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Evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect is based on statistics. It doesn't imply that anyone, or even most of those, that claims awesomeness are either stupid or
by Confusion 16y ago
Evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect is based on statistics. It doesn't imply that anyone, or even most of those, that claims awesomeness are either stupid or insufficiently humble. Of course you should check someones claims. But if Brendan Eich tells you he is awesome at javascript --and he should--, then he is simply telling you the truth, but there are hundreds of others in the world that could validly make the same claim and simply be right.
- scotty79 16y agoSure enough. But way technical people look at the world in absence of detailed data is based on statistics. And most of the times when someone claims that he is great at something he is either not good at all, or good but ready to say things that he doesn't believe in. Either way you should be cautious around that guy. That's why (IMHO) intelligent people don't really like self promotion in other people and by extension do self promote themselves. Generalists usually can't learn if someone is actually good or not at the thing he claims he's good at so they don't have the same statistics about the world as specialists. And they don't look down on self promotion and proudly self promote themselves because if they see nothing bad about it only positive sides of self promotion remain. My argument is not about what is true and who can self promote without lying, but about how minds work statistically and why specialists distrust self promotion while generalists (like managers who generally know what they employees do but specifically they have no idea) think.