Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Today I Learned: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is defined as "a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability to recognize their own ineptitude." 
It's the principal that someone who knows a little bit of something is likely to believe they have a masterful understanding of it as opposed to someone who truly has a thorough knowledge or skill realizing the limits of what they don't know. 

Ever noticed that the people that genuinely excel at something don't overly feel the need to go around boasting how they are so intelligent or skilled, but that those who come across as the biggest idiots on a subject can't help but regale you with tales of their mastery of it?
An example I've encountered in my own life is:
"I'm a great guitar player, my friends always want me to teach them my tricks" said unsolicited by a University underclassman with a generic acoustic who then proceeded to botch the fingering of a G chord
—Versus—
"I'm ok" said by Joey Laycock when asked if he was "any good" [at playing] by the same guy. 

We can see this most recently illustrated in the media regarding the Ferguson, MO shooting death of Mike Brown with people claiming to be experts saying 6 shots is excessive and that police should shoot people in the leg whereas had they any actual training they would instantly see the fallacy of both those arguments. 

For a more locally themed example, one need only listen to Paul Finebaum to hear scathing critique of coaching decisions by people who's days are spent watching ESPN rather than getting paid to win national championships. 

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, ladies and gentlemen. 

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