Thursday, October 9, 2014

Dunning-Kruger Effect, yo.

The Dunning–Kruger effect was put forward in 1999, though they have noted similar historical observations from philosophers and scientists, including Confucius ("Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."), Socrates ("I know that I know nothing"), Bertrand Russell ("One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision."), and Charles Darwin, whom they quoted in their  paper ("ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge").
Geraint Fuller, commenting on the paper, noted that Shakespeare expressed similar sentiment in As You Like It ("The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wiseman knowes himselfe to be a Foole.")

So much this.  I live in a world where I have to constantly envy the people that suffer from this.  While they probably live simpler, less stressful, and happier lives, I guess they also have the unknown possibility of really screwing something up and getting fired.  Whereas I would get fired for some screw up that I really spent time trying to make the right decision about knowing it was probably wrong.

But maybe I’m the Dunning-Kruger of Dunning-Kruger diagnoses. 


(source of information in the first paragraph:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect )

No comments:

Post a Comment