You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself by David Mcraney Page A
Authors: David Mcraney
Tags: Psychological, Humor & Satire
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humor and logic tests and then report how well they thought they had scored. Some people accurately predicted their own skill levels. Some knew they sucked at humor, and they were right. Others had a hunch they were better at telling jokes than most and had this belief confirmed. So sometimes people who are really good at something are well aware and can accurately predict their scores, but not always. Overall, the study showed you are not very good at estimating your own competence.
More recent studies have attempted to refute the absolute black-and-white predictions of Dunning-Kruger—that the unskilled are the least aware of it. A study by Burson, Larrick, and Klayman in 2006 showed that “on easy tasks, where there is a positive bias, the best performers are also the most accurate in estimating their standing, but on difficult tasks, where there is a negative bias, the worst performers are the most accurate.”
So the Dunning-Kruger effect isn’t always influencing you to think that you are awesome when you are actually mediocre. It breaks down like this: The more skilled you are, the more practice you’ve put in, the more experience you have, the better you can compare yourself to others. As you strive to improve, you begin to better understand where you need work. You start to see the complexity and nuance; you discover masters of your craft and compare yourself to them and see where you are lacking. On the other hand, the less skilled you are, the less practice you’ve put in, and the fewer experiences you have, the worse you are at comparing yourself to others on certain tasks. Your peers don’t call you out because they know as little as you do, or they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Your narrow advantage over novices leads you to think you are the shit. Charles Darwin said it best: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Whether it’s playing guitar or writing short stories or telling jokes or taking photos—whatever—amateurs are far more likely to think they are experts than actual experts are. Education is as much about learning what you don’t know as it is about adding to what you do.
The recent explosion of reality programming is a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. A whole industry of assholes is making a living off of making attractive yet untalented people believe they are actually genius auteurs. The bubble around reality stars is so thick, they may never escape it. At some point, the audience is in on the joke—yet the people in the center of the tragedy are often completely unaware.
As someone moves from novice to amateur to expert to master, the lines between each stage are difficult to recognize. The farther ahead you get, the longer it takes to progress. Yet the time it takes to go from novice to amateur feels rapid, and that’s where the Dunning-Kruger effect strikes. You think the same amount of practice will move you from amateur to expert, but it won’t.
Everyone experiences the Dunning-Kruger effect from time to time. Being honest with yourself and recognizing all your faults and weaknesses is not a pleasant way to live. Feeling inadequate or incompetent is paralyzing—you have to plow through those emotions to get out of bed. Seen along a spectrum, Dunning-Kruger is on the opposite end from depression with its crippling insecurity.
Don’t let the Dunning-Kruger effect cast its shadow over you. If you want to be great at something, you have to practice, and then you have to sample the work of people who have been doing it for their whole lives. Compare and contrast and eat some humble pie.
12
Apophenia
THE MISCONCEPTION: Some coincidences are so miraculous, they must have meaning.
THE TRUTH: Coincidences are a routine part of life, even the seemingly miraculous ones. Any meaning applied to them comes from your mind.
Screenwriters and novelists have discovered over the years a number of tropes that you tend to understand without
More recent studies have attempted to refute the absolute black-and-white predictions of Dunning-Kruger—that the unskilled are the least aware of it. A study by Burson, Larrick, and Klayman in 2006 showed that “on easy tasks, where there is a positive bias, the best performers are also the most accurate in estimating their standing, but on difficult tasks, where there is a negative bias, the worst performers are the most accurate.”
So the Dunning-Kruger effect isn’t always influencing you to think that you are awesome when you are actually mediocre. It breaks down like this: The more skilled you are, the more practice you’ve put in, the more experience you have, the better you can compare yourself to others. As you strive to improve, you begin to better understand where you need work. You start to see the complexity and nuance; you discover masters of your craft and compare yourself to them and see where you are lacking. On the other hand, the less skilled you are, the less practice you’ve put in, and the fewer experiences you have, the worse you are at comparing yourself to others on certain tasks. Your peers don’t call you out because they know as little as you do, or they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Your narrow advantage over novices leads you to think you are the shit. Charles Darwin said it best: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Whether it’s playing guitar or writing short stories or telling jokes or taking photos—whatever—amateurs are far more likely to think they are experts than actual experts are. Education is as much about learning what you don’t know as it is about adding to what you do.
The recent explosion of reality programming is a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. A whole industry of assholes is making a living off of making attractive yet untalented people believe they are actually genius auteurs. The bubble around reality stars is so thick, they may never escape it. At some point, the audience is in on the joke—yet the people in the center of the tragedy are often completely unaware.
As someone moves from novice to amateur to expert to master, the lines between each stage are difficult to recognize. The farther ahead you get, the longer it takes to progress. Yet the time it takes to go from novice to amateur feels rapid, and that’s where the Dunning-Kruger effect strikes. You think the same amount of practice will move you from amateur to expert, but it won’t.
Everyone experiences the Dunning-Kruger effect from time to time. Being honest with yourself and recognizing all your faults and weaknesses is not a pleasant way to live. Feeling inadequate or incompetent is paralyzing—you have to plow through those emotions to get out of bed. Seen along a spectrum, Dunning-Kruger is on the opposite end from depression with its crippling insecurity.
Don’t let the Dunning-Kruger effect cast its shadow over you. If you want to be great at something, you have to practice, and then you have to sample the work of people who have been doing it for their whole lives. Compare and contrast and eat some humble pie.
12
Apophenia
THE MISCONCEPTION: Some coincidences are so miraculous, they must have meaning.
THE TRUTH: Coincidences are a routine part of life, even the seemingly miraculous ones. Any meaning applied to them comes from your mind.
Screenwriters and novelists have discovered over the years a number of tropes that you tend to understand without
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