Ever since learning about this effect (and spending lots of time reading about cognitive biases) I’ve given up and just assumed I’m shit and just muddle though questioning everything I do.
Still, at least i’m not a colossal mess like Trump and I’ll probably wont get everybody on the planet killed.
So I can take some solace in that that.
It’s not so much you should question your competence but never assume that it’s firm in all aspects of what you do know. For example, I know programming but mostly in a few areas. I know plenty about C and memory allocation in low level (heh, calling C low level is cute tbh) systems that it’s second nature to me and I know enough JS to get around using existing libraries but if you asked me to cook up a whole new UI lib to compete with Telerik then I’m going to tell you to pay me to learn all the details of CSS and the DOM (HTML) before I start. I just don’t know enough to cook one up out of thin air. Knowing what you don’t know is actually more valuable than being a blowhard about what you do. Often there’s not enough overlap to get you by. It’s like being a mechanic and then declaring you know the details of a car enough to be a mechanical engineer.
You’d be amazed how many times I have heard this exact thing. For example, a couple of years ago a highly competent co-worker who had made a simple mistake, readily recoverable, threw down the tool and said “everything I touch turns to shit, just like my father always said”. The emotion in his voice was obvious, just as it was obvious that his own self-doubt was crippling him. I felt like punching his father in the head.
The reason why incompetent people think they are amazing is that we have a culture that rewards people for bluster and confidence rather than for actual excellence. We reinforce this behaviour at every turn.
We reinforce the idea that being successful is being good, and being unsuccessful is being bad. People absorb this idea and behave as if they are experts to protect themselves from judgment.
Dunning-Kruger is not human nature, it is cultural. A study in Japan showed that Japanese people who are incompetent tend to recognize that and that in general people are more likely to underestimate their abilities. It also showed they were more likely to see failure as an opportunity for improvement.
I don’t like it when this is presented as a human foible rather than a product of the same zeitgeist that gives us supply-side economics. Just another toxic element of a culture that sees people as commodities to be judged by their output.
Unfortunately, a good chunk of us aren’t gifted with good parents. If all you get from your parents is negative reinforcement and un-constructive criticism, the effects can be long lasting and seem to infect every person I know who is demonstrably competent.
Except you’ll be one of the victims. Sorry to crush your solace.
…Or like having been sent to a boy’s military academy because you were unmanageable at home and then declaring you know more about military strategy than your experienced generals.
But Trump himself knows more than the generals, more than the judges, more than the economists…
Methinks the better question is, how do we overcome the widespread Dunning-Kruger effect?
I concur with @anon50609448; it’s not a natural state of human existence - it’s a result of socialization and conditioning.
My sister wants us to be Mensa buddies, so we can swap photos and stuff. She reckons she can join because she got 100% on an online test, and she wants me to try.
That is tied into another area of cultural ignorance - in that success/failure are entirely relative. So a person judging another tends to be based purely upon projection of whatever personal or group values/goals they have been socialized to, and assumed to somehow be universal. (THAT mechanism is how cognitive bias allows imperialism/colonialism/hegemony to sneak in so easily)
Realistically, there is no way to know if any given person or group is succeeding or failing without knowing what it is they are actually trying to accomplish in the first place.
Some are amazingly transparent about it! I had some managers at my previous job referring to me as “a big phony” for a few months. I needed to press them to disclose whatever they thought was being misrepresented, or STFU.
This sort of attitude I think can be readily observed by seeing how those in a social setting react to deliberately somewhat self-deprecating comments and humor. If they file it in their blackmail book, they might just be shrewd and ruthless backstabbers. But if they immediately become gleeful and start grandstanding about how you admit that you aren’t omniscient and omnipotent or whatever - then you’ve hooked yourself a D-K.
That describes some of my discussions with Trump supporters. When discussing judicial rulings, I would often say that I’m an amateur, and can’t be expected to know as much as the judges. They would immediately claim that I’m not competent to discuss the matter (but somehow, they are, because they CLAIM to know more than the judges).
When they run out, maybe switch to Futurama gifs please?
Well said. I think it is a cultural outgrowth of inherent bias. Other cultures keep bias in check. Our dratted culture does not: we exaggerate our internal biases as something positive. Obv. not every single American. But in broad strokes, we do as you described.
“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”
You work for tRump?
(sorry, low hanging fruit and all…)
Sums up pretty much every “discussion” I’ve had online about climate change.
“What if the Sun’s output changes? Didn’t think of that didya, so-called scientist guy?”
After years of trying to educate people and correct misconceptions I just move on. Too many people don’t want to learn.
