to-launch who can't hold a job and never moved out of his parents' house. It's not the greatest fic on my watchlist but it is on my watchlist.
1410887 Shades of Mighty Whitey!
because autism, why the fuck else.
I would guess it has more to do with established community standards than the actual content or quality of the story. We are taught that soldiers are to be respected and honored, and that alicorn OCs are to be derided and shunned. This will affect a reader's evaluation of the story before they even start reading, if they do at all.
Well...I haven't read these stories and I don't know their authors. Also I'm not a shrink. Thus qualified I shall sit on this barstool and deliver my epistle on the subject (or maybe I should stand on the bar, the better to epistle on everybody else).
Yeah, most bronies are adolescent males, and violent fantasies are part of male adolescence. That's why there are so many violent video games. It's a harmless and normal part of growing up. But write these fantasies down someplace where your teacher or another grownup who isn't your parent can find them--and you're fucked. You can be kicked out of school, arrested, marked for life, all for writing the same silly shit that I and countless others did back before the Internet and school shootings became fashionable.
So you come here and you dump a big steaming load of talk therapy on the boards because it's safe. Nobody's going to rat you out because of that "bro" in "brony." And besides everybody else has something to lose just by being here ("Hey I saw Vito at a gay bar!" "Oh yeah? What were you doin' there?"). So your secret is safe with us.
Also there's this. I bet a lot of these kids are growing up in fatherless homes because that's just how it is nowadays. In adolesence you are, quite literally, learning how to be a man: how to reconcile those base hormonal tendencies towards aggression and dominance with the necessities of civil behavior such as prudence, deference, gentleness and compassion. Kids learn primarily by imitation. That's how they're hardwired. But if there's no adult male around to imitate you have a lot more work to do on your own. What these stories are, is scratch paper. The authors are working things out for themselves because no one was around to tell them the answers or even to teach them how to do the math.
So what we've got is this: it's like we're all in a bar somewhere and down at the far end there's these kids with their hats on backwards drinking Red Bull and Jägermeister, which I don't know if you've ever tried--it looks like a shot of dirty motor oil in a glass of diabetic piss and it tastes as good as it looks.
And they're all "N***A!" this and "M********A!" that and fist-bumping and whooping and it's terribly distressing to us scotch snobs at the other end trying to enjoy our single malts ("It's a 15-year-old Islay--you can practically taste the sheep shit!").
Yet despite our complete opposition in tastes here we all are in this bar, drowning our sorrows. And there's a reason for that. It's different for each of us and I wouldn't presume to say what it is, but I'm pretty sure it's not because we just couldn't face another night of Krug and supermodels aboard our yachts.
So--whaddaya drinkin'?
1410902
How about one with Joan of Arc?
1413371 Havn't seen one yet. Would probably suck too because nobody seems capable of writing these things.
I guess some people lack the imagination necessary for their personal power fantasies so have to get them from other people.
Though my guess is also that some of the military/ex-military/militaristic types also just like it.
Also, let's face it: why don't those get thumb-bombed? Because the people who know that these stories are crap don't read them, and therefore don't downvote them. It is the same general reason why most things on the internet have far, far more upvotes than downvotes, even if they're incredibly nasty, because the audience is not random, but of people whose interest is sparked.
Rainbow Dash Get An Abortion is a darkfic with a ton of downvotes because waaah abortion (also because it is actually dark, but yeah).
I did enjoy one human soldier in Equestria story - the Article 2 story. It wasn't amazing, but it was okay. And it never had a conclusion. It also presented the soldier as being morally ambiguous.
Incidentally:
1410960
It is just a power fantasy, the same as girls writing fanfiction about some girl who shows up and totally marries the main character of the series. Same drive, really.
Incidentally, explanations such as your own are a major indication of rationalization. Just a heads up; Freud was wrong.
Indeed, while young men are aggressive, young women are ALSO aggressive, and as it turns out, it really has nothing to do with "sexual immaturity". While it is true that teenagers also act out, young men (and women) do so as well, and people in their 20s are indeed sexually mature. The very idea that young adults are immature is really not correct in the first place. As one who has seen further than most, let me tell you a little secret:
People are immature.
Age doesn't actually really play much of a role in maturity; maturity is about your ability and willingness to take responsibility for your actions, and to recognize your own mistakes and falliability. Almost no one actually does this in real life, especially not in general. Most "adults" are immature. Just look at Congress. Or everyone ever who claims that their life being a disaster area is everyone's fault but their own. CEOs who blame everyone but themselves for their company's failure. Or lumberjacks or factory workers who complain that their jobs went away, and now they can't find work and how unfair it all is - despite not having any skills beyond manual labor, which is increasingly less valuable in this day and age, and that they were LUCKY to find a job with their skillset that paid as well as it did.
