6 ms·

Revisiting why incompetents think they’re awesome

56 points by llambda 14y ago

mistercow 14y ago
>How are we to parse all this information? Do any of these people know what they are talking about? And if anyone does, how can we know which ones to listen to? The research of Dunning and Kruger may well tell us there is no way to figure out the answers to any of these questions. Yikes, that's a stretch. Dunning and Kruger's work tells us nothing about our ability to assess others' competence; just our ability to assess our own. This idea of trying to apply that to arrive at "how do we know which experts to listen to?" is really reaching.
- brudgers 14y ago
  It's turtles all the way down. Incompetence includes over-estimating our ability to evaluate experts (e.g. acting upon or ignoring legal advice from web forums).
  - mistercow 14y ago
    Perhaps, but is that something that that Dunning and Kruger (or anyone, for that matter) has actually demonstrated?
glenra 14y ago
Always worth mentioning: the fact that most people think of themselves as above-average drivers is not a delusion; it happens to be true given quite reasonable assumptions as to what constitutes "being a good driver" that most people are above average drivers. The average number of legs per person is slightly less than two, so if you have two legs, you have an above-average number of legs. Thus, nearly everybody in the population has an above-average number of legs. Similarly: The number of car accidents the average driver causes per year is fractionally more than zero, so if you caused no accidents last year you were "an above average driver". Some measurable attributes just happen to be "chunky" in that way - they don't follow a normal distribution.
- eragnew 14y ago
  Exactly! Many people seem to have a lot of trouble with what the word 'average' means. It depends on the context!
  - lloeki 14y ago
    The 'average' meaning does not depends on context but: - on the distribution - on whether by 'average' you mean 'mean' (in statistics, arithmetic mean) or 'median' (what value cuts the population in half) The GP gives an example of people being above average by having two legs. I will take a similar example but in a classroom. Say students in a classroom take a test scored from 0 (worst) to 20 (best). The result of the test is as follows: forty students get a 11 and ten gets a 1. That makes a mean of (11x40+10)/50 => 9. Hence all forty students are above average. If we plot the number of people per mark this gives a very special (and artificial) distribution since we made it up to make the point that it is possible for most people to be above average. In more realistic scenarios and unless skewed by external factors (bad test, wrong population, cheating) the distribution is often close to being normal, i.e mean and median are approximately the same (hence it's an impossibility to have 80% of people above mean). Yet what's really interesting in Dunning-Kruger tests is not the actual results of the tests, it is the comparison between one's own assessment and real results, which actually abstracts from distribution problems and 'average' discussions, since each one person is compared to oneself. In the above whacky scenario we could have expected people getting a 1 to evaluate themselves scoring a 8. If you don't want to read the whole paper, just look at the quartile/percentile graphs in the paper. They speak for themselves.
    - Retric 14y ago
      When the vast majority of people fall into the 60-100 range, but it's still possible to get zero's (ex: cheating) you don't end up with a normal distribution. This is one of the reasons most standardized tests give percentile results. IMO, the Dunning-Kruger effect relates to this. Compared to people that regularly ride horses I am probably at the bottom 5 percentile. However, I am better than most people because most people have never ridden a horse. As people improve the list of people they compare themselves to shrinks faster than their skills improve. Being the worst player in the MBA makes you better than 99.99999% of people, but that does not let you keep your job.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Do any of these people know what they are talking about? And if anyone does, how can we know which ones to listen to? I must confess to bailing out here. The purpose of democratic government is the consent of the governed, not to find the best experts to make the best decisions. People have to agree on stuff, and that means people who don't understand issues have to agree on them anyway. That's much more important than intelligence and competence. In fact, I'd argue for many of the complexities of the modern nation-state, nobody knows what they are doing in many areas, not even people who have paid lots of money to be trained on these issues. Simply because we can imagine that there is some sort of hierarchy of intelligence and competence in a certain field does not mean that there actually is one. Every generation, no matter how ignorant, has always had a somewhat ordered list of intelligentsia. Many times they have had little to do with how much is known and much more to do with how well somebody is respected by their peers. Humility is a good thing.
- skybrian 14y ago
  Another way to think of it: democracy is a way to convince the losing side in a political dispute to back down (at least temporarily). This has benefits whether or not the decision was right when the drawbacks of escalating a dispute (rebellion, civil war, etc) outweigh the original issue.
- tensor 14y ago
  How is having people agree on bad decisions a good thing? Would it not be better to have governments make the best decisions they can for their people, and also teach the people why these decisions are best? Yes, many of the issues facing governments are complex and difficult to solve. You seem to be arguing that because it's difficult to learn what course of action is best, we should not even try. Humility is a good thing, but it is completely absent in popular opinion.
  - adgar 14y ago
    Ann Coulter is famous for saying that fascism is optimal locally. Something tells me you aren't happy you agree with Ann Coulter about the benefits of fascism.
coldarchon 14y ago
Common sense is the most evenly distributed quantity in the world. Everyone thinks he has enough. Descartes
sad_panda 14y ago
How about the bravado of the startup "code ninja rockstars" fresh out of school - simply a brave face in a macho subculture, or is it the Dunning Kruger effect at play, because they haven't had the chance to work alongside experienced colleagues that make them realize they have more to learn?
WalterSear 14y ago
And I thought it was because they were given all the cushy management and executive jobs.
droidist 14y ago
... lazy, self-entitled... blah blah... everyone gets a trophy... blah blah... (etc. angry clap trap rantings).
mathattack 14y ago
Very important document. At year end, how many employees really believe they're in the bottom 50% of a population? And is it really worth fighting this when measurement of ability is so hard? Most "Up or Out" firms need to cull people so they are firm, and try to create the appearance of rigor. Most software firms find this much more difficult. Very few start-ups have formal evaluation processes, which sounds terrible to the MBA crowd, but could just be admitting that it's impossible to really fairly judge people. (Deming would say judge the system anyway)
michaelochurch 14y ago
The D-K results don't actually say that incompetents think they're awesome. It says that, as a group, they tend to estimate themselves as slightly above average. So do the most competent. What this means is that percentile-based self-assessment has no signal, not that unskilled people are preternaturally inclined to think of themselves as excellent.

