This week I learned about the The Dunning–Kruger effect. Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger wrote at paper titled: Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. In this paper the pair explain that the poorest performers are unable to recognize their own lack of skill. These poor fools mistakenly labor under the misconception that they are much more skilled than they are in reality. What makes this state of affairs even more unfortunate is that because these poor fools lack the capacity to accurately assess matters they are unable recognize their own incompetence even when confront with objective facts which contradict their preconceptions concerning their relative skill.
For the benefit of an unskilled who happened to stumble across this blog as a result of a random search, what I said in the preceding paragraph (the paragraph be for this one) is: Stupid people do not know they are stupid. Stupid people think they are smart. Because they are stupid, stupid people continue to think thy are smart even after being presented with evidence that they are stupid.
The paper also discusses the fact that gifted people can fall prey to a cognitive error which is the the converse of the idiots. The gifted will often erroneously rate themselves as doing worse than their actual performance. [H]ighly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others. (Wiki).
There is a lot that I could say about The Dunning-Kruger effect. I spent much of my life suffering under its effect. I really believed that nearly every person I met was an idiot because they could not grasp what I considered very easy concepts and procedures. But going down this path is too much like bragging, and I like to do that in person.
I could also discuss some of the concrete examples of The Dunning-Kruger effect that I have observed in real life. Have you ever been approached by an idiot and been forced to listen to them say some variant of, "People tell me that I should have been a lawyer. I like to argue a lot." Maybe you haven't because most of you are not attorneys, but those members of the Bar that you know can tell you we all hear that. Most of us want to grasp the offending speaker about the throat and squeeze until you see the light go out of their eyes. Those attorneys who do not wish do do so are not paragons of virtue, they are probably suffering under the fist part of The Dunning-Kruger effect and are thinking to themselves, "Well I'm glad he didn't go to law school because that is one more guy I'd be in competition with." But we shant be going down this path either.
What I would prefer to do is discuss the circumstances that would give rise to Messrs Dunning and Kruger, allow me to correct myself, Dr.s Dunning and Kruger deciding to study this phenomena. The doctors were inspired by a true moron. Because they say that "stealing from one source is plagiarism, but stealing from many sources is research," let me steal from another source:
Charles Darwin observed that “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” That was certainly true on the day in 1995 when a man named McArthur Wheeler boldly robbed two banks in Pittsburgh without using a disguise. Security camera footage of him was broadcast on the evening news the same day as the robberies, and he was arrested an hour later. Mr. Wheeler was surprised when the police explained how they had used the surveillance tapes to catch him. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled incredulously. (New York Post, 2010)
McArthur Wheeler covered his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras. Why couldn't Mr. Wheeler see that his plan would fail? Dr. Dunning supplies us thith the answer. "If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent. […] the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is." says Dunning.
Let that sink in.
There is no hope for these poor bastards. They are incapable of being anything but morons. If they had the ability to recognize that they were morons then they would not be morons in the first place.
In a way this is liberating for me. I have been banging my head against the wall all my life trying to help idiots stop being idiots. They don't need my help. God loves them so he lets them go though life blissfully unaware of their status as idiots blithely confident that they are in fact above average and therefore one of the smart people. Since I can't help them or even make them aware that they need help, I am not obligated try any longer. The sweetest irony for me is that any idiots that come across this post will not even be offended because they will be certain I am not talking about them.
Later
Bob
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