As such, while there is a loose correlation, in reality maturity only vaguely trends upwards with age. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the explanation for this; more or less, competence correlates with your ability to judge competency. Incompetent people believe they are above average in skill level, on average. Indeed, it has been my experience that children are actaully less prey to this phenomenon than adults are, because kids don't expect to be as good at everything as adults are.
While it is true that men in their late teens and 20s are responsible for the bulk of criminal activity, this is most likely the result of simple ability and having "less to lose" - young women are also more likely to commit crimes than older women, after all. It is also interesting to note that, over time, crime rates and rates of criminal and violent activity have decreased. It has been on the decline since 1990 throughout the developed world, and no one knows exactly why - in the US, our crime rate has fallen by half. Half! And this is with all that "violent, corruptive media". Canada has very similar amounts of violent media, but a lower homicide rate (though overall crime rates aren't actually all that dissimilar). Interestingly, while people often percieve Americans as being violent, Americans are actually considerably less violent than many Europeans - while people are more likely to DIE in America, you are three times more likely to be violently assaulted in the UK than in the US. The homicide rate is only about 5 in 100k in the US (a bit south of that now), while the UK's rate is a mere 1.2 per 100k, and the overall rape rates are similar (the UK is a bit higher), the robbery rate in the UK is a bit higher (different sources give different numbers, suggesting anywhere between 30% more likely to twice as likely)... and the wounding rate is about three times the US's aggravated assault rate. However, it should be noted that wounding =! aggravated assault, so take that with a grain of salt - the difference may be somewhat lower.
But if you look at, say, the protagonist of 24 or Tom Clancy novels, they're basically power fantasies themselves. And they were very popular. People worried about 24, in fact, because people involved in the various government torture programs used 24 to justify their actions.
PS. That psychology study sucked. Very small sample size and no actual correlation with violence. In fact, studies have shown the opposite - people are more likely to behave badly towards people who are perceived as ugly than pretty. People subconsciously treat attractive people better.
1411321
Hey I did my part this week. Accidentally, but still.
1411767
That too.
1413374 ...Well, I'll try my best.
I'm suddenly inspired to find a Talib and interview him on what he would think if heaven was Equestria.
1413535 How much of the Dunning-Kruger effect isn't a statistical artifact? Quoting from Wikipedia:
Suppose you test a population on a skill in which most of them have about the same skill. I once went go-kart racing with a bunch of other people who had also never gone go-kart racing. We didn't differ measurably in our abilities; we were all bad. But each time we raised, someone came in first, and someone came in last. If you test people on their "humor" (whatever that means), 10% will be in the top 10%, and 10% will be in the bottom 10%. That doesn't show that there's any difference in ability at all.
Even if there is a difference in ability, you will still have regression to the mean in the scores. What is the expected variation to the mean in those studies, and how much of the observed effect does it account for? Citing the raw results, as is usually done, only proves somebody didn't do their statistical analysis.
1414185
An important question! The answer is none. There are a lot of things that they did to make sure this wasn't just chance.
Firstly, it is important to note the question was their ability to actually correctly judge how competent you are (and later, to recognize competence in others), not how well they actually did on the test. In other words, the actual study was not on their ability at the skill, but their ability to recognize competence. You got first, second, third, ect. in kart racing, but you knew how well you did relative to your peers. They did not, and their inability to tell this was what was really being tested. This is a pretty important difference from your example.
Secondly, the experiment has been replicated a number of times. The more times you replicate an experiment, the more statistically sound the results become. Not only was the experiment replicated a number of times by Dunning and Kruger, but it has also been replicated by other groups as well, which is an indication both of its relevance (bad experiments tend not to be replicated) as well as the fact that it is interesting and believed to be broadly applicable.
Thirdly, they actually accounted for your hypothesis. They had these people judge each others' exams and score them, and checked to see if they changed their opinions regarding their own performance afterwards. People who did well (i.e. the people who scored the best on the test and were the most competent) were good at judging the competence of others in their exam scores. Moreover, after they graded the examinations of others, the people who were most competent increased their self-rating - that is to say, they originally underestimated their own performance relative to others, because they believed that other people were more competent than they actually were. Once they saw others' actual performance, their self-ratings improved. Conversely, people who were incompetent did not change their self rating, and were poor at judging the competence of others on their exams. In other words, the competent people could tell that others were less competent than themselves, and increased their self-rating, and could correctly grade others, while the incompetent people could not judge competence in others, and could not tell that they themselves were less competent than others, and therefore did not change their self-ratings.
