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I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

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Re: I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

#21
post #5

I think Dunning Krueger makes intuitive sense. When you become skilled in your field you learn from other people in your field, and your assessment of yourself is based on your relation to the skills of those other people. But if you know very little about something, you have no reference point to evaluate yourself against. When you learn something you also learn what are some of the mistakes you can make. You evalua…

I think that's assuming more ignorance than even an unskilled person has. If you had never listened to a professional play piano before then you'd have no idea what level of performance is possible. Similarly, if you had never seen skilled skaters perform on TV. But we have done these things, so it's obvious that they're doing something that's very difficult. Maybe you don't fully appreciate the skill, though. You wo…

If you had never listened to a professional play piano before then you'd have no idea what level of performance is possible. Similarly, if you had never seen skilled skaters perform on TV.

But we have done these things, so it's obvious that they're doing something that's very difficult.

Sometimes the things we find most impressive, in a demonstration of a skill we don't have, aren't the most difficult things.

I remember being absolutely blown away by some aerial circus tricks and stunts I saw at shows. Later, I started studying and eventually performing myself, and it's often the case that the most crowd-pleasing stunts are some of the easiest to perform.

As a performer, you could always tell which members of the audience knew their stuff, because they'd be the only ones applauding the tricks that might not have looked so spectacular, but were actually the most difficult.

Re: I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

#22
post #9

The corollary of Dunning Kruger is that everyone is equally capable and equally capable of assessing their performance. This nicely suits the current social rhetoric but does not match observed reality. Edit-see below I meant opposite not corollary.

Isn't that the exact opposite of D-K?

Re: I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

#23

I think Dunning Krueger makes intuitive sense. When you become skilled in your field you learn from other people in your field, and your assessment of yourself is based on your relation to the skills of those other people. But if you know very little about something, you have no reference point to evaluate yourself against. When you learn something you also learn what are some of the mistakes you can make. You evalua…

Your post reminded me of one of my favorite Adam Savage videos where he touches upon this idea you're exploring. I encourage folks to see it, he articulates it so well. I linked to the start of the video where he begins to build the idea. TLDR is he mentions Monet painting Impression Sunrise and how it was something that people have never seen before and it took a bit of time for it to blow people away--they needed t…

Sounds kind of similar to [1]:

> After two months in the bakery, you learned how to “see” clean.

> Code is the same way.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-...

Re: I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

#24
post #5

I think Dunning Krueger makes intuitive sense. When you become skilled in your field you learn from other people in your field, and your assessment of yourself is based on your relation to the skills of those other people. But if you know very little about something, you have no reference point to evaluate yourself against. When you learn something you also learn what are some of the mistakes you can make. You evalua…

I think that's assuming more ignorance than even an unskilled person has. If you had never listened to a professional play piano before then you'd have no idea what level of performance is possible. Similarly, if you had never seen skilled skaters perform on TV. But we have done these things, so it's obvious that they're doing something that's very difficult. Maybe you don't fully appreciate the skill, though. You wo…

It's more like intermediate (most vulnerable to the DK-effect) to advanced (utmost appreciation for professionals).

Taking the piano example: after 1-2 years of progressive learning you can certainly give off the impression to somebody unfamiliar/untrained (including yourself to an extent) that you are actually quite good: Intermediate stage. But after awhile when confronted with more and more challenging stuff, by discovering different styles and finetuning your hearing; you at some point reach the very visceral and uncanny sensation of the countless possible roads you can now explore: advanced stage.

Re: I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

#25
> Again, my main point is that there’s nothing inherently flawed with the analysis and plots presented in the original paper.

I find the use of quartiles suspicious, personally. It's very nearly the ecological fallacy[1].

> I’m not going to start reviewing and comparing signal-to-noise ratios in Dunning-Kruger replications

DK has been under fire for a while now, nearly as long as the paper has existed[2]. At present, I am in the "effect may be real but is not well supported by the original paper" camp. If DK wanted to they could release the original data, or otherwise encourage a replication.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_correlation [2]: https://replicationindex.com/2020/09/13/the-dunning-kruger-e...

Re: I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

#26

On a pure human level, a large portion of DK discourse seems to be a fight over which people are the "Unskilled and Unaware." Or more bluntly, who gets to call who stupid. The author says as much in this article: > Why so angry? [...] [Frankly], for the last few years, the world seems to be accelerating the rate at which it’s going crazy, and it feels to me a lot of that is related to people’s distrust in science (an…

So true, the whole DK discourse is very rarely constructive. Except on HN of course ;)

Re: I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

#28
post #22
post #9

The corollary of Dunning Kruger is that everyone is equally capable and equally capable of assessing their performance. This nicely suits the current social rhetoric but does not match observed reality. Edit-see below I meant opposite not corollary.

Isn't that the exact opposite of D-K?

Doh corollary doesn't mean what I thought. I learned something thank you. I meant the opposite.

Re: I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

#29

I think Dunning Krueger makes intuitive sense. When you become skilled in your field you learn from other people in your field, and your assessment of yourself is based on your relation to the skills of those other people. But if you know very little about something, you have no reference point to evaluate yourself against. When you learn something you also learn what are some of the mistakes you can make. You evalua…

>I think Dunning Krueger makes intuitive sense.

If human cultures can be characterized as default arrogant or default humble then it stands to reason that arrogant cultures will have a DK effect, and in humble cultures you won't.

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