Shot in the Dark

Life Is Full Of Ironies, If You’re Stupid

A few years ago, when people started talking about the “Dunning Kruger Effect” – the notion that the less someone knows about a subject, the more expert they feel about it – the first thing I thought was “Well, this isn’t going to get turned into a form of onanistic self-ongratulation, used in service of political hackery, nosireebob”.

I was right, of course, judging by this “Dunning-Kruger-For-Dummies”-level primer:

During the 2016 election and in the months after the presidential inauguration, interest in the Dunning-Kruger effect surged. Google searches for “dunning kruger” peaked in May 2017, according to Google Trends, and has remained high since then. Attention spent on the Dunning-Kruger Effect Wikipedia entry has skyrocketed since late 2015.

There’s also “much more research activity” about the effect right now than immediately after it was published, Dunning said. Typically, interest in a research topic spikes in the five years following a groundbreaking study, then fades.

“Obviously it has to do with Trump and the various treatments that people have given him,” Dunning said, “So yeah, a lot of it is political. People trying to understand the other side. We have a massive rise in partisanship and it’s become more vicious and extreme, so people are reaching for explanations.”

“People are trying to understand the other side”, and why politics has become more vicious and extreme, by trying to quantify your opponents idiocy?

Seems legit.

In so many ways:

Many people “cannot wrap their minds around the rise of Trump,” Sloman said. “He’s exactly the opposite of everything we value in a politician, and he’s the exact opposite of what we thought Americans valued.” Some of these people are eager to find something scientific to explain him.

In other words, people using the “Dunning Kruger Effect” to explain the rise of Trump, qua Trump, without understanding the demography and class-conflict aspects of 2016 (and today) are exhibiting…

…what pop-psychological syndrome?

I don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here…

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60 responses to “Life Is Full Of Ironies, If You’re Stupid”

  1. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    From the Wikipedia:
    Outside psychology, non-professionals often invoke the Dunning-Kruger effect to insult people. Mark Murphy calls this abuse of the theory a form of “weaponized psychology”.
    This is one of those useless classifications. If what the Wikipedia tells us is true, the sign that a person knows little about a thing will be that he says that he knows a lot about it, and a person who knows a lot about a thing will say that he knows little about it. So when you need to have car serviced, you will look for a person who swears that he knows nothing about servicing your car.
    And of course there is the problem of misidentifying the subject. If a person invents and builds a perpetual motion machine, he knows much nore about all of its belts and pulleys and spinning wheels than I do, yet I can say with confidence that it doesn’t work. This is because the topic is not his particular gizmo, but the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
    Dunning’s statement, “If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent … The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is,” is incorrect.
    I know very little about fishing, even how to properly bait a hook or identify common fish. Yet I do not believe that I have any expertise in catching fish.
    There is also some tautology involved. Dunning and Kruger believe that they have expertise in detecting and defining a logical fallacy. How do they know that this correct?

  2. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is probably not real

  3. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    Great article, jdm. I’ll put the author’s takeaway at the bottom of this comment.
    My problem with social science (with a few exceptions), is that they are not asking questions that are scientific, and when they do research to answer these non-scientific questions, they do it in a non-scientific way. They are not trying to discover immutable, objective truths about nature.
    So often they discover “facts” that are trivial (“more women than men breast feed their children”), non-useful (“If you live in the Northeast, you more likely you are to confuse the flavors wintergreen and spearmint”), or so counter intuitive they can’t be right (“Median age of proffesional Japanese sumo wrestlers is four years, scientists say”).
    Some social science is useful, without a doubt, but the social scientists themselves can’t tell the shit from the shinola.
    Take-home message from the article jdm links to:
    – The Dunning-Kruger effect was originally described in 1999 as the observation that people who are terrible at a particular task think they are much better than they are, while people who are very good at it tend to underestimate their competence
    – The Dunning-Kruger effect was never about “dumb people not knowing they are dumb” or about “ignorant people being very arrogant and confident in their lack of knowledge.”
    – Because the effect can be seen in random, computer-generated data, it may not be a real flaw in our thinking and thus may not really exist

  4. MacArthur Wheeler Avatar
    MacArthur Wheeler

    Finally, people understand me!

  5. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    I laughed at the assumption that we value anything about politicians.

