ConceptsNest

  ***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Meaning & Interpretation, Historical Origins, Types Of Information: The Ignorance Of Ignorance, The Dunning-Kruger Effect In The Workplace and In Our Lives ) Chapter 01- Click Here Behaviors That Initiate The Dunning-Kruger Effect How To Steer Away From The Dunning Kruger Effect People can learn they are incompetent . . . by becoming competent. Thinking of meta-cognition again, we may divide it into two: General and domain specific. If we can hone our general meta-cognition, we can ensure that we do not fall for the Dunning-Kruger effect in whatever domain. Every time we think – “I am above average, of course” – an alarm bell needs to go off in our mind. How do we know we are above average? Getting to know our peers and what they are doing can help. If we can distinguish between the competent and those who are not, maybe we do know what we are doing . If not, that should be enough of a warning to dive deeper into whatever we are

  If we were asked to rate our driving ability on a scale of 1 to 10, how would we score ourselves? Maybe we are not amongst the best drivers in the world, but we probably do not believe we are the worst. In fact, we probably rate ourselves as being a little better than the average driver. The problem with this is that most people rate themselves as being a better driver than the average person. This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where most people overrate their abilities , with the greatest overestimation coming from those with the lowest skills. Perhaps what’s even more amazing is that the English philosopher Bertrand Russell said this long before the advent of the internet . Today, due to the joys of social media, we are regularly exposed to legions of people who believe they know what they are talking about when they do not. And, indeed, as Russell pointed out, the more clueless these people are, the more confident in their pronouncements they seem to be . People who are bad at som