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> The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority High brow smack (condescension) like that and

• pmarreck 10y ago
  Has it become that radical to suggest that smart, well-educated people may in fact see further into the consequences of things (particularly in their areas of expertise, but probably also peripherally), see more cognitive bias, have better critical-thinking skills, remember more mistakes from history, and all around make better long-term decisions? Why is that even offensive to anyone? Just because of someone's personal insecurity about not having a college degree in anything? I've worked around plenty of people without college degrees (4 year vet, USAF, enlisted), they have nothing to be insecure about... except for uninformed ideas about the world (IMHO). Is it the subtle "I got this" confident arrogance of the expert? If so, then how is that any worse than a confidence and arrogance NOT based on intelligence/education/experience? (i.e., dunning-kruger) If the liberal doctor says you have cancer and need an operation and the conservative mechanic says it's just soreness and to take two Advil, are you going to discount the doctor because he is liberal elite, or because he is full of himself and has terrible bedside manner? If merely getting a college education makes you more liberal (as can be seen in exit polling), does that mean that merely knowing/understanding more things has a liberal bias? Doesn't that mean knowledge itself has a liberal bias? Does that sound like a preposterous conclusion to you? Modus tollens, and all that (not that even using the language of logical discourse is valued at all). No wonder this "anti-intellectualism spring." Election as proxy-class-war and proxy-culture-war (not to mention proxy-gender-war), that much has been made clear. “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov (RIP)
  • dmfdmf 10y ago
    I think you are over-generalizing the Dunning-Kruger effect in your strawman argument. Moreover, you might want to consider that its not intellectualism -v- anti-intellectualism but psuedo-intellectualism -v- anti-psuedo-intellectualism behind the Trump win. There is a difference.
    • pmarreck 10y ago
      Can you clarify what you mean by "pseudo-intellectualism -v- anti-pseudo-intellectualism"?
      • oldmanjay 10y ago
        Perhaps you can compare it to intellectualism by considering the difference between offering up your humble opinion, and offering up your humble opinion as an objective truth.
      • randomvalue 10y ago
        I don't expect you to agree-with or understand this, now or in the near future but perhaps he/she was thinking along these valid lines: "The Intellectual Yet Idiot" from "Skin in the Game" by Nassim Taleb https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577#.guuys35mo https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211...
        • linkregister 10y ago
          I think this is a good think piece about humbly accepting criticism about widely-held beliefs and not blindly believing in academic authority. Although Taleb's characterization of the IYI seems to be as broad as a horoscope, this is his tongue-in-cheek writing style. I think the point you're making is that credentialed individuals shouldn't be blindly trusted; on the other hand, those that say that all experts are clueless are falling for the very same fallacy decried by Taleb. That said, I appreciate your posting of this link; it was a good read (I'm not being snarky).
      • 10y ago
• dmfdmf 10y ago
  You beat me to it. Indeed, it was a Dunning-Kruger election but not in the way that the OP meant it. Also, following on your second point, if the Dems are so smart how could they not see that Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate. We'll never know but I think its likely Sanders would have won versus Trump.
  • pyre 10y ago
    > how could they not see that Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate All of the people positions of power in the DNC were pro-Hillary. That's why they were blinded. Their mind was made up before the election cycle even started.
    • rdtsc 10y ago
      > > how could they not see that Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate > All of the people positions of power in the DNC were pro-Hillary. That's why they were blinded. Running a campaign vs running a country is very different, no doubt. But many will make a case there. She has dropped the ball on the election, besides other list of things vs someone won against all odds (CNN projecting less than 1% odds of winning). The interesting thing is much as people like to say Trump is stupid, anti-intellectual, just a TV personality, somehow he had intuition to poll in the right states at the right time, to understand what people want and respond do. All that while the both the Republicans, and Democrats, the media, the DOJ and POTUS where against him. Taking everything away and just comparing based on those things, it is possible to draw some conclusions perhaps.
      • ant6n 10y ago
        Or it was just a toss up and be got lucky.
        • gohrt 10y ago
          Getting it to the tossup point was a massive mistake. How many voters did the Democrats lose due to their own underhanded infighting in the primaries?
• pyre 10y ago
  Why do you assume that the poster you're replying to is a liberal (or at least a Hillary-supporter) just because they are against Trump / Trump-supporters. You're complaining about people making condescending assumptions, while making your own.