Fourth, they later took some of the low performers and trained them in whatever the task at hand was. The result was an increased ability to judge competence in the skill.
The original study is free to read online (or at least, I've found free copies of it online; here is a copy if you want to read it.)
Some of the follow-up studies are also available online.
But the long, the short, and the middle of it was:
1) Incompetent people believe themselves to be more competent than they really are.
2) Competent people believe other people to be more competent than they really are.
3) Exposure of incompetent people to competent and incomptent people does not improve their ability to recognize their own incompetence, and they are incapable of recognizing competence in others as well.
4) Exposure of competent people to competent and incompetent people does improve their ability to rate their own competence relative to others, and they can recognize competence in others.
5) Training in a skill will improve people's ability to recognize competence.
It is a very real effect, and all of the above points towards the hypothesis being true (at least for some, fairly broad, subset of skills).
Of course, some people will point out that people have always known this on some level; if you want to know who the best at something is, who do you ask?
1410872 RE: Your User Icon:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is how I was born, and what Khazad-dûm was like, and how the Dwarves occupied it before I came there, and why I have tentacles, and all that Elder Edda kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
--J. R. R. Salinger, The Watcher in the Water
1415653
I really kind of want to hug you right now. And read the hell out of that book.
I think 1412892 has the right idea: Fimfiction's norms about what makes stories "bad" don't have anything to do with literary phenomena, and are more folk wisdom than anything else.
The users shun Shadowblood Darkblade because they are told that red and black alicorn OCs are bad. They disdain self-inserts because they are told that self-inserts are bad. They are not told that a soldier innaquestria is bad, so they do not spurn them.
It's as simple as that. Rather than actually interpret the description and story, users seem to prefer a shallow objectivity. If it passes the brief checklist, it's Not A Bad Story and they'll just ignore it at worst.
1415588 I went and read the original study, and I don't believe it was done correctly. The problem is that all the test subjects were Cornell undergrads, and they were being asked to rank themselves relative to their peers. What is missing from those graphs is the graph showing how many questions they thought they got correct. The study shows that people estimated their relative performance incorrectly, not their absolute performance. The average SAT score of a Cornell undergraduate is in the 95th percentile, so of course they all thought they were above average. That's how they're used to thinking of themselves.
Scoring the papers of other students was supposed to account for this in some way, but I don't see how. If they had simply showed everyone there scores, then the incompetent people would have realized their low rank. But they didn't; they merely had everyone grade other papers, which is exactly the same as having the take test over again. If they got the wrong answer to a question themselves, they would look at the paper by someone who got it right, and say they got it wrong. They might be quite aware that they were just guessing, but they couldn't do anything else without having the answer key. So of course people who got the answers wrong increased their estimate of their relative performance; from their perspective all the experimenters did was show them that everybody else got more problems wrong than they did.
A possibly more important source of error is that the study did not account for regression to the mean. When you take 40 students who are all in the 80th to 99th percentile of the general population and give them a test, their test scores will differ more from random variation than from their abilities. The students who were said to be in the bottom quartile on that study were certainly not the bottom quartile of the students in that study. They were a combination of the students with lowest ability, and the students with the worst luck on that particular exam.
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Kruger and Mueller claimed the same thing. Ehrlinger et. al. thus did another study on the issue to rule out reversion to the mean and the idea that the ease of the tasks caused overestimates:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702783/
Incidentally, while yes, in theory Cornell students are very capable relative to the general population, this does not necessarily extend across all tasks; the bottom performers in the test had quite poor scores overall. The average scores on the tests were between 66.4% and 49.1% correct, and the bottom performers scored between 48.2% (the highest lowest score - i.e. the exam that the worst person did the best on) and a very terrible 3.2% correct (the lowest lowest score). It is very unlikely that they got such low scores by chance alone.
Ehrlinger's study used both absolute and relative rankings (i.e. people were asked not only to rate themselves relative to their peers, but absolutely) to help see whether people were underestimating their peers or overestimating their own ability.
They also examined reversion to the mean. As it turns out, reversion to the mean reduced or eliminated the effect of top scorers underestimating themselves; however, low scorers continued to vastly overestimate their own ability, suggesting that while the top scorer underestimates could be a statistical artifact, the bottom-scorer underestimates were indeed real.
They also managed to take advantage of some non-college students as well - they gave some Trap and Skeet people a test on gun safety based on an NRA test (which they did depressingly poorly on) and incentivized accurate self-rating for some of them (which appeared to help their raw score estimations, though oddly it made their absolute percentile self-rating even less accurate - the top performers put themselves lower, the bottom performers put themselves HIGHER. This odd "accountability making low performers overestimate their ability even more" showed p in two of the three studies where it was done (though in the third, even a large cash incentive had no impact on college students' self-rating).
Are the tests perfect? No. Most of them are done on college students (though not all of them). That being said, they were quite consistent in showing that poor performers overestimated their own ability.
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I'm in a rush right now and will be busy for the next few days, so I'm writing this after reading up to and through just the first study in the paper you referenced.
There is one thing missing here that I'd love to see in these studies: efforts to ensure that the participants understand the questions and the evaluation criteria. With multiple choice questions (especially for true/false), misread and misinterpreted questions are a common source of error. Assuming the test-taker is more likely to select the right answer than the wrong one (which seems to have been the case in this exam), this would lead to inflated performance beliefs*. That accurate understanding of the questions would be correlated with better performance also suggests that "top performers" would have accurate beliefs about their performance, which is exactly what this study found.
Actually, that aligns exactly with the results of the Krueger and Mueller (2002) study referenced in that paper (I haven't read it, so I'm making assumptions). If people are more likely to answer correctly, then misinterpretations and misread questions/answers would lead to inflated performance beliefs, and the reverse would lead to deflated performance beliefs*.
*That's only partially true. The probabilities break down into more than two cases, but the broad idea still holds.
1417284 Thanks for posting that--I was about to waste a lot of time simulating the tests to see whether regression to the mean could account for all of the effect.
I am not convinced that the low performers are behaving differently than the high performers given their scores. The basic problem is that people cannot know they are making mistakes without trusting an authority figure who says they are mistaken (giving them an answer key). The high performers and low performers both gave answers that they thought were correct. You could say that the only mystery is why everybody didn't always say that they got all of the questions correct. Suppose that every person had 90% confidence in every correct answer that they gave, and 50% confidence in every incorrect answer that they gave. Each person would then estimate the fraction of questions they answered correctly as e = .9r + .5(1-r), where r is the fraction of questions they answered correctly.
r = .5 e= .7
r=.7 e=.78
r=.8 e=.82
r=.9 e=.86
As you see, you can reproduce the results with a model that assumes everyone acts the same way.
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Those don't actually replicate the results of the test, though. Even if we assume that they all estimated their scores in that way, it would suggest that the people who did worst on the tests really did overestimate their performance - even someone with r = .5 would, as you noted, expect to get 7/10 questions (or 70%) correct. Their odds of getting a score of a 4/10 would be very low - not only would they have to get every question that they guessed on wrong (1/32 chance), but they would also have to get a question they were confident on wrong as well (They have a 41% chance of getting at least one question they were confident on wrong). Taking those together, you would only expect someone whose prediction of getting 70% getting 40% on the test about 2% of the time; a full quarter of the test takers expecting 70% and getting 40% is very unlikely from a statistical standpoint, and it is far more likely that the actual cause is that the people are overestimating their scores (i.e. are overconfident).
That is why in Ehrlinger's study they did both raw score estimates and percentile relative to peers. In fact, the way they got those numbers is the way that you suggested - basically, each person rates their certainty of each answer. Assuming their certainty of their answers is correct, then their raw score estimate should be close to their actual score, plus or minus some randomness.
Conversely, what we actually saw was stuff like this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702783/figure/F5/
This was for the gun test. The raw score estimates are what are interesting here. To guess that your score was 8, you would have to have 80% average confidence in all of your answers. The odds of getting a score of a 4 (the actual score for the people who did badly), given that 80% average certainty, is quite low - and it is doubly bad as you would expect someone who is guessing randomly to get a score of 2.5. The competent people on that test, conversely, guessed that they would get about an 8... and they did.
Now, one could argue from the raw score data that it is really quite flat - in other words, that people believe that they are all going to get a score that would place them in the top quartile, regardless of actual ability, and that it is merely an artifact that people in the top quartile are right - it isn't that they are better at self evaluation in reality, it is simply that they say the same thing as everyone else (they're going to score in the top quartile) and because they ARE in the top quartile, they appear to be validated in their belief.
However, most of the tests showed some difference in the perceived scoring between the low people and the high people, and while the low people did vastly overestimate their own ability, they were ranking themselves statistically significantly lower than the people who got the best scores. They thought they were above average, but they didn't usually put themselves as high as the best people did, which would suggest that competence at least correlates with confidence, if not self-rating ability.
One way to potentially get around this hypothesis (people simply guess they'll get 70-80% of the possible points) would be to construct a very difficult test where you expect the top quartile score to be around 50% (raw score), and then see what results people actually guess they'll recieve. If people still guess their average scores will be 70-80% of the total possible points, then you would know people simply guess. If on the other hand the more competent people guessed close to their actual raw score, then you would know that they are accurate at self-rating.