"Where have you seen the Dunning-Kruger effect in action in your work?"
If they start saying something negative about someone without self-reflection, they are exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
41–50 of 95 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#42Tell me about an opinion you hold on some piece of technology (framework, language, design pattern, etc.), one you have a fair amount of conviction about and hold pretty strongly. Now tell me how you arrived at that opinion and conviction.
Depending on what opinion they pull out, I might tweak that and suggest: "What's the argument against that opinion?" From what I've seen, a lot of people can rattle off reasons they've heard for why a particular thing is done, but have not deeply considered the opposite side of that opinion and what its benefits may be. Ymmv.
One of my favorite interview questions is "What is your favorite programming language and what would you change about it if you could?" Any answer along the lines of "I wouldn't really change anything." shows a lack of either experience or willingness to think about your tools.
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#43When 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-io…
Your point as a whole stands, but I think even saying “we don’t have data” misrepresents the situation. We have strong theoretical reasons, from our understandings of physics and biology, to believe that there will be no harmful effects. An expert would reasonably say to someone, either a layman or another expert, “5G is safe.”
I disagree: saying "we don't have data" [0] doesn't say anything about the existence or lack of existence of underlying models. Models are refined all the time to account for exceptions and transitions shown in empirical measurements (Mercury's orbit, deflection of light & general relativity, for example).
The tetrahertz range is especially interesting precisely because it is an unknown between known non-ionizing and known ionizing effects. Extrapolating down from ionizing radiation biological effect data and panicking makes as little sense as extrapolating up from non-ionizing radiation biological effect data and making fun of the panic-ers.
I think it's a fantastic opportunity to prove or modify our existing models. But a mistake to assume the models hold true, given the historical intensity of debate around the (discredited) Linear No Threshold Model and subsequent alternative proposed models.
Edit: I would personally say 5G is more likely to be safe (no acute radiation-caused long term health effects) than unsafe. But I'm not one who likes to gamble, especially with the lives of the public.
[0] DOI: 10.1080/10643389.2011.574206
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#44In grappling (Brazilian jiu-jitsu), it is very apparent from one sparring round with a person to get a sense for what they know and get a general idea for their skill/belt level. The exact belt is determined by that person's coach by measuring their skill against their personal potential. An analogy to software would be to pair program with a person. You both get a feel for each other's strengths and weaknesses while…
The point about feedback is the root of my problem with DK as an idea.
In most professions, you have a ton of feedback indicating where you are, often formalized. In martial arts, you wear a belt showing roughly what level you're at, which you earned through tests done by people far senior to you. In the military, you wear your rank, maybe skill badges, and do constant training. In most other jobs, you have a title and get feedback from supervisors and such.
The hypothesis of DK seems to require that the person is evaluating their performance entirely on their own, possibly because the authors were evaluating comedic skill, which is a very subjective task and something everyone knows at least a little about. Moreover, it's one where you get bad feedback: good comedy among friends is not the same as comedy that pleases a crowd.
But in the professional world, you practice a craft towards a result and are exposed to your peers, the information on how you stack up is pretty objective and coming to you fairly consistently.
And I think the cases people attribute to DK are better explained by other mechanisms. In particular, there's a lot of confusion between self-knowledge and knowledge of the complexity of a task.
I have done phone screens and asked people stuff like, "how many numbers can be represented with 8 bits." But that's to screen out people who were applying to a job without having a clue what the job entailed. Not understanding a job description is different from not understanding your level of skill.
And I see plenty of self knowledge in interviews; if I ask about algorithms and data structures, a common answer is "I haven't looked at that since school." You learn: 1. the person doesn't think that skill is relevant to the job and 2. the person is willing to admit they aren't good at it.
I may disagree with the person that the skill is relevant, after all, I asked the question for a reason, but it's not a lack of self-knowledge on the part of the candidate.
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#45Don'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 bu…
I disagree. I do this all the time when I know (1) someone is presenting a fact to the limit of their knowledge and are not interested in going deeper, or (2) someone is not truly interested in how things are going, and my details will fall on deaf ears, in which case I prefer to conserve energy.
The scenario is even more complex when working for govt. Your role is often that of a sponge: Absorbing all the information presented and volunteering very little, if any, of your own.
As I get older, I try to keep my sentences short and to the point. Often they are dense, layered with meaning. In my experience, folks often wax poetic and use all sorts if inaccurate analogies when they understand very little about the subject.
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#46When someone takes a position on a topic but is unable to answer questions on why that position was taken. Scientists and academics are often guilty of this when they pontificate on a topic outside their domain of expertise.
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#47What is the best ORM?
Not a great question for the stated purpose.
Some people will dig in to the various tradeoffs involved with an ORM, and pick apart the structure of an ORM. And that should result in an "it depends" kind of answer.
Others are more interested in how a team is going to use an ORM; does it help junior devs write "not awful" code, how does it help me structure my application logic.
Others are stats nerds who will tell you which ones do best on benchmarks, are most popular, etc.
And many people will tell you a story about some ORMs they used, and why they liked them or not.
These answers can be useful for getting a sense of how a person thinks, but they won't tell you if the person is competent.
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#48Build vs. buy for tech platforms. 100% build or 100% buy both are dangerously answers from a senior tech person.
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well yeah but have you considered that if you put a mouse in a slowly oscillating catastrophic magnetic field you get a usually statistically insignificant outcome!! Wake up sheeple
Studies have repeatedly shown non-ionizing radiation has no long term health effects. As material science closes the tetrahertz gap, the longitudinal studies, by their very definition, take time to complete (longitudinal studies = exposing animals or individuals at lower doses for much longer periods of times). It's natural for an undisciplined mind to assume they're also non-ionizing. But it is a mark of a disciplin…
Even the people saying it harms people don't say its ionizing.
If we take the frequency of 5G and compare it with X-rays (the lowest energy ionizing photons give or take) we're only off by a factor of 600000
Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?
#50One for hardware engineering might be not considering the PCB itself. At higher voltages your double-sided FR-4 will become a capacitor, and at 100Mhz+ speeds you'll have EMI problems from 90-degree traces. It's easy to think that you can go from a perfboard and wires proof-of-concept to a PCB in a day, but once you hit higher than ~12V or 100Mhz it starts to feel like it's haunted.