• yolesaber 10y ago
  >High brow smack (condescension) like that and "basket of deplorables" are what America revolted against. Actually, the majority of Americans agreed with Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote by over a million votes. We just use an outdated system built to appease slaveholders that does not necessarily represent the bulk will of the people. Trump won on a technicality of our (antiquated and frankly awful) system, not on a mandate. >If the liberal left was truly smart, why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined? The president doesn't make the budget or handle the accounting of the US. Congress does. Guess who controls Congress? Hint, not the liberal left.
  • Graphon1 10y ago
    > We just use an outdated system built to appease slaveholders that does not necessarily represent the bulk will of the people. It may have been built with slave/free state "fairness" in mind, but even today the mechanism serves to level out the tyranny of the majority, from the states' perspective.
    • MereInterest 10y ago
      I fail to see how a tyranny of the minority is better than a tyranny of the majority. The current winner-take-all system must provide one or the other.
      • eveningcoffee 10y ago
        I fail to see how it is a tyranny of the minority. US is a federation after all.
    • gohrt 10y ago
      A state doesn't have a "perspective". A state is just a line drawn around a collection of people. Mathematically, a majority of states have excess power in proportion to its population. From a state's imagined perspective, it's a tyranny of the majority.
  • deleted 10y ago
• albinofrenchy 10y ago
  > why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined This isn't true even on the face of it; it went up from ~10 trillion to ~18 trillion. And aside from that; the national debt exploded due to the economic collapse that happened months before Obama was sworn in. The accusation is wrong on the facts and disingenuous.
  • givinguflac 10y ago
    Yeah, I agree but unfortunately anyone who says that usually isn't going to be swayed in the face of objective fact. People act like the 2008 crash just happened spontaneously because Obama was elected, ignoring the shit show of the prior decade.
    • ainot 10y ago
      Yes the prior decade, starting in 1998 when Bill Clinton signed legislation that opened the financial doors which allowed the housing crisis to start. Bush didn't close that door and so it built momentum but it would not have been possible if Bill had not signed that legislation in the first place.
  • malz 10y ago
    And the debt was increased by actions like bailing out the auto industry, saving 800,000 jobs. All those workers then voted for Trump.
    • kgwgk 10y ago
      That costed less than $10 billion in the end... you have several additional trillions to account for.
    • astrodust 10y ago
      That actually didn't increase the debt. Most of those loans were repaid. The money to the banks, I'm not so sure. Don't forget Obama was handed two active wars that he had to fund. They were spending billions per day on military operations. He wound them down as fast as he could but it still took years.
• oldmanjay 10y ago
  Here's Nate Silver today trying to explain trump: > America hasn’t put its demons — including racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny — behind it. White people still make up the vast majority of the electorate, particularly when considering their share of the Electoral College, and their votes usually determine the winner. By intentionally continuing to attempt to associate support for trump with a litany of unacceptable -isms that are the guilty burden of being white (men), he exposed the attitude that people are revolting against.
  • berdario 10y ago
    So you're saying that it's perfectly normal for a non-racist person to support a candidate who openly argued for deporting huge swaths of honest workers and enforce by law racial and religious discrimination?
    • oldmanjay 10y ago
      I'm saying that if you believe you can so trivially comprehend and dismiss the emotional state of tens of millions of people who until today you possibly didn't even want to admit exist, you're fooling yourself badly.
      • asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
        To add on, part of the galvanizing force that created the political block (those tens of millions) was they don't like GP's exact attitude! People really, really, really, don't like it when you deny or trivialize their experience. I think it was the final straw that led to the Trump victory.
      • sirtaj 10y ago
        Whatever the emotional state, in the end they supported the candidate openly espousing racist and misogynist opinions, and is on the record saying he sexually assaults women. Maybe the people who voted for him aren't themselves racists and misogynists, but they sure as hell didn't think that stuff was important enough not to vote for him.
• warlox 10y ago
  Because at the current interest rate, the government actually makes money from taking out loans after inflation is accounted for.
• vacri 10y ago
  > If the liberal left was truly smart, why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined? Because the prez doesn't actually get a say. Congress sets the budget and the prez is obligated to pay it. If the taxes that congress sets aren't enough to cover it, the prez has to borrow the money. Given that Congress has been controlled by the Republicans for the past... 6?... years, you're barking at the wrong crowd. Congress is in a sweet spot here, where they can blame the president for the huge debt that is congress's doing.
• vehementi 10y ago
  Oh man really? They just voted for the obviously bad candidate out of spite because mean Leftist Boogeymen were being condescending on the internet? It turns out after all that Trump supporters didn't have any legs to stand on, or any ideologies, or wishes, they were just like "you know what everyone, I'm tired of being called X, let's revolt" and that's why? Man, that's almost like the ultimate self-discredit of the movement.