56 points by llambda 14y ago

>How are we to parse all this information? Do any of these people know what they are talking about? And if anyone does, how can we know which ones to listen to? The research of Dunning and Kruger may well tell us there is no way to figure out the answers to any of these questions. Yikes, that's a stretch. Dunning and Kruger's work tells us nothing about our ability to assess others' competence; just our ability to assess our own. This idea of trying to apply that to arrive at "how do we know which experts to listen to?" is really reaching.

brudgers 14y ago
It's turtles all the way down. Incompetence includes over-estimating our ability to evaluate experts (e.g. acting upon or ignoring legal advice from web forums).
- mistercow 14y ago
  Perhaps, but is that something that that Dunning and Kruger (or anyone, for that matter) has actually demonstrated?

glenra 14y ago

Always worth mentioning: the fact that most people think of themselves as above-average drivers is not a delusion; it happens to be true given quite reasonable assumptions as to what constitutes "being a good driver" that most people are above average drivers. The average number of legs per person is slightly less than two, so if you have two legs, you have an above-average number of legs. Thus, nearly everybody in the population has an above-average number of legs. Similarly: The number of car accidents the average driver causes per year is fractionally more than zero, so if you caused no accidents last year you were "an above average driver". Some measurable attributes just happen to be "chunky" in that way - they don't follow a normal distribution.

