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> if you think it only applies to other people (which itself, ironically, is part of the DK effect) then you miss the core lesson I have observed in conversati

> if you think it only applies to other people (which itself, ironically, is part of the DK effect) then you miss the core lesson I have observed in conversation that invariably if someone brings up Sturgeon's Law [1] either by naming it or quoting it ("90% of everything is crud|shit|garbage"), they invariably place themselves in the 10%. As if awareness of the law somehow insulates the speaker. That seems to be the case with D-K, per this article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

acqq 7y ago
Moreover, the original point of Sturgeon was not a simple dismissal of "90% of everything" but his dismissal of any informativeness in somebody's similar claim for anything specific (he wrote about the art forms): "I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other art forms."
Kaveren 7y ago
I dislike when people use adages like these (___'s law). They rarely add anything to the conversation and I think a lot of confirmation bias is involved. Moore's Law is an exception to this because it's actually falsifiable and less of an adage.
taneq 7y ago
So you're saying 90% of invocations of Sturgeon's Law are crap? Of course, to follow Sturgeon's own line of thought, that doesn't mean the other 10% aren't worth taking note of.
dahart 7y ago
The best part of Sturgeon's Law for me was realizing that it's tautological. It's just defining "crud" to be the bottom 90%, which is drawing an arbitrary line between the top and the bottom. It's a fun one in the same way that D/K is in that it just feels true, like it's validating a working theory you already had about the world. But Sturgeon's law can't be false, whereas D/K really is commonly misunderstood and might not even be generally reproducible; it might not even be broadly true at all. D/K is certainly over-generalized and in popular culture applied to situations that are very unlike the experiments in the paper, which were only pretty trivial tasks. The D/K Effect "actually goes away, and even reverses, when the ability tests given to participants are very difficult." https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/ https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-...
taejo 7y ago
I have never heard Sturgeon's Law invoked to place the speaker anywhere: I've only heard it as a rebuttal of a dismissal. If someone haughtily says they don't watch TV, and cites three shows as reasons why TV is terrible, well, yes 90% of TV is crap, but so is 90% of opera, 90% of stage plays, 90% of tweets. If we judge anything based on the median, it's crap, so it makes more sense to judge things based on their best examples. And if 90% of invocations of Sturgeon's Law are crap, well, we should judge them by the best examples too :)
- philipov 7y ago
  I hazard to propose that twitter contains closer to 99.999% crap. 90% might be the central point, but I think there is still variance between different mediums. Comparing nominal values without knowing the distribution can be dangerous, but that's why we have units of deviation, such as zscore.

acqq 7y ago

Moreover, the original point of Sturgeon was not a simple dismissal of "90% of everything" but his dismissal of any informativeness in somebody's similar claim for anything specific (he wrote about the art forms): "I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other art forms."

Kaveren 7y ago

I dislike when people use adages like these (___'s law). They rarely add anything to the conversation and I think a lot of confirmation bias is involved. Moore's Law is an exception to this because it's actually falsifiable and less of an adage.

taneq 7y ago

So you're saying 90% of invocations of Sturgeon's Law are crap? Of course, to follow Sturgeon's own line of thought, that doesn't mean the other 10% aren't worth taking note of.

dahart 7y ago

The best part of Sturgeon's Law for me was realizing that it's tautological. It's just defining "crud" to be the bottom 90%, which is drawing an arbitrary line between the top and the bottom. It's a fun one in the same way that D/K is in that it just feels true, like it's validating a working theory you already had about the world. But Sturgeon's law can't be false, whereas D/K really is commonly misunderstood and might not even be generally reproducible; it might not even be broadly true at all. D/K is certainly over-generalized and in popular culture applied to situations that are very unlike the experiments in the paper, which were only pretty trivial tasks. The D/K Effect "actually goes away, and even reverses, when the ability tests given to participants are very difficult." https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/ https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-...

taejo 7y ago

I have never heard Sturgeon's Law invoked to place the speaker anywhere: I've only heard it as a rebuttal of a dismissal. If someone haughtily says they don't watch TV, and cites three shows as reasons why TV is terrible, well, yes 90% of TV is crap, but so is 90% of opera, 90% of stage plays, 90% of tweets. If we judge anything based on the median, it's crap, so it makes more sense to judge things based on their best examples. And if 90% of invocations of Sturgeon's Law are crap, well, we should judge them by the best examples too :)

philipov 7y ago
I hazard to propose that twitter contains closer to 99.999% crap. 90% might be the central point, but I think there is still variance between different mediums. Comparing nominal values without knowing the distribution can be dangerous, but that's why we have units of deviation, such as zscore.