David Brooks writes about Donald Trump in The New York Times this morning:
[Trump] is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.
I have written, in the past, about the Dunning-Kurger effect in the world of dogs:
The Dunning-Kruger Effect means the least competent and least experienced are often the most certain they are right, and that they are also quite certain they doing a better-than-average job at most of the tasks they are doing.
What's that mean for dogs?
Well, for one, it means the least competent breeders are often the ones who are most certain they are quite excellent.
Conversely, the most competent and most knowledgeable dog men and dog women are often filled with self-doubt to the point they may go a lifetime without breeding a litter.
And so it goes, round and round, in an almost never-ending circle of dysfunction.
Is it any wonder the world of dogs (and the world in general) is in such a mess?
And it does not stop at dog training and dog breeding, does it?
3 comments:
Did you go to the Wiki site for Dunning-Kruger Effect? Such a perfect example of the complete bullshit which is Psychology. Darwin (an actual scientist) had described this in his lifetime and I'm sure any smart person since Gobekli Tepe has observed this in his fellow humans. Patrick- I admire your actual writing skills and original research so I don't understand why you buy into the pseudo sciences- Psychology, Neuroscience, etc...
I'm not confident enough in my own infallibility to reject anything that has been around longer than I have, and which has helped millions of people, whether that is placebo or religion, heroin or math, ax or gun. Why would I reject neuroscience or psychology? To do so is to suffer from... well, you know.
And sure Darwin described what we call the Dunning-Kruger Effect. So what? Both Dunning and Kruger noted that in their own work. Darwin could have cited Shakespeare, and Shakespeare could have cited Confucius. Again, Dunning and Kruger noted all that themselves. But the world calls it the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and so that's what we call it, same as a fish is called a fish and not a "poisson," and a copier is called a Xerox no matter the brand.
I resent that these charlatans call themselves "scientists". They are not. Or not even that they call themselves scientists but that society at large believes they are. Except for a much finer honed jargon and a very deliberate disguising of their human natures psychologists are no different than astrologers, phrenologists or alchemists.
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