Linking to another article, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball referenced a term I’d not heard of before – the Dunning-Kruger Effect. To quote the linked Wikipedia article:
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast, the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”
This instantly explained bogans, loud mouthed idiots and politicians who pander to them, as well as a plethora of other areas.
No related posts.
Hi Preston.
That’s a very interesting quote. Maybe the reason why the competent person is so competent, is because it has inner urge to go further, regardless of external pressure.
In Iceland we have a saying:
The empty barrel is the loudest barrel.
Best regards,
Johannes