eragnew 14y ago
Exactly! Many people seem to have a lot of trouble with what the word 'average' means. It depends on the context!
- lloeki 14y ago
  The 'average' meaning does not depends on context but: - on the distribution - on whether by 'average' you mean 'mean' (in statistics, arithmetic mean) or 'median' (what value cuts the population in half) The GP gives an example of people being above average by having two legs. I will take a similar example but in a classroom. Say students in a classroom take a test scored from 0 (worst) to 20 (best). The result of the test is as follows: forty students get a 11 and ten gets a 1. That makes a mean of (11x40+10)/50 => 9. Hence all forty students are above average. If we plot the number of people per mark this gives a very special (and artificial) distribution since we made it up to make the point that it is possible for most people to be above average. In more realistic scenarios and unless skewed by external factors (bad test, wrong population, cheating) the distribution is often close to being normal, i.e mean and median are approximately the same (hence it's an impossibility to have 80% of people above mean). Yet what's really interesting in Dunning-Kruger tests is not the actual results of the tests, it is the comparison between one's own assessment and real results, which actually abstracts from distribution problems and 'average' discussions, since each one person is compared to oneself. In the above whacky scenario we could have expected people getting a 1 to evaluate themselves scoring a 8. If you don't want to read the whole paper, just look at the quartile/percentile graphs in the paper. They speak for themselves.
  - Retric 14y ago
    When the vast majority of people fall into the 60-100 range, but it's still possible to get zero's (ex: cheating) you don't end up with a normal distribution. This is one of the reasons most standardized tests give percentile results. IMO, the Dunning-Kruger effect relates to this. Compared to people that regularly ride horses I am probably at the bottom 5 percentile. However, I am better than most people because most people have never ridden a horse. As people improve the list of people they compare themselves to shrinks faster than their skills improve. Being the worst player in the MBA makes you better than 99.99999% of people, but that does not let you keep your job.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Do any of these people know what they are talking about? And if anyone does, how can we know which ones to listen to? I must confess to bailing out here. The purpose of democratic government is the consent of the governed, not to find the best experts to make the best decisions. People have to agree on stuff, and that means people who don't understand issues have to agree on them anyway. That's much more important than intelligence and competence. In fact, I'd argue for many of the complexities of the modern nation-state, nobody knows what they are doing in many areas, not even people who have paid lots of money to be trained on these issues. Simply because we can imagine that there is some sort of hierarchy of intelligence and competence in a certain field does not mean that there actually is one. Every generation, no matter how ignorant, has always had a somewhat ordered list of intelligentsia. Many times they have had little to do with how much is known and much more to do with how well somebody is respected by their peers. Humility is a good thing.

skybrian 14y ago
Another way to think of it: democracy is a way to convince the losing side in a political dispute to back down (at least temporarily). This has benefits whether or not the decision was right when the drawbacks of escalating a dispute (rebellion, civil war, etc) outweigh the original issue.
tensor 14y ago
How is having people agree on bad decisions a good thing? Would it not be better to have governments make the best decisions they can for their people, and also teach the people why these decisions are best? Yes, many of the issues facing governments are complex and difficult to solve. You seem to be arguing that because it's difficult to learn what course of action is best, we should not even try. Humility is a good thing, but it is completely absent in popular opinion.
- adgar 14y ago
  Ann Coulter is famous for saying that fascism is optimal locally. Something tells me you aren't happy you agree with Ann Coulter about the benefits of fascism.

coldarchon 14y ago

Common sense is the most evenly distributed quantity in the world. Everyone thinks he has enough. Descartes

sad_panda 14y ago

How about the bravado of the startup "code ninja rockstars" fresh out of school - simply a brave face in a macho subculture, or is it the Dunning Kruger effect at play, because they haven't had the chance to work alongside experienced colleagues that make them realize they have more to learn?

WalterSear 14y ago

And I thought it was because they were given all the cushy management and executive jobs.

droidist 14y ago

... lazy, self-entitled... blah blah... everyone gets a trophy... blah blah... (etc. angry clap trap rantings).

mathattack 14y ago

Very important document. At year end, how many employees really believe they're in the bottom 50% of a population? And is it really worth fighting this when measurement of ability is so hard? Most "Up or Out" firms need to cull people so they are firm, and try to create the appearance of rigor. Most software firms find this much more difficult. Very few start-ups have formal evaluation processes, which sounds terrible to the MBA crowd, but could just be admitting that it's impossible to really fairly judge people. (Deming would say judge the system anyway)

michaelochurch 14y ago

The D-K results don't actually say that incompetents think they're awesome. It says that, as a group, they tend to estimate themselves as slightly above average. So do the most competent. What this means is that percentile-based self-assessment has no signal, not that unskilled people are preternaturally inclined to think of themselves as excellent.