The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Why Stupid People Think They Are Smart

[Robert]

BTW, this video actually shows something coming from nowhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN5mdtXw5xM

[caz]

I prefer professor Jim Al Khallili. I actually understood, or thought I understood, something about quantum mechanics after one of his demonstrations.
Going on wiki to learn more is a discouraging process. Terms I don't understand and equations that look like a knitting tangle. I understood that I didn't really. No doubt those who do have a high I.Q, but it also represents a lifetime of study and hard work.
Not all opinions are equal, although all must be heard, and weighed accordingly.
My grind is with those who have no better use for life than to gratify their basic appetites, and think it represents common sense or realistic thinking. Perhaps it's a tendency that all of us are guilty of, that everybody else thinks as we do.
The wearying process of trying to be the sole rational voice on forums that have fallen to the majority of the ignorant is easily solved- leave the forum. It still feels like you should still be posting, trying to change hearts and minds.
Ignorance was once a cause of shame. Now it's celebrated, often as a badge of hyper masculinity I'm ashamed to say.

Great post, Martin. It should make us all think a bit more before assuming we are in the right, either because we are the only one marching in step, or because we have an army of followers who couldn't think for themselves if their life depended on it.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

We live in an age of specialisation, and many people would rather be an 'expert' (in their own opinion) on one topic than have a broader but shallower interest in a range of subjects.

Yes, there's a lot of crap on the internet but such is life. What bothers me is the following :

From time to time, you hear a debate in a pub at a table next to you, and you immediately understand what the real case is with the democracy.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but in a democracy most people realise that they are not experts on anything much, but they decide which decisions should be reserved for experts and which decisions they should take for themselves. Or they decide which bunch of politicians they trust to pick the right experts to make the decisions. The point is, once you let the 'experts' decide what you are or are not allowed to decide, and even let the 'experts' decide who counts as an expert, then you are truly, madly, deeply f*cked.

PS Martin, it's the same for me with quantum mechanics. Up to a point it's possible to understand it, but the sad fact is that there's no bypassing the mathematics.

Hi Robert,

I find the problem with some people who have specialised from an early age, at the expense of other subjects, is that they seem to think that because they are an established 'expert' in one field, they can claim to be better informed than most about virtually any other subject that comes up for debate, when the opposite is more likely to be true.

It can be laugh out loud funny to see someone like this struggle with a subject they know a lot less about than people who never specialised, and were able to spend those years gaining experience and absorbing knowledge on a wide variety of different topics, including the one the 'expert' thinks he/she has mastered.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Hello Caz,

I have always been amazed myself at the spelling and grammar errors that you see on the internet. You would think if you are going to have your name attached to something that thousands of people are going to see that you would take a few moments to proofread.

By the way, Caz do you remember that thread I started a few years ago gently rebuking bad grammar and spelling that was becoming rampant on Casebook? Man, did that turn into an absolute **** storm. People got seriously riled up.

P.S. I hope I didn't misspell anything in this post.

c.d.

That was splendid, c.d.

I should have stopped being surprised years ago to find people who couldn't string a few words together mocking the spelling and grammar errors in a certain diary. Often they spell it 'dairy' with evidently no irony or self-awareness. For me it's like seeing a semi-literate poster mocking the author of the 'From Hell' letter for not writing it in better English, while saying a medical student probably sent it with the kidney, pretending to be JtR.

Love,

Caz
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[Svensson]

If you work in IT like I do, the Dunning-Kruger effect is hiding in plain view as a matter of fact. Another favourite saying of mine: " A little knowledge is dangerous".

[Sam Flynn]

Often they spell it 'dairy' with evidently no irony or self-awareness.

They're milking it for all it's worth.

[Robert]

I read that and heartily concurd.

[barnflatwyngarde]

I am reading Steven Pinker's new book "Enlightenment Now", and he makes the point that if we can understand even the basic principles of science, we then look at the world and the universe with a sense of awe.

There is a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope which shows galaxies that existed millions of years before the Earth was formed, looking at that picture, you are actually looking back through time.

If that doesn't induce awe in a person, then there really is no hope.

If I was in a position to do so, I would give every child, upon reaching the age of 16, a copy of Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World".

A book that moves me every time I read it.

[Magpie]

The first rule of Dunning-Kruger club is you don't know you're in Dunning-Kruger Club

[martin wilson]

I suppose technically I'm an atheist. Although that implies I have given the matter due consideration and taken a position.
I haven't. To me the whole thing is ridiculous.
I do have faith. In science. All it requires is time and pretty much everything will be explained.
What mysteries remain are no proof of a divine presence. Merely limitations of the discovery process.
University students seem more well rounded to me. On University Challenge the occasional football question used to completely baffle them. Not so much any more.
I remember dealing with a fairly irate customer, having ordered a built in oven and a dishwasher, he was delighted at our prompt and efficient next day delivery service.
He was perhaps less delighted that neither one was a built in oven or a dishwasher.
One of our legendary storesmen. So often wrong that in the end we simply said that he wasn't wrong but that the answer he gave us was so profound in its wisdom that we couldn't yet hope to understand it.

