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I agree with you, going by the description, about it being more like "breadth first vs. depth first." I think the author of the article may have misunderstood

I agree with you, going by the description, about it being more like "breadth first vs. depth first." I think the author of the article may have misunderstood the blog post he was citing; "Expert Beginner" seems to be more about self-awareness (Dunning–Kruger effect) and awareness of the big picture rather than specialization.

dahart 9y ago
> “Expert Beginner” seems to be more about self-awareness (Dunning-Kruger effect) Hmmm I guess it’s too bad for that hypothesis that the Dunning-Kruger effect has been shown to disappear for cognitive tasks like writing code, IIRC by the very same authors.
- mcguire 9y ago
  Interesting! Do you have a reference?
  - dahart 9y ago
    Yeah, here's one: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/ http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k... "...some studies have shown that the asymmetry reported by Kruger and Dunning (i.e., the smaller discrepancy for high performers than for low performers) actually goes away, and even reverses, when the ability tests given to participants are very difficult." Dunning-Kruger is almost a meme, people throw it around casually like it's blanket truth and applies in all situations. What is rarely discussed is that the original study only measured very, very simple tasks. And (importantly, I think) they are tasks that you don't learn in school, so nobody has metrics or good calibration for their abilities. The ability to get a joke was one of the tasks they measured. You can't really compare the "skill" of the ability to get a joke to the skill of writing computer programs, but that's what's happening. When task difficulty was controlled for, the conclusion is the effect depends on task difficulty. So I pretty much agree with the author: using DK to explain people I can see in my life is probably confirmation bias, rather than evidence. *BTW, note the two spellings of Kru[e]ger, I may have mistaken the Krueger referenced in that article as the same Kruger in Dunning-Kruger. I thought that the DK authors had clarified in a later paper, but I'm not sure now.

dahart 9y ago

> “Expert Beginner” seems to be more about self-awareness (Dunning-Kruger effect) Hmmm I guess it’s too bad for that hypothesis that the Dunning-Kruger effect has been shown to disappear for cognitive tasks like writing code, IIRC by the very same authors.

mcguire 9y ago
Interesting! Do you have a reference?
- dahart 9y ago
  Yeah, here's one: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/ http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k... "...some studies have shown that the asymmetry reported by Kruger and Dunning (i.e., the smaller discrepancy for high performers than for low performers) actually goes away, and even reverses, when the ability tests given to participants are very difficult." Dunning-Kruger is almost a meme, people throw it around casually like it's blanket truth and applies in all situations. What is rarely discussed is that the original study only measured very, very simple tasks. And (importantly, I think) they are tasks that you don't learn in school, so nobody has metrics or good calibration for their abilities. The ability to get a joke was one of the tasks they measured. You can't really compare the "skill" of the ability to get a joke to the skill of writing computer programs, but that's what's happening. When task difficulty was controlled for, the conclusion is the effect depends on task difficulty. So I pretty much agree with the author: using DK to explain people I can see in my life is probably confirmation bias, rather than evidence. *BTW, note the two spellings of Kru[e]ger, I may have mistaken the Krueger referenced in that article as the same Kruger in Dunning-Kruger. I thought that the DK authors had clarified in a later paper, but I'm not sure now.