  6. J. Ewing Avatar
    J. Ewing

    There are two more fundamental things at work, here, to explain D-K. The first is the “iron rule of knowledge,” the belief that because somebody knows a thing, that /I/ know that thing. IOW, I can look it up on the Internet, so I “know” it, whether I look it up or not. It’s another form of confirmation bias. The second is the fundamental liberal belief that they are morally and intellectually superior to YOU, on any and every subject, because they have been TOLD what is true, so there. No knowledge is required for their view, as evidenced by their general inability to defend that view. And besides, they do not have to defend it because you are stupid and evil.

  7. John Kraephammer Avatar
    John Kraephammer

    The post hook is this wapo article right?  

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/01/07/whats-behind-confidence-incompetent-this-suddenly-popular-psychological-phenomenon/

    I agree about the lefty hackertastic misuse of this piece of wisdom.  I wouldn’t describe the 2016 phenomena as it being used to describe “the rise of Trump.”  My recollection is more often it was used as a lefty catch phrasey short hand to tag Trump himself as a mediocre intellect who claimed expertise and fluency on topic after topic.

    So that usage isn’t right either… but it’s merely the wrong term to evaluate that feature of Trump, which is a true feature.  I’m not trying to be provocative with that last statement, if you want to be triggered, that’s your deal.

  8. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    One phrase I have run across recently is “Educational authority.”
    Which is an interesting mashup, as though the hero of “animal house” was Dean Wormer.
    You can find an example here, in an article by the establishment organ “AVClub”: https://www.avclub.com/there-are-a-lot-of-contenders-but-lake-of-the-ozarks-m-1847370967
    It is about an article that appeared in Left Wing, establishmentarian publication Politico, about how them terrible hillbillies in the ozarks aren’t wearing masks. It’s not the article itself, the author instead just rephrases and comments on phrases from an article written by someone else.
    The author never claims to have been to Lake of the Ozarks. He has no expertise, educational or otherwise, to write about it.

  9. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    At the risk of being accused of “whataboutism” I will mention that when it comes to claiming expertise in subjects about which he is ignorant, Trump in teh good compay of recent Presidents, including the Current Occupant, who claims to have knowledge about a wide variety of topics about which he has no demonstrated expertise.

  10. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Respect my educational authority!

    Sorry, anytime I see the word authority I think of Cartman from Southpark.

  11. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Suppose the President of the United States spent his life as a businessman, selling peanuts, say, or maybe clothing, possibly running a newspaper, or even as a miner or oil man. Is anybody sufficiently brilliant to know everything about everything (well, aside from Hillary, The Smartest Woman In The World TM)?

    If not, do we expect the President to personally develop the expertise and fluency on the wide range of topics faced by the occupant of the Oval Office to govern perfectly in every regard?

    Or do we expect Presidents to receive briefings from advisors, make decisions based on experience tempered by intellect, then announce the decision while projecting a reassuing air of confidence and expertise to give the public the impression the country is in good hands? If so, would that be an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect or is it simply modern political theater?

  12. John Kraephammer Avatar
    John Kraephammer

    ^ I absolutely agree Trump is in good company there.  

  13. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Well, MO, yesterday, Joey Demento proclaimed at a Mack truck factory, that he once drove an 18 wheeler. Not sure where Joey is on the lie – o – meter, but if we look at all of the whoppers that he’s told since he’s been an elected apparatchik, he’s within about 10 of the 10,000 lies that Trump allegedly told while he was POTUS.

  14. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Hey now, I once drove an 18-wheeler, a tanker truck owned by a Koch Oil subsidiary doing business in the Badlands of North Dakota, back in the late ’80’s oil boom. A Kenworth conventional with two-speed transmission and killer air-ride driver’s seat – felt like you were floating on air – so I guess that makes Joe and me pretty much twins.

  15. kinlaw Avatar
    kinlaw

    –Many people “cannot wrap their minds around the rise of Trump,” Sloman said. “He’s exactly the opposite of everything we value in a politician, and he’s the exact opposite of what we thought Americans valued.” Some of these people are eager to find something scientific to explain him.”–

    Damn those creatures in flyover country; don’t they know they are voting against there own interests?

