Dunning-Kruger effect

[formercia]





The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when incompetent people not only fail to realise their incompetence, but consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. Basically, they're too stupid to know that they're stupid.
If you have no doubts whatsoever about your brilliance, you could just be that damn good. On the other hand..

--snip--


The effect is named after the valiant scientists who properly proved its existence in their seminal, 2000 Ig Nobel Prize winning<4> paper Unskilled and Unaware of It,<5> doubtless at great risk to personal sanity.
The idea that people who don't know enough also don't know enough to realise that they don't know enough ("Dunning-Kruger effect" is so much simpler to get your tongue around) isn't particularly new. Bertrand Russell in The Triumph of Stupidity in the mid 1930s said that "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." Even earlier, Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man in 1871, stated "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".
In his 1996 book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, Al Franken described the phenomenon of "pseudo-certainty" which was rampantly being displayed by pundits and politicians such as Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who would use "common sense" as the basis for their confidently-made assertions, but without actually backing them up with time-consuming research or pesky facts. Franken prefers the term "being a fucking moron".
Following a 2008 study by Helmuth Nyborg, which showed a slight but significant negative correlation between religiosity and IQ,<6> Nyborg theorised that this is because "...people with a high intelligence are more skeptical" - in other words, those with higher intelligence will also be more doubting about their ability to be right, because they possess the cognitive ability to gauge themselves better.

--snip--

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

[femrap]

1. I should type

this Syndrome's definition up and keep copies in my purse. When I encounter it (which is usually daily), I can simply hand him/her a small piece of paper and enlighten them.

And then I'll run and if I'm shot, I won't see it coming.

This explains so very, very much. I actually has saved me from many headaches and arguments.

[Enthusiast]

4. I have observed this phenomenon up close.

It is far more common in red areas of the state.

[No Elephants]

2. Now, why do you want to pick on poor Scott Brown?

Brown fits the description that Ann Richards gave of Dummya. Cunning.

I would add, not smart, but cunning, especially when it comes to fulfilling personal ambition.

And not all hung up on ethics and stuff. Just ask the mixed race child McCain supposedlly sired out of wedlock.


But I digress.

Don't underestimate people who over-estimate their own intelligence. There's strength in numbers!

[Enthusiast]

5. Ethics are just an impediment to achievement.

"The constitution is just a piece of paper."

[No Elephants]

6. You're right. Having ethics is like having an appendix.

No one can figure out why we ever had one and we certainly have no use for it now.

When it is not being totally irrelevant, it's only causing pain and threatening our well being.

Thanks for reminding me.

[Enthusiast]

3. I remember this, Dunning-Kruger effect.

Charles Darwin was so right on the money. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." He was describing the Neo-Cons.

[formercia]

7. "They will welcome us with candy and flowers."

How did that work out for the US?

[No Elephants]

8. Do you think Cheney said that out of ignorance?

[Enthusiast]

9. No, Cheney was a victim of the Dunning Kruger Effect.

Basically he thought he knew everything he needed to know. He was wrong. It was the embracing of wishful thinking to a ridiculous degree. That is kind of what the PNAC was all about. PNAC is sort of the opposite of Zen.

[No Elephants]

10. See, I always thought he knew he was bullshitting the American public about that.

I've always thought that he was lying and also that he knew perfectly well that he was lying.

Same for Condi and Rumsfeld who also made the rounds of the talk shows to gin up American support for the invasion.

Sure, they were going to be happy Saddam was toppled, but we knew that we were not just going to leave after that, nor could we. Either there would have been chaos or some Saddam type from the military would have taken over brutally.


And Powell either knew it too, or was pretty damned suspicious. The very story he tells to absolve himself only incriminates him more in my eyes. The story: "I made sure that Tenet sat right behind me when I made that speech, right in camera view." Tenet, of course, being the one who said the WMD intel was "a slam dunk"--whatever that means.

How Powell thinks that exonerates him, I have no idea. To me, it says only that Powell thought then the so-called intel was b.s. and he got his alibi ready in case the rest of the country caught on. He also knew he was chosen to give the UN speech because, of all the big names in Bushco, polls had shown that Americans trusted his veracity most. Yet, he never once said anywhere that he had doubts about the intel.

So, he wasn't at all particular about helping convince the American people to send their blood and treasure to Iraq, or about trying to persuade other nations to do the same, but he was particular about getting Tenet in the camera shot so that, if and when it did hit the fan, he could try to exonerate himself by saying it was all Tenet's fault.

There's that, there's My Lai, there's DADT. (Ironically enough, Bubba has tried to use Powell with respect to DADT the same way that Powell has tried to use Tenet with respect to Iraq.)

Powell is not my favorite.

ETA: Long story, but on the morning of 911, as I watched the Today Show, I happened to be standing next to a native of Syria who had gone to Lebanon and from there had immigrated to the U.S. She was about 75.

My first words: "Bin Laden."

Her first words. "Yes, but they'll try to hang it on Saddam."

During the week of 24/7 TV that followed the attack, Peter Jennings announced that a government official from the state department had information and he was going to be speaking to her in a few minutes. (This I know simply because I was watching.)

Soon, a woman, in answer to his questions, said, yes, Saddam had definitely been behind the attack.

Jennings asked, "How do you know that?"

The woman seemed totally unprepared for the question. Her reply, as nearly as I can approximate it was "Beeeeeeeecawwwwwwse, who else would do such a thing?"

Without saying another word to or about this woman, Jennings ended the interview. The camera immediately returned to him and him alone; and he returned to the monologue most anchors were forced to give all week. He never mentioned her or her theory (if one can dignify it that way) again during the next few hours. AFAIK, he never mentioned her again all that week--and i watched quite a bit, having gotten stuck in Houston and being unable to get a flight homw to Logan until well after other airports re-opened. (Because Logan was a crime scene.)


No one, but no one, on either side of the ocean who knew the least bit about the Middle East, thought Saddam and Osama were in cahoots. Everyone knew they hated each other.

I would be more than shocked if Cheney and Rumsfeld were unaware of that, given how much intel they get and how chummy both Bush Presidents were with Saudis. And no one thought Saddam was going to jeopardize his good life by invading the U.S.

He had even either cleared it with us, or tried to, before he attacked Kuwait, though Bush claimed April Glaspie never passed on that info. (Sure--that's what minor government bureaucrats do every day--okay invasions of other countries on their own, without passing it up channels first. In fact, I thought of Glaspie when some woman no one ever heard of before definitively told Jennings that Saddam was behind 911.)

And there is a rumor, though I cannot attest to it personally, of course, that on the night of 911, Rumsfeld told Bush, "This is your excuse to invade Iraq, if you want it." Or words to that effect.

But, I digress. In all, I think Cheney knew very well that he was cheerleading for slaughter on all sides.

[Enthusiast]

11. Nice post, No Elephants.

Oh, I am sure that Cheney and the rest were lying about WMDs and Saddam being involved with 911. I know they fabricated evidence to support an invasion of Iraq. I know they should have been executed for treason. But we had to "look forward".

My only assertion was in regard to Cheney's claim that, "We will be greeted as liberators." I do think his understanding of the Iraqi people was that poor.