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…

60 thoughts on “Life Is Full Of Ironies, If You’re Stupid

  1. Well, I suppose that on the Left there must be a “conservatives are not feminists, incels aren’t feminist, therefore incels are conservative” idea,
    But of course that is a invalid syllogism like “Cows are not Oxen, men are not oxen, therefore men are cows.”

  2. Say, Bill?

    You know what tells us you’re an 80 IQ moron? You work in IT, but it never occurred to you that internet sleuthing goes both ways.

    You’re a fucking idiot, of EPIC proportions, manlet. Take care of my chin twat.

  3. MO, Bill Peterson is never without pussy. I was wrong; he doesn’t need to dig into his shorts, all he has to do is schlong his own face.

  4. 10/10 Bill Peterson is gone.

    It’s how these leftist cunts roll.

  5. “Life is full of ironies, if you’re stupid”

    That is your SiTD phrase of the day.

  6. Ahhh, a new day dawns, with one less leftist rat squealing around the internet.

    Just so you know Bill, I’ll wearing your filthy, flea bitten pelt around like a cape for awhile. Bye, Felicia.

  7. Not sad to see JK go.
    Definitely a second rate intellect, totally unaware of his own limitations. I had to laugh when he began to put conservative SITD commenters (and only conservative commenters) on some kind of totem, just like they do in the software group where he claimed to work. No self-awareness at all.
    Also his use of the word “nihilists” and “racist” to describe Trump supporters. Obviously you can’t be a nihilist if you are a racist. You believe in race, fer God’s sake.
    I bet that he picked it up from Left pundits who believe that the only true political belief is theirs, so if you believe in anything else, you believe in a thing that does not exist.

  8. Pingback: Variations On The Two Latest Pop-Psych Affectations | Shot in the Dark

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