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The stupid are too stupid to know they are stupid 

4/23/2016

6 Comments

 
Have you ever noticed how truly competent, intelligent people are often quiet about their ideas, while total buffoons are happy to go around shouting about their own goofy concepts? Yeah, we all have see thins play out. 

This particular phenomenon is due to a cognitive bias first illustrated by Dunning and Kruger in 2009, and therefore referred to as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. 

Their `1999 paper starts with a story illustrating how the incompetent often lack the skill necessary to recognize their own incompetence: 
In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in broad daylight, with no visible attempt at disguise. He was arrested later that night, less than an hour after videotapes of him taken .from surveil- lance cameras were broadcast on the 11 o'clock news. When police later showed him the surveillance tapes, Mr. Wheeler stared in incredulity. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled. Apparently, Mr. Wheeler was under the im- pression that rubbing one's face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to videotape cameras (Fuocco, 1996). 

Apparently Wheeler had hear that Lemon Juice was used for invisible ink and thought it would therefore work to make his face invisible.  

A couple of other cognitive biases partner together to make this worse. Attributions bias causes people to attribute bad outcomes to bad luck and good outcomes to skill. So if your business venture fails, it was because you were merely unlucky, had bad timing, etc. But if you win the lottery, it was because you had a superior system borne of a keene intellect. 

The lake Woebegone Effect is named after Garrison Keillor's fictional town where "all the children are above average." If you ask a group of 100 people to rate themselves on a skill such as driving, 8-% of them will rate themselves above average. By definition no more than 50% can be above average, so 30% of these people are deluding themselves about their skill. 

So in a group of people working together, the chances are good that there will be someone incompetent who believes that they are well above average, that they always make good decisions, and they will not have the self awareness or metacognition to be able to identify their own shortcomings. And here is the kicker: they will be far more confident about there own ideas and probably more vocal. 

Why? because they feel smarter than everyone else and completely lack the ability to see the flaws in their own ideas! 

I don't pretend to have a cure for this. But I have often wondered at why the truly talented people in an organization are often the quietest and most riddled with doubt. This explains it. 

What it does suggest is that for those of us in senior management, we really must find ways to hear what the quiet people think. Allowing vociferous, confident people to dominate the conversations has a good chance of producing truly flawed plans. Confidence, it seems is not an indication of competence, but rather often, evidence of the opposite. 
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6 Comments
Franz
8/28/2016 02:28:49 am

A few typos to be fixed?

Reply
David Smith
8/28/2016 09:43:41 am

You'd think that someone who is going to write an article about stupidity would make sure that tehy hdnat mdae any sllepnig mstikaes.
You need to try harder Vance (real name Dan https://www.linkedin.com/in/veltri).
Dan/Vance is signed up to the green CAGW religion, but admits he likes to travel around the globe (no doubt by plane). Go figure.

Reply
beaumont vance
3/2/2017 09:07:16 pm

David, my name is Beaumont Vance, not Dan, I don't subscribe to CAGW and don't travel around the world.

If you are accusing someone of sloppiness because of typos while getting their name, politics, positions and practices all wrong, you are throwing bricks from inside a glass house.

The only people who respond about typos are folks too old to be grokking modern communication. Yes, it is sloppy for a publication. Bonus points will be granted to you in the afterlife for your keen editorial eye.

Reasonable Guy
8/28/2016 07:21:04 am

There are a few things I have come across that I think address this.

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_and_ola_rosling_how_not_to_be_ignorant_about_the_world?language=en

http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/episodes/the-trouble-with-experts

https://www.gapminder.org/

www.ourworldindata.org

Enjoy!

Reply
Reasonable Guy
8/28/2016 07:34:00 am

I forgot to address this: "But I have often wondered at why the truly talented people in an organization are often the quietest and most riddled with doubt."

This is talked about in the the CBC "the trouble with experts" At a high level it goes like this:

1) People like to hear affirmative statements from experts.
2) For complex issues, affirmative statements can't be made.
3) Weaker experts tend to be over confident and make affirmative statements even in highly complex situations
4) Strong experts are wishy washy as they know they lack deep understanding of the highly complex issue.
5) The media gravitate towards the weaker experts because of their affirmative statements.
6) The people are mislead into believing that a highly complex issue has been solved.

Think of climate change. The ECS was originally estimated to be between 1.5 and 4.5 around 60 years ago. AR5 made the same estimate. Yet the perception is that climate science is solved even when the single most important question has remained untouched in two generations.

Scientists are nibbling around the corners but can't penetrate the big stuff. If they make assumptions about ECS then they model the climate and makes affirmative statements such as "it will be 4.5 deg above normal in 2100" They skip out on the "Plus or Minus 3.0 degrees" because that is not what people want to hear.

Reply
Beau Vance
3/2/2017 09:10:24 pm

Excellent point. Also, most people don't remember the lesson taught in physics 101 that you have to express your margin of error based on your measurement accuracy.I.e., you can't express accuracy to .01 degree if your thermometer only measure to .1 degree.

But who needs details when you have an agenda to push?

Reply



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