The Dunning-Kruger effect is probably just from bimodal skill distributions
Comments
belviewreview
mwkaufma
"probably" according to what? Just producing a possible decomposition of a graph and arbitrarily assigning meaning to the components is rationalization, not empirical inquiry.
clickety_clack
It’s about as empirical as the chart everyone sees that describes the effect, and as rationalizations go it seems like a plausible one.
mwkaufma
How does it become more "plausible" just by doing number-wang absent one iota of external confirmation? It's a tautology.
peterlk
Thanks for numberwang today. Probably my favorite meme for board meetings and all-hands presentations
themonsu
Isn't the Dunning-Kruger effect considered an over-simplification and not true in general?
torginus
Dunning Kruger is just people thinking they're more average than they actually are. Which leads to below average people overrating and above average people underrating themselves.
Which is fair, if somebody asked me how good a driver I was, I would say I'm not particularly good, but I don't really get into accidents either so about average, which might or might not be true.
Smoosh
We may or may not be experts on a particular topic but most of us are inexpert at estimating competence on that topic.
Zenst
Good article. I particularly like the line, "early exposure to experts reduces delusional confidence", which is very true. It helps prevent a flawed Occam’s razor mindset, where people mistake the simplest visible explanation for the correct one.
Though probably not the best title as more about "Mount Stupid", than Dunning-Kruger.
kromem
Why are you using the straw man graph for your curve you're addressing?
Where's the top quartile drop relative to measured performance?
D-K effect wasn't only around low competence overestimation but regression to the ~80% mean on both sides.
the_tyger
"It’s worth noting that the 'Dunning-Kruger curve' never appeared in the original paper and is basically a meme based on a misunderstanding(?) of the effect. Nevertheless, it resonates with a lot of people."
This is so speculative. I think the first step in determining why some people believe they are much more competent than they really are would be to interview them on how they came to believe it.
I think the fact that the author thinks this is unnecessary and that he can determine the cause of this phenomenon without this sort of empirical research indicates he believes he is better at understanding how one goes about determining human psychology than he really is.