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I'd say no really "very smart people" agree with that idiocy in the first place. Most people just believe what they want to believe, regardless of the truth, an

I'd say no really "very smart people" agree with that idiocy in the first place. Most people just believe what they want to believe, regardless of the truth, and what they want to believe is usually primarily due to what they figure they'll get out of those signals they send. People's confidence is no indicator of their intelligence. See Dunning-Kruger's landmark study for how human nature in modern engineering corps manifests itself in two diametric ways, depending on one's humility and actual hard work. A major problem is that when someone has the expertise to actually know the truth, the fools of the world deride them mercilessly. See Eugene Parker for a perfect example. Most people are simply far too stupid to know how stupid they are, and trying to tell them how stupid they are makes them really, really angry.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> Dunning-Kruger There are some solid, though not uncontested, arguments that the D-K study itself is fatally flawed.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  But the conclusions are bang-on correct vis a vis human achievement. We can choose to be humble craftspeople that know we can always improve some more, especially as a software engineer; such humility naturally leads to undervaluing our expertise. And then there are the people who are in the job for the money or social perks and that's all they ever really wanted, so, because they already have the status/money they desired and that's "good enough" for them, they overvalue their expertise. I'm not a study designer but as a student of human nature, the results they reported are just absolutely correct. Humility and hard work are both causitive and correlated with excellence, whether the person is a physicist, mathematician, engineer, musician, programmer, or just a regular old human being. I mean, look at the lying, know-nothing, big-talking turd-sandwich we just elected President, my friend. And then look at the people who elected him, and know those fools are just a bunch of rubes who think they're "real smart". It is said that it is far more difficult to convince a person that they've been fooled than it is to fool them in the first place. The low-expertise folks think they're fooling people with their confident self-assurance. It is possible to achieve the level where one knows that one knows, and the idiots will attack such a person out of their lack of humility. Eugene Parker dealt with that, as do I, my friend, but I know that I know. And my advantage is that I am always ready to learn more. Always.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago

> Dunning-Kruger There are some solid, though not uncontested, arguments that the D-K study itself is fatally flawed.

MrMcCall 2y ago
But the conclusions are bang-on correct vis a vis human achievement. We can choose to be humble craftspeople that know we can always improve some more, especially as a software engineer; such humility naturally leads to undervaluing our expertise. And then there are the people who are in the job for the money or social perks and that's all they ever really wanted, so, because they already have the status/money they desired and that's "good enough" for them, they overvalue their expertise. I'm not a study designer but as a student of human nature, the results they reported are just absolutely correct. Humility and hard work are both causitive and correlated with excellence, whether the person is a physicist, mathematician, engineer, musician, programmer, or just a regular old human being. I mean, look at the lying, know-nothing, big-talking turd-sandwich we just elected President, my friend. And then look at the people who elected him, and know those fools are just a bunch of rubes who think they're "real smart". It is said that it is far more difficult to convince a person that they've been fooled than it is to fool them in the first place. The low-expertise folks think they're fooling people with their confident self-assurance. It is possible to achieve the level where one knows that one knows, and the idiots will attack such a person out of their lack of humility. Eugene Parker dealt with that, as do I, my friend, but I know that I know. And my advantage is that I am always ready to learn more. Always.