{"id":78982,"date":"2021-07-29T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=78982"},"modified":"2021-07-27T16:18:29","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T21:18:29","slug":"life-is-full-of-ironies-if-youre-stupid-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=78982","title":{"rendered":"Life Is Full Of Ironies, If You’re Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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 <\/em>isn’t going to get turned into a form of onanistic self-ongratulation, used in service of political hackery, nosireebob”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was right, of course, judging by this “Dunning-Kruger-For-Dummies”-level primer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the 2016 election and in the months after the presidential inauguration, interest in the Dunning-Kruger effect surged. Google searches for \u201cdunning kruger\u201d peaked in May 2017, according to Google Trends<\/a>, and has remained high since then. Attention spent on the Dunning-Kruger Effect Wikipedia entry has skyrocketed since late 2015<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also \u201cmuch more research activity\u201d 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cObviously it has to do with Trump and the various treatments that people have given him,\u201d Dunning said, \u201cSo yeah, a lot of it is political. People trying to understand the other side. We have a massive rise in partisanship and it\u2019s become more vicious and extreme, so people are reaching for explanations.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

Seems legit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In so many ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people \u201ccannot wrap their minds around the rise of Trump,\u201d Sloman said. \u201cHe\u2019s exactly the opposite of everything we value in a politician, and he\u2019s the exact opposite of what we thought Americans valued.\u201d Some of these people are eager to find something scientific to explain him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

…what <\/em>pop-psychological syndrome? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,368],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-trump-derangement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78983,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78982\/revisions\/78983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}