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I feel like some perspective needs to be applied to these popular terms. Imposter syndrome: there's a "sadness is not depression" thing going on here. There is

I feel like some perspective needs to be applied to these popular terms. Imposter syndrome: there's a "sadness is not depression" thing going on here. There is an actual Imposter Syndrome that afflicts people who are highly qualified/credentialed, people who have qualified for entrance into elite programs, and put in the time and effort to progress to graduation; and yet for psychological reasons, they have great self doubts about their "worth". This is akin to depression. (a third party would look at you and say "wow, you are super competent and qualified, it's terrible you feel you aren't," and no pep talk they give you is going to help you.) Then there are bouts of insecurity and guilt whereby any of us can feel like "I fibbed on my resume and interview to get this job, and I now I'm surrounded by people who know what they are doing, I hope nobody figures out I snuck in." This is akin to sadness. (a third party would look at you and say "ha ha serves you right, but it's always fake-it-till-you-make-it, everybody feels this way to start out, just grit your teeth, you'll be fine," and that pep talk will help you.) Everybody experiences sadness; sadness clears up and goes away. Not everybody suffers clinical depression, and it does not go away on its own. Dunning Kruger? it's not really an Effect, it's an observation/tendency that is explained by simple logic along the lines of, "you don't know what you don't know".

hirvi74 3y ago
> Not everybody suffers clinical depression, and it does not go away on its own. In many cases, depression does in fact go away on its own. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10364186/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10364186/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22883473/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22883473/
jjeaff 3y ago
The Dunning Kruger studies were observations, but I believe I have seen the term "Dunning Kruger Effect" used pretty often to describe the possibly/likely explanation to why Dunning Kruger observed what they did. Which is that once someone learns just a little bit about a complex topic, the effect is that they start to over estimate their competency in said topic. If it were simply the idea that you don't know what you don't know, then you would expect to observe over confidence in people who know almost nothing about a topic. I believe D & K observed a sort of bell curve. (actual knowledge level on the x axis and confidence of knowledge on the y)
- fsckboy 3y ago
  > If it were simply the idea that you don't know what you don't know I wrote a simple phrase to refer to the "tip of an iceberg of associated ideas". To illustrate what I mean, you could rephrase your more detailed description of the gaussian to use "my" phrase to say "these people don't know anything, these people know more but don't know what they don't know" and these people know even more but do know what they don't know" etc.

hirvi74 3y ago

> Not everybody suffers clinical depression, and it does not go away on its own. In many cases, depression does in fact go away on its own. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10364186/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10364186/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22883473/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22883473/

jjeaff 3y ago

The Dunning Kruger studies were observations, but I believe I have seen the term "Dunning Kruger Effect" used pretty often to describe the possibly/likely explanation to why Dunning Kruger observed what they did. Which is that once someone learns just a little bit about a complex topic, the effect is that they start to over estimate their competency in said topic. If it were simply the idea that you don't know what you don't know, then you would expect to observe over confidence in people who know almost nothing about a topic. I believe D & K observed a sort of bell curve. (actual knowledge level on the x axis and confidence of knowledge on the y)

fsckboy 3y ago
> If it were simply the idea that you don't know what you don't know I wrote a simple phrase to refer to the "tip of an iceberg of associated ideas". To illustrate what I mean, you could rephrase your more detailed description of the gaussian to use "my" phrase to say "these people don't know anything, these people know more but don't know what they don't know" and these people know even more but do know what they don't know" etc.