    As far as I’m concerned a degree from an Ivy or any one of the other dozen or so “prestigious” schools should disqualify you from holding office or having any authority over anyone else.

  16. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    “social science” – a defintion of an oxymoron.

  17. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Speaking of ironies and stupid…

    I know Mitch had Hayduke/Emery/Prendergast in mind when he posted this, since he was aka Dunning_Kruger at one time, but that is a misnomer. Hayduke/Emery/Prendergast is a pathological liar in a desperate search for respect; completely different dysfunction.

    The real D_K exhibition is given daily by your 80 IQ manlet, Kraphammer. Remember when he burst into the comments proclaiming, literally, that he possessed a towering intellect? Heh… He goes on to post the most stultifyingly ignorant observations, intermixed with pissy exhibitions of his insecurity surrounding his lack of cognitive skills.

    A 10th percentile buffoon judging himself in the 80th. It’s It’s a master class in low IQ functioning, and you get if free of cost.

    It’s also something that seems to evolve mainly within leftist circles.They’re always calling their dimwitted leaders “scary smart”; they make a circus of their scientist cult. Leftist women are the worst, of course. I guess we should be thankful that the majority of them go to their graves childless.

  18. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Meant to say their sciencism cult.

  19. John Kraephammer Avatar
    John Kraephammer

    I’d be very impressed if you can pull the post where I said I had a towering intellect, Tom.  I’ve never said it.  Standing out here at SiTD is another matter…

    Yesterday in the name of your profound oppositional mental illness and Dunning-Kruger as well you chose to contradict me on the matter of whether Viacom “makes money”.

    https://www.google.com/finance/quote/VIAC:NASDAQ?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwivzu6Z2ojyAhXUB50JHYGuCOwQ3ecFMAJ6BAghEBI

    Well does it, asshole?

  20. Tom Swift's Obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s Obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    You’ve done well and have some money and have investments right Tom, and know what EPS and PE are.

    Does Viacom make money?

  21. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Yesterday in the name of your profound oppositional [sic] mental illness and Dunning-Kruger as well you chose to contradict me on the matter of whether Viacom “makes money”.

    (Nice grammar and syntax mangling. jfc)

    No, fuckwit. I didn’t say Viacom doesn’t make money; I said “so does QVC”. And then I mocked you for an idiot, which I always do; it’s amusing to do so because it’s true. Go look at it again.

    And, perhaps you had said your intellect towers over the regular commentators. That’s a difference without distinction; you’re still an insecure, low IQ slob, witlessly strutting around with your pants down around your ankles.

    I don’t suffer from low self-esteem; I’m comfortable acknowledging what I know and what I don’t. There are several regular commentators here that are clearly smarter, and wittier than I am; but you’re not one of them, manlet.

    Did you help Doris with her user ID?

  22. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    LMAO!

    You’re going to have to do a better job of disguising your critical lack of command of the written English language, manlet. That papspew was completely incomprehensible…your 80 IQ betrays you.

  23. Tom Swift's obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    Yeah, we can tell you don’t suffer from low self esteem Tom. You suffer from some other things. HEYO!

  24. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Hahaha! Manlet, that was pathetic, even by the low standards you set. You’re going to re-read this later and think “Shit…he ran me into the dirt again”.

  25. Tom Swift's obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    Tom you managed to stay away a couple months, you must have read a lot of Nick Fuentes in that time and really gotten down his theory of the holocaust. Lay it on us.

    Or, regale us with all that pencil neck beating you did when you were a hanger on with the Aryan Cowboys.

    Be you, Tom, let it out!

  26. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Okay, you guys have convinced me.

    Mitch should throw the baby out with the bath water.

  27. Tom Swift's obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    Mitch would never ban Tom, Joe. Tom’s a stand up guy that he just has a few disagreements with. And of course, the id of the comment section.

  28. This Space For Rent Avatar
    This Space For Rent

    More shitposting from SiTD’s White Nationalist Tom Swift. Where he combines Ignorance with arrogance — the very definition of the “Dunning Kruger Effect”.

  29. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    More shitposting from SiTD’s White Nationalist Tom Swift.

    Fixation on Tom.

    Use of the term “Hayduke”

    Does the name ‘Ken Weiner” mean anything tio you, “Space?”