All the best.

[Pcdunn]

Interesting comments, all. As an academic librarian, I believe in the importance of education. One of my recent tasks is updating the books in our community college library, trying to make sure the science areas are more current than 1999.

I do not disdain religion, nor spirituality, but I don't think the Genesis story can be taken as proof that Darwin was wrong, and vice versa. Why can't science and religion/myth coexist, since both speak to different areas of the human psyche?

Fundamentalism in any religion is dangerous, just as bigotry in any political system is the same. Our hope for the future lies, I think, in educating the young with all viewpoints-- and, of course, the facts.

[Ginger]

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you on this point.... when De-Grasse-Tyson and MOST other scientist talk in an authoritative way it is because they are discussing issues that have been tested and gone thru peer review and are scientific facts....I know that upsets people who don't like the answers, but that is how it is...people will argue "well that's only a theory" when they don't know what a scientific theory is... it's not a guess....it's a tested and, for all intensive purposes, fact...

However it is a misused word by "non-scientists" for instance....the "theory of intelligent design" and " the flat earth theory" are NOT theories at all... and people who don't know better hear theory and think that "intelligent design, or Flat Earth, or 6000 year old earth theories" are the same meaning of "theory" as " theory of gravity, or relativity, or the Big Bang theory, or the Theory of Evolution" and it's not..... and it's about time scientist started talking bigger and tougher and louder... they have to silence those who will spread BS claiming to be truth... and having it taught as "science" for they are a danger to society.

Steadmund Brand

A very late response, for which I apologize.

The idea that the earth is flat is so readily disprovable, by so many avenues of approach, as to be ludicrous. So far as "Intelligent Design", I hold a more open mind on that. Darwin's observation that evolution can, through random mutations, produce an organism more fit to survive those conditions that produced it, should be understandable and obvious to anyone. We have examples of it happening all around us. The Salt and Pepper Moth is the classic case, but one reads constantly in the news these days about bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics. That's Darwinian selection at work, and on a humanly observable time scale, since bacteria reproduce so fast.

Can Darwinian selection account for all the results of evolution, though? I don't think that it can. Were Darwinian selection all that shaped us, then we should be eminently suited to survive, but that's ALL that we should be. Factors that did not affect one's likelihood of survival might arise, and breed true among a certain percentage of the population, just as, for instance, some people find aspirin intolerably bitter, and some cannot taste it. The mutation seems to have no effect on survival, so as one might expect from Darwin, it's just out there, neither favoured nor disfavoured. Some people have it, and some don't.

There are, however, some strong traits of humans that don't seem to really be tied to any kind of Darwinian evolutionary pressure. Music, for instance. Humans pretty much universally have an appreciation for music, to the extent that people who can't enjoy music are pitied as a type of cripple. That seems to be a constant in every human culture, however much they may differ otherwise. If there are cultures to whom music is incomprehensible, I have not heard of them. Moreover, some studies seem to show an awareness of, and appreciation for, music among other species. I have a very hard time believing that Darwinian natural selection can account for that.

[Ginger]

Yes, people who don't know what a theory means in science drive me crazy. Then you have the ones who say well scientists just pull stuff out of their ass. When it is pointed out to them that you have peer reviewed scientific papers they counter that the papers are only reviewed by other scientists in that particular field who are of course biased just like the original author.

That is, IMHO, a serious potential pitfall, and one that we've not really begun to address. Even a hundred years ago, and even up to the Second World War, most scientists had a much broader grounding, and could bring to bear knowledge from outside of their particular speciality. Now, of course, one has to concentrate on a particular field, or even a subset of a field, to be able to fully understand the vast amount of information available. There seems no obvious solution to the problem, but that shouldn't keep us from being aware of it as a problem, potential if not actual.

[Sam Flynn]

There is a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope which shows galaxies that existed millions of years before the Earth was formed, looking at that picture, you are actually looking back through time.

Billions and billions of years before the formation of the Earth, in fact. Awe-inspiring indeed.

[martin wilson]

Music is a fascinating example of apparent evolutionary uselessness.
I saw a documentary on chimpanzees, one was drumming on a tree, part of a mating ritual.
I also saw one on cave art, which suggested its location was by design, linked to the acoustic properties of the cave itself. Thus a form of music, chanting and rhythm, even flute playing accompanied what may have been part of a hunting ritual.
In evolutionary terms, such activities are important as they bind peoples together with common purpose. Cooperation amongst peoples are generally accepted as being crucial to our survival as a species.
Early man would have been surrounded by a form of music. Birdsong. Understood as not really singing, but marking territory, warning of predators and calling for a mate.
It's interesting how often crowds, at concerts (obviously) sports competitions, even protests, find something to sing together, to me, indicating its usefulness as a social binder.

All the best.