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Do you know less than nothing?

I often do

ClearerThinking recently published a multiple-choice test about the world's biggest problems.

Pure guessing will give about 35%. So getting below 35% means you know less than nothing.

There are many tests about the world where I know (or at least knew) less than nothing because many of the things that I had known had changed over the decades since school.

It bothers me when the world changes while I am not watching, which probably means that I should start watching since I can't count on it to stop change.

I don't suffer from that on this test. It is not set up to trick you. And while most of it requires knowledge of the world, for some of it, strong skills will do.

Leaving aside the estimation skills, I know about nothing.

With estimation skills, I am a bit better than the average participant, who, in turn, did a bit better chance.

Perhaps the one saving grace is that I wasn't wrong on any of that relatively few questions that I felt confident on.

With the caveat that the test is set up to foster thought about the particular problems that the Effective Altruism community cares about, I dare you to compare your ignorance to my own.

Written by Russell Brand

Entrepreneur in residence at Founder Institute, he has mentored, performed due diligence on and invested in numerous early stage companies. Hundreds of these early stage companies have described Russell’s insights and advice as the most useful thing in the history of their companies. He has always had an inborn ability to find more valuable uses of new ideas and faster ways to achieve results.

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