  30. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    No worries, JD.

    80 IQ Manlet took another beat down, and is going for his reliable plan “B”; posting his version of funny cat videos to distract from his shame.

    And right on schedule, Hayduke/Emery/Prendergast, the least self-aware liar and cheat to ever grace these pages, shows up to help his manlet pal off the cyber cement.

    With apologies to Mark Twain, whom I referred to earlier, they’re the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn of dimwitted, leftist internet trolls. Just floating down the digital river, getting steam-boated with mockery from time to time, but never a care in the world..pals to the end.

  31. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    OMG…not Weiner! Hahahahahaaha!

    You mean the failed pornographer who has been forever immortalized as a cock-and-balls cartoon character? I thought Weiner and his hairy, masculine wife took their POD crusade to Indianapolis.

  32. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Holy shit. It looks like Avidor/Weiner moved back to the TC about 5 years ago.

    https://streets.mn/author/kavidor/

    When did the Emery’s show up?

  33. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Come to think of it, Ken Avidor-Weiner is a bicycle Nazi. The Emery’s like to brag about shredding the BirKie.

    Is that you under there, Weiner? Come out, come out and let us have a look at you!

  34. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Holy shit. Look at “Hayduke’s” twitter avitar.

    That’s Weiner’s drawing.

    https://twitter.com/OldHayduke

    Checking his tweets 10/10 I’ll find a direct plagiarization in there.

  35. This Space For Rent Avatar
    This Space For Rent

    Berg says: “Fixation on Tom“

    Don’t drag me down into your personal hell.

  36. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Here’s Weiners Twatr account

    https://twitter.com/avidor

    Avidor is not Hayduke, but it looks like he uses that handle to post plagiarized blather on the Strib. We’re gonna get to the bottom of this.

  37. Tom Swift's obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    Tom, being a bicycle “Nazi” is bad right, as opposed to being a regular Aryan “Nazi” like you?

  38. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Avidor-Weiner still lives in Indy, but comes to the TC often.

    Check Emery’s IP, Mitch. If it’s from Indy; that’s our moron.

  39. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Lol…more funny cat videos from the shamed, 80 IQ manlet.

    At least you have enough brains to be ashamed when you get beat down, manlet. Good job!

  40. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Berg: “Who is” is your friend here.

  41. Tom Swift's obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    Yeah LOL – you left for two months after I rhetorically kicked your ass Tom.

    What’s the deal here Merg, is Tom the guy who does your stalking for you?

  42. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Manlet, I left because I was tired of pulling wings off flies. I’ll get tired of doing it again, sit by your dish and be patient. Try not to be too much of a cunt. ty

  43. Tom Swift's obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    Tom I’m looking at your picture on LinkedIn, the one with the palms behind you. When’s the last time you had some pussy, 25, 30 years ago? I give you credit for not being self conscious about your looks.

  44. Pig Bodine Avatar
    Pig Bodine

    Hey Kraephamer, give us the link to your LinkedIn profile so we can have a reference point.

  45. Tom Swift's obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    Pig, I’m not actually putting anyone’s LinkedIn link up.

    Just sayin…

  46. MacArthur Wheeler Avatar
    MacArthur Wheeler

    ^Coward!

  47. Tom Swift's obsession with mens' anus but no he's not gay Avatar
    Tom Swift’s obsession with mens’ anus but no he’s not gay

    Whoa, lot of pushback.

    You guys are sensitive to the notion conservatives are incels, right? Was I too mean?

  48. Pig Bodine Avatar
    Pig Bodine

    Mac Coward is so polite…but Chickenshit does cover it nicely.

  49. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    You stalking me manlet? HAhah!

    I know, I know, you get pussy every time you stick your hands in your pants; I’m not jealous.

    Ya’ll remember when twatlet thought Berg might doxx him…squealed like a bitch, and that’s no exaggeration. LMAO!

    Hide bitch, hide.

  50. Dr. Pete"Sedition Boy"Strunk Avatar
    Dr. Pete”Sedition Boy”Strunk

    Say, Bill Peterson? Did you know that Linkedin is owned by Google? Did you know Google tracks everyone, all the time, manlet?

    You know, that cleft in your chin looks like a cunt on your face; did you know that?

    LMMFAO!

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