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| Turns out you can't spell "ironic" without Inc. The Dunning-Kruger Effect Has Been Cited for 26 Years, but Most People Still Misunderstand It  The lesson isn’t that dumb people are overconfident, according to its co-creator. It’s that you are. You sure about that? Few psychological rules have as high a public profile as the Dunning-Kruger effect. "Few?" Way to weasel out there. What are the rules you're talking about? That only children are selfish? That short men are pugnacious? The one about the bystander effect, which was pretty much debunked? David Dunning and Justin Kruger showed that the people who were least competent at a given task were also the most confident in their abilities. Meanwhile, the most skilled are the most unsure. They were far from the first to notice this. Yeats wrote, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity," which sounds about the same to me. A theory that states the dumbest among are often the loudest and most overconfident seems to explain so much about modern life. Because we need such simple explanations. As pleasant as it might be to write off those you disagree with as hopelessly dim and deluded, the Dunning-Kruger effect isn’t actually about anyone’s general intelligence, Dunning explained. It’s about what happens when you gain just a little knowledge in a particular domain. I mean, okay and all. We should all be aware that it can happen to us, and not feel superior to those of unfortunate mental capacity. “It’s not about general stupidity. It’s about each and every one of us, sooner or later,” he says. “We each have an array of expertise, and we each have an array of places we shouldn’t be stepping into, thinking we know just as much as the experts.” Yes, but wouldn't stupid people have a bigger "array of places [they] shouldn't be stepping into?" Dunking on others’ oblivious idiocy, as tempting as it can be, isn’t actually the takeaway message of the Dunning-Kruger effect according to Dunning. Instead, it’s to be mindful of your own overconfidence, especially in areas where you don’t have deep domain expertise. If you say so. You're the expert. The point isn’t to help you spot others’ stupidity. It’s to alert you to the constant potential for your own. Or as Dunning puts it: “Our ignorance is an everyday companion that we will all carry for the rest of our lives.” You know what bugs me most about this article, though? It's that the author and, apparently, Dunning, based on his quotes therein, conflate ignorance with stupidity. They are (I say with great confidence) not the same thing. Ignorance is our default state. Were you born knowing how to ride a bike? Was the Pythagorean Theorem engraved on your little baby neurons? No. Hell, you even had to be taught how to walk and talk (and then, once you mastered those, how to sit down and shut up). There is no shame in ignorance per se. No matter how aghast I might be at someone who doesn't understand a Star Trek reference joke I made, the simple truth is not everyone has seen Star Trek. Nor is there real shame in having reduced mental capacity. People who are slow learners deserve help and empathy, not scorn and ridicule. What deserves ridicule, the thing that I feel free to mock, is willful ignorance: the deliberate refusal to learn, to change one's mind, or consider other points of view. Flat-earthers, for example. 7 ways to avoid falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect I'm just going to touch on a couple of these, here. Imagine the worst-case scenario. Oh, I do. That's my entire life philosophy: imagine the worst thing that can go wrong, assume it will, and you can only be pleasantly surprised. The problem is, maybe I'm too ignorant to see that there are even worse possibilities than the one I imagined. Think in probabilities. Citing the work of fellow psychologist Philip Tetlock, Dunning observes that people who think “in terms of probabilities tend to do much better in forecasting and anticipating what is going to happen in the world than people who think in certainties.” I agree and all, but, and I'm not saying this makes anyone stupid, people are generally utter shit at thinking in probabilities. We (and I do mean we) overestimate the risk of things we're not used to, while underestimating the risk of activities we do regularly. The example I usually quote is someone who is scared shitless of flying because of the risk of a fatal crash or whatever, but doesn't think twice about speeding to the airport if they're a little late. The latter is far, far more likely to be fatal, but we're used to driving, so it just doesn't register. Something similar happens at casinos, too. Playing blackjack, someone sitting next to me will wonder whether to stand or hit. The odds might favor hitting, say, with a >50% chance. But then they look at me like I'm the stupidest fool in the universe when the next card is a 10 and they bust. Don't look at me. Odds were in your favor. Never said it was a guarantee. They call it gambling for a reason. So I quit giving advice. “Be 10 percent more skeptical of people you agree with—and 10 percent more charitable to people you disagree with.” Insofar as such things can be quantified, this is something I try to do. Scientists are trained to look for evidence to disprove their hypotheses, which acts as a brake on the Dunning-Kruger effect. But you don’t have to be a scientist to think like one. This too. Admittedly, I don't always succeed. Practice saying “I don’t know.” This one time, I drove through Columbus, Ohio in a car full of friends. I remember seeing a billboard that urged something like: "Help wipe out ignorance and apathy!" I said, "I don't know; I just don't care anymore." That got a laugh. Was it appropriate? I don't know. |
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