Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

What question (or problem) separates the wheat from the chaff?

As a marketer, asking someone to develop a Go To Market strategy definitely separates the wheat from the chaff.

You see who really thinks of marketing in terms of competitive positioning, differentiation, and how to create different messages and content for different parts of the funnel (and how to measure it all), and who just throws a random bunch of tactics at it.

Don't know about questions, but there are couple of answers I have learned to be serious red flags:

1. Yes, I understand. (with no further elaboration or clarifying questions) 2. It's okay/good/going well (again, with no further elaboration when asking how something is going/set up etc)

First one typically translates to something between "I have a completely unfounded illusion of understanding" and "I have no clue but don't dare to say it"

Second one translates typically to "I have no clue whatsoever"

When people plain-language declare things as "safe" or "unsafe" it's clear they don't have a background in technical risk assessment.

When people call 5G "safe" or "unsafe", it's clear they don't know about radiation effects on human health. The correct answer is "we don't have data".

Edit: The fact that people would rather make fun of me and imagine me as an "non-ionizing radiation tin foil hatter" (I am not, non-ionizing radiation has no negative long-term health effects) I hope is a demonstration of the power of one's own biases and forcing it onto a stranger to fit one's own convenient worldview.

In software engineering, I think "unconditional faith in a single technique or technology" is a good sign of overconfidence in one's knowledge or ability. This certainly applied to me when I was younger. Engineers who go all-in on a specific technique will have really inconsistent results: some projects will go amazing because the technique was the best option. Some projects won't go so great because the technique wasn't the best solution.

A good sign of maturity is when they can notice "hey, that didn't go great" and use it to inform their future strategy - "technique X applies when these conditions are true. If one of them are false, I'm not sure what to do, but I should conduct more research (or talk to more people) before starting that project"