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The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)

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Re: The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)

#3
Very hard to understand the meat behind all the fluff of the article, especially as the simulation code is not available, and as the presented simulated and original graphs are effectively the same (I don't see a disagreement).

It's clear that the perceived curve will be differently sloped, as no one will evaluate themselves as the topmost or the bottommost percentiles, so the edges will be biased.

And if in both cases we draw differences between perceived and actual, we will get the same curve that everyone knows, biased or not.

Re: The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)

#4
It’s obviously real, at least as used in conversation, whether it meets some rigorous definition I’m sure there’s an out, but we’ve all known these people. With vibe coding they’re everywhere. Is this going to be a modern “begging the question” where everyone knows what you mean but someone pipes up that actually the technical meaning is different?

Re: The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)

#5
> The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not Real

Self-deception by any other name is still self-deception.

The Dunning-Kruger effect also applies to smart people. You don't stop when you are estimating your ability correctly. As you learn more, you gain more awareness of your ignorance and continue being conservative with your self-estimates.

But overall I think real intelligence by definition requires empathy and humility.

One has to realize that we can't know the things we don't know, which includes the fact that we can't always trust our own beliefs and opinions because we might be relying on faulty or incomplete information, or we might be suffering from a mental health problem, whether we are aware of it or not.

"As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding." -Sloman and Fernbach

Re: The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)

#7
Even if it isn’t true, it’s got the feeling of truthiness (1).

I don’t expect it to ever go out of the public consciousness. Like other things that were never real like Stockholm Syndrome I suspect it’s just stuck in the zeitgeist now.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

Re: The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)

#8

So this is a case of the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

I was going to say: is this a joke?

But really, the article seems to be going out of the way to make the author's particular point... but reads to me that the original paper is often understood... it simply shows that "specialists who are very knowledgeable about a subject are more likely to accurately identify gaps in their own knoweldge, when compared to any population less knoweldgeable on the same subject."

For example, I am apparently the most knowledgeable birder in my family. I've taken graduate-level ornithology courses, identify a fair number of N. American birds by their calls, etc. However, I recognize that I know nothing about birds compared to anyone who actually works in the field with them... I don't know enough to even estimate what I don't know.

Re: The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)

#10
post #4

It’s obviously real, at least as used in conversation, whether it meets some rigorous definition I’m sure there’s an out, but we’ve all known these people. With vibe coding they’re everywhere. Is this going to be a modern “begging the question” where everyone knows what you mean but someone pipes up that actually the technical meaning is different?

The problem is that the original formulation was "most people" are unaware of being unskilled, but by now the name is used to mean "some group of people" is unaware of being unskilled. In that sense the article confirms that “a small number are", 5-6%, and therefore the effect exists in the colloquial sense but not in the scientific sense.

Mentioning the Dunning-Krueger effect incorrectly is wonderfully meta...

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