"Why ignorance fails to recognize itself" Featuring David Dunning
Вставка
- Опубліковано 1 чер 2024
- Psychological data suggest that people are not very good at knowing what they do not know. As a consequence, they often claim expertise that they do not have. David Dunning talks about why the scope of our own ignorance is often invisible to us, and what potential consequences this invisibility has in personal, social, and economic realms.
More from EconEd 2017
• EconED 2017
ABOUT MACMILLAN LEARNING
Macmillan Learning is a privately-held, family-owned company that improves lives through learning. By linking research to learning practice, we develop pioneering products and learning materials for students that are highly effective and drive improved outcomes.
To learn more, please visit www.macmillanlearning.com
Join our Macmillan Community at community.macmillanlearning.com
OUR SOCIAL MEDIA
LinkedIn / macmillan-learning
Twitter / macmillanlearn
#dunningkruger #EconEd
It's hard to win a debate against a genius, but it's impossible to win a debate against a stupid person.
This is so true!
"You can't argue with as**oles or reason with idiots."
Smart people debate. Stupid people argue.
No it is not!
@@blessedowo1958 It is impossible to win a debate against a stupid person because a stupid person cannot understand logic.
Ignorance is rarely declared, but easily found. Wisdom is rarely found, but easily declared.
True intelligence is a gift your born with..its common sense....You can't learn it from a book..its an ability to reason out a solution to a problem and apply what you know to be true to solve the equasion..our ancestors used their reason and application to survive..fire was discovered through reason and application...its elementry
@@mariankeller5852 The 'your' in your reply is spelled 'you're'
Everyone is ignorant,just depends on the subject
@@mariankeller5852 Intelligence is something one is born with. It's not "common sense" though. Intelligence has nothing to do with WHAT you know but how easily and quickly you can learn. One can waste their intelligence on pride and hubris. Applying what you know is not intelligence. That's called being smart. Intelligence is HOW you learn. Smart is APPLYING what you learn. You don't need to be highly intelligent to survive but you do have to be smart.
Seems to me that the most common reaction to learning about the Dunning-Kruger effect is a knee-jerk presumption of individual immunity from it.
Underrated comment
Agreed, but the first step in dealing with one’s inherent cognitive biases is recognizing them.
😂🤣👏🏾👏🏾👌🏾
@Kenneth Schrank Touche 😂😂👏🏾👏🏾
You, not me.
"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about." (Wayne Dyer)
the main criteria for winning popular political leadership is the abiilty to speak confidently (and with 'heartfelt' conviction) on all manner of things that one knows little about.
And these are the people that end up running the country.
My motto is when I’m the smartest person in the room then the place is screwed and I need to GTFO…
But how to know such a thing?
You don't exist, the room doesn't exist, and you can't escape either.
Lol you missed the whole point of the talk.
Me too! Run....
@@chiznowtch I though the point of the talk was to earn money.
I now better understand why, years ago, when I sang for myself I knew I was great, but that when I sang for others, the reviews were poor. In retrospect, it's sad that the members of my audience so grossly overestimated their abilities to evaluate singing talent. I'm deeply grateful to Dr. Dunning for helping to finally clear this up.
Joker!
Best comment so far.
"If you keep getting rejected by women, it's not the women."
Peter Jordanson talking with Jordan Peterson.
@@baronvonbeandip but modern women rejects 80-90% of men (data from Tinder). They all want the top 10% of men. Is it still not the women?
@@Harper.Tech49
It's a function of the medium. We are all bolder on the net.
If you had 1000s of options, would you settle for mediocrity at the outset? No, you would struggle with rejection until you settle for pornhub. In the real world, those girls view the lay of the land through beer goggles. They go home with Kevin Costner and wake up to Slippin' Jimmy.
😂😂😂😂
“All it takes is ignorance and confidence, and success is sure.” -Mark Twain
yes! Twain nailed the Dunning Kruger effect like 100 years before Dunning and Kruger
We’re all ignorant,just depends on the topic
@@CasperLCat Trump? That’s the creed of all Authoritarians
@@CasperLCat Yo! My friend once had a door dash order for you, Don Ho. Not even joking.
So what's the problem?
"Against stupidity we are defenseless", Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Wrong experience is ur defense
True, although stupidity is a lack of intelligence, not necessarily knowledge. In other words, stupidity and ignorance are not the same thing, although there is much overlap.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer `s country must not have had any guns or rope.
The best defence against stupidity( anti biological behaviour) is to remove it from the community.
A gun is quick but the rope gives them time to reflect for a few seconds.
@@ossiedunstan4419 dude chill out. That may be the stupidest statement I've ever heard
sounds like a stupid thing to say if you’re trying to encourage resistance.
"I am not young enough to know everything." Oscar Wilde
Ha ha ha ha ha. Yes. 👍 Oscar Wilde. One of the best there ever was.
I never believed that I was.
@Brysen Michael So you're tag-teaming the spam, I see.
I find the elderly have abandoned critical thinking and are most stuck in their ways
I was so much older then.
“It’s easier to trick someone into believing than it is to convince someone they've been tricked” - Mark Twain (?)
100%
Ironic that Mark Twain never said this.
Will Rogers?
I don’t know about that. Telling people they’ve been hoodwinked has been a tactic of demagoguery for a long time. Isn’t this a reason why people fall for conspiracies?
@@thethirdman225
You can tell that it's real because it looks so fake.
The older I become, the more aware I become of how little I understand about almost everything. We all spend our best years mostly fumbling about. It is only close to our end does humility begin to open our minds. The great paradox of life.
If you spend your life in an effort to learn you won't have that problem..you'll never know everything but you can know something about most things..knowledge is the only thing no one can ever take from you....
the imposter syndrome affects people of all ages.
That's a great realization, of a great universal truth. At 56 I've come to this same conclusion myself, but haven't been able to explain it as well as you have here.
yes, its a shame youth is wasted on the young
@@allthatmattersiscigars2312 Oh the things I would do if I was in my early 20s with my current knowledge.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin
@@theinvisibleman2070 Doesn't mean much as the average person is incredibly stupid, which I think was part of the point.
I don't think it is right to assume that half the number of people alive fall under an average line. I think there must be an unequal distribution between number of below and above average intelligence.
George carlin was as ignorant as those he attacked.
You should not mistake ignorance for stupidity, As Carlin admits he is both stupid and ignorant.
That's a fact!
A great philosopher and he was funny
The more I learn, the less I realize I know.
The first sign of leaning is to realise how little you know. Never stop learning, it can be a lot of fun.
As I get older, I find that I know more and more about less and less. I'm almost at the point where I know everything about nothing.
@@wow-ww7pe I’m feeling the same as of late, & I’m a retired research scientist. The only thing I think I’ve learned over the decades, is that even though times change, human beings tend to behave the same. We’re still tribal, war-like, power hungry, and most of us need to belong and fit in, and want leadership we can follow. It’s just a matter of degree. Even now, a few hundred powerful companies & families are deciding to let the climate crisis spiral out of control, causing hundreds of millions of people to suffer, & somehow the rest of us can’t stop them. The why if that remains a mystery to me
"All the things I thought I'd figured out, I have to learn again..." love Don Henley
@@wow-ww7pe Wow, that is the definition of a specialist!
Explaining to some one that there are things that people are unaware of to the extent that we aren't even aware we are unaware of is a daunting task.
True in fact
Exactly! It requires some sort of faith in order to take that leap into the unknown that we have no knowledge about, doesn’t it?
A madman who knows he is mad is much less mad than a madman who does not know that he is mad
I'm completely ignorant. But I'm also uninformed, perpetually lied to, and kept in that position by people who think they are not ignorant.
If you are completely ignorant how would you possibly know that you are being lied to by anyone, ignorant or not.
@@thomasnaas2813 I'm ignorant for other reasons. And I just assume I'm always being lied to until proven otherwise.
One has to take Sociopathy/Psycopathy and Narcissism into account as well. Stable geniuses, never wrong, know everything....etc, etc, etc.
What do Dark Triad traits have to do with genius?
Also religion, please. When you're indoctrinated from early childhood to accept things on faith, to believe in the supernatural and to reject facts that contradict your faith, you've already been put on a bad path that will make your future life and learning a lot more difficult.
Everyone is capable but not everyone is willing.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
― Aldous Huxley
Personally, I find it very easy to recognise my ignorance, and to accept it.
Socrates recognized that people believe without knowing and it was this that made him the wisest man of his time.
If only he'd known that hemlock was poison... ;o)
@@AZCobraman Uh he did. He knew he was being executed.
@@AZCobraman It is claimed he dictated a report of the poisons effect as it killed him, for research purposes. A further example living with purpose.
@@AZCobraman he also was given the choice of banishment or execution.
It was a joke folks....a joke!
This seems to be a subset of what I often tell my children, people believe what they want to believe and hear what they want to hear. What people say and do often is a function of their need to protect their self worth. Therefore everyone must be above-average in their own eyes. Self-examination and change is a huge effort. There is no money in telling people what they don't want to hear.
Look into a phenom called "The Knowledge Filter" (if you haven't already) What an eye opener that was! It's to do with the intellectual peer community...as in "peer reviewed", which determines nothing less than what we consider actual knowledge/factual information that is "allowed", or selected, to be put into our text books, then to filter down to the masses.
^This.
What culture teaches the young mind is if you don't tell them what they want to hear, you will be punished. This is by design so when you grow up you obey.
@@Bix12 Yes. In the STEM fields, peer review has always been pretty good. You couldn't slip lies into the literature without being shredded by colleagues. This remains mostly true in mathematics, although critical race theory has penetrated into the TEACHING and most of all the ASSESSMENT of mathematics at the lower levels. In science, things have gotten WAY political, especially climate science, most recently, but we all remember how the tobacco companies hired their own scientists to "prove" cigarettes weren't addictive!
But in the humanities, one after the other POLITICAL documents have been accepted as CANON, and so you can actually do "real research" and make OUTLANDISH claims, and have plenty of peer-reviewed literature to back you up, EVEN THOUGH THE HARD SCIENCES SHOW THE OPPOSITE! Evolutionary biology, sociology and psychology have produced virtually incontrovertible evidence that contravenes CRAZY critical-race-theory conclusions and other postmodernist, truth-denying claims that arise out of an ideology that HAS to suppress open debate, because it just doesn't hold up.
Bogossian (sp?), Lindsay and Pluckrose spoofed different peer-reviewed journals in the humanities by doing 2 things:
Make claims the ideologically-driven reviewers LIKE, and
Make sure you cite previous, peer-reviewed articles.
It's like you just have to make sure you know the Bible and cite the Holy Trinity to get the seal of approval from bishops and the Pope, only they all deny God, of course. Just take lines from Mein Kampf, replace "Jew(s)" with "white men," and win awards! They literally DID THAT and won awards!
We treat scientists like high priests, nowadays, and to question CERTAIN scientists or believe certain OTHER scientists is considered heresy! Often it only has the APPEARANCE of science, because science-y people make claims and no one dares challenge them.
Eric Williams Ah yes! The memorize and regurgitate model of education that results in people or not only can't think, they don't even want to because they associate "thinking for oneself" with failure.
Nincompoopery is such a lovely word to describe stupidity, I’m putting it on my business card when I get a business
Ignorance does recognize itself. Growing up, I heard about an iron curtain. That false info made me think I knew the Russians had an iron curtain. Later, I learned it was not iron and not a curtain, but a cement wall. I reconized my own ignorance - this is called learning.
But only when it's pointed out and accepted by the listner
That's the point - some people don't learn; but the Dunning-Kruger effect fools us into thinking we know beofe we do - you even provide a perfect example - you'd made an assumption without doing research to find the truth
Here´s my example for you: when I was in college I got essentially straight A´s and graduated at the very top of my class. During those four years I helped dozens and dozens with understanding basic physics. I just spent a 30 year career with some of those very same engineers and often found myself bewildered that virtually all of them thought their solutions were superior to mine. Seems in a world without real exams everyone is a genius. I really enjoy these videos of yours.
It’s the same in the world of software.
Those shiny apps and websites you use. Half the devs are idiots.
Yes, in fact
but intelligence is also a environmental and situational thing. i mean some of high performers in academic might become dumb on other topics related to different way of understanding or needing more flexibility...
@@pierreburgaud2347 no argument here
I was sure you were going to speak about the bid difference between emotional and rational intelligence but nope!
I do understand what you're saying and agree in large part but I knew some genius guy like this one a radiologist who knows everything about his domain but not much on so many other things but he cannot stand that a guy like me with my 125 IQ could teach him anything. An A+ graduate can be a gullible person too, believe me.
I think it’s possible that the philosophy of “fake it till you make it” which is ubiquitous in the USA, explains a lot of this
That is horrible. I always associate that saying to "mood" for when you are having a rough day or a bad time. Maybe it is more like the story the Leo DiCaprio Catch Me If You Can film was based on. Impersonating pilots and other professionals and such. Scary.
"Fake it until you make it" makes the Dunning-Kruger effect worse but makes imposter syndrome better.
It's undependable and untrustworthy, but is the right medicine in certain select scenarios.
Ignorance fails to recognize itself, in part, because it is encouraged and celebrated in the world. In essence, we train people to be ignorant. Church, synagogue, mosque are three huge culprits in this… but so often, family dynamics generate the same result. And then there is nationalism, and ugly history to suppress, and all manner of other factors designed and determined to keep us ignorant.
How to get someone to consider a completely new idea. My 81 year old friend was given a smart phone by her son. She acted like it would bite her at first. She would get angry if I tried to help her use it. She “accidentally” dropped it in the toilet 😂 Then COVID hit. She loved meeting with her friends on Zoom. The gift of desperation
I think a person becomes ‘old’ when they stop being curious
awareness vs. "knowledge"
your mind is not a container to store data. it is an organ that needs practice INTERACTING with THE WORLD.
the "education" system functions as if appearing on Jeopardy is the ultimate goal.
Asi es
""your mind is not a container to store data. it is an organ that needs practice INTERACTING with THE WORLD." - nice: ) and very quotable, thank you; is it original/may I quote you?
@@Tubulous123 its not original but it is augmented by me. I believe the way i first heard it was the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a flame to be kindled.
@@duewhit310, awesome thank you for all of this! "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. Plutarch "
@@Tubulous123 a flame is more vulnerable than a fire
"But so it goes"! Brilliant.
I believe I am way above average simply by the fact that I don't believe in God, never have, never will.
People's ability to remember and repeat false information very good. Their ability to qualify and realize it's false is very poor. In fact most people believe consensus is truth. So to them if 2+2=7 is repeated enough times with enough authority they simply believe it. They'll defend their false belief to belong to the crowd they feel safe with.
@Harold Moore your comment is funny because, false information has everything to do with politics I agree, however picking a side only means you qualify information by the consensus you follow and not on merit. I gather you follow a Democrat consensus, so what does a political leaning have to do with science for example? You choose the science you believe in based on a political parties endorsement? If they tell you 2+2=7 it's the truth because your party endorsed it? This is exactly what I'm talking about.
Ignorance is simply a tool.
Propagandists know this, and use it, quite effectively.
True,, a fact
As we have daily proof here in the USA.
Umm yeah look at Fox News.
@@drewgoerlitz5739 Another MSM zombie.
@@Annie261. try again I haven’t had a tv since 2005. I read and listen to professors I am sorry to trigger you. Have a nice weekend.
I began to suspect my dumbness when I flunked my kindergarten entrance exams.
“Never argue with an idiot. Onlooker may not be able to tell the difference.”
Mark Twain
I think this is why people always tell me I'm selling myself short. They're so used to people overestimating their abilities that someone who actually knows or acknowledges their limitations is seen as a mysterious outlier.
Not to say I'm immune to D-K, just that I try to be realistic .
Same. I've learned that I have to talk myself up in some situations because many people confuse someone who is humble with someone who is incompetent
As per Dunning's graphs, the brightest know that they don't know everything and therefore doubt even some things they do know.
This is particularly the case where a solid amount of evidence points in a particular direction but there remains some uncertainty. So we say "probably" or "most likely" rather than an emphatic certainty.
Others, who know less, don't realise that the probability that we are wrong is very slight actually suspect that we have no confidence in what we are talking about. So 95% becomes less than 50% (particularly for people who think in black / white terms rather than a million shades of grey).
I played football in high school (not AL Bundt), I was always very hard on myself. I played in the line, I remember missing an assignment and it cost us a first down and we had to punt in a big game. I was so mad at myself that while I was running of the field I was yelling and screaming at myself, calling myself names. My line coach was extremely upset and was coming over to tear me a new one but stopped short when he saw and heard me. He turned around and left me alone. He said latter I should be a motivational speaker because he NEVER saw somebody who held themselves to such high standards and who punished themselves so severely when those standards where not met. This may account for a lot of my misery today!😂
@@carmengogeidnas9670 Yes. They do. I’ve learned this as well. Humility is often heard as incompetent.
@@icestationzebra8636 I love your handle. Loved that book!
This is the result of the American society that was taught it could do no wrong ever since the WW2 victory.
The elites describing themselves.
Love it or leave it.
"Ignorance: there's no authority like it." Orson Welles
This guy was a riot. Did his humor go over most of the audience's heads? He got barely a couple of chuckles. It was a very informative talk, one I wish more people could understand. Unfortunately, most won't...
What I think I know keeps changing. I am convinced at this point that my biggest educational task is to realize when I know enough to make no claim that I really "know" at all.
People do not know when they are doing poorly when the feedback is not immediate or available. They cannot know how poorly they are doing when feedback, if available, is ignored. The second proposition is a reflection of a person's stupidity, often mistaken for stubbornness. The first is a natural condition that, when encountered, a rational person will try to honestly correct. Feedback is vital and when avoided or ignored can be fatal.
Learning requires feedback and correction...and practice.
This is similar to the learning factor of Primacy in flight training which can be described with the phrase, “teach it right the first time”. The demonstration of the flight maneuver must be flawless and feedback to student errors must be immediate and flawless. Think of it like teaching someone to defuse a live bomb. The intensity of the situation tends to make the feedback difficult to ignore but it does happen occasionally. These students seldom solo.
@@darrylday30 Teaching or training ? (Good) teaching should provide the tools to figure out where the experts got it all wrong.
Excellent point. It's not about intelligence as much as it is about willingness to consider criticism of your own judgments and opinions, and particularly from strangers. I work as a lawyer and there is probably no other profession where you see your hard work ripped to shreds, and unfairly portrayed, as when the opposing counsel writes out the legal arguments against your position. I know that academics also do this to some extent, but the level of meanness isn't the same as with lawyers. But as painful as it is, that is what one must do, study the counter arguments and incorporate them into your understanding of the legal problem.
@@brucefrykman8295”Experts are experts for a reason and students are taught to respect their wisdom. Every lesson is written in blood as no one lives long enough to make all the mistakes the hard way. However, independent thought and decision making skills are woven into all lessons taught in the classroom and trained in the air. Students learn from the experts, become experts, and eventually improve upon the experts that preceded them.
@@paulwolf3302 Aviation is similar but not mean. We just brief, train and debrief. The grim reaper takes care of the rest.
I can be proud to claim that when the slide of financial terms came up I paused the video to review the terms and genuinely said that I had never heard of the last 3 terms.
Me too! In fact, it was the same for many of those terms.
"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people."
W.C. Fields
My dad had a phrase for this. “That guy knows enough to be dangerous…”
The cycle of ignorance is self-reinforcing. In thinking about it, this is fairly obvious that someone who doesn’t know what they don’t know is unlikely to change without external stimulus.
I tell people I know enough to be dangerous but not enough to be useful.
A solid shot gun slug to the cerebellum usually makes it safe again.
a speaker very skilled in remaining in harmony with his audience, imv - quite the show I thought :)
Amazing how self-confidence and bluster can help ignorant people be far more successful than they deserve to be.
Deep knowledge implies hard intelectual work.
But in a world of instant rewards, people who beleaves in them assumes knowledge should be in that same category and acts accordingly.
One of the largely ignored facets of Dunning-Kruger is what I call “Transitive Expertise Fallacy”. This is where you have a person with significant domain expertise in one area (physics) who automagically assumes they’re an expert in a related field (computer science). Yes, there is overlap: I need a working understanding of physics (both Newtonian and Quantium Mechanical) to understand things like material science issues impacting physical semiconductor design, or the application superposition to understanding what a qbit is. But I am not a physicist (or expert in material science, etc.), not even close. And, to be blunt, most physicists, if confronted with disassembled ARM or x86 object code, would not know what they are looking at, or how to trace through compiler generated routines and structures, or the algorithms that generated them.
Hell, even with my expertise, I only know a fraction of what there is to know in my own field. Every time I play a game like Forza Horizon 4 or RDR2, I’m astonished by the sheer artistry of everything on display, and the incredible amount of computer science and math employed. The first time I played Crysis, I spent two hours examining the parallax depth mapping used to create the illusion of geometry for ground-level objects, and then taught myself how to write a Parallax Depth Map Shader… but that doesn’t make me a qualified 3d engine developer or expert in shader programming.
Yet, far too often, I see and hear people with domain expertise in one field, babbling on about another, as if their specialized area bestows them with a “knower of everything” PHD. And this isn’t an “appeal to authority” issue of someone being credentialed, or not. One of my friends is a physicist by training, but has spent a quarter century in computer science (largely self-taught) and is absolutely a subject matter expert in the field. It’s a matter of being honest about what you do and don’t know: just because I’m an expert in one field, and sorta remember some of my bio-chem 101, does not mean I really know what a spleen does. Sure, I can go read the Wikipedia article (I just did… turns out your spleen is pretty important), but that doesn’t mean I know anything about disorders or problems that might impact the spleen, how to spot symptoms, treatments, etc., that a doctor (or perhaps a nurse practitioner) might understand.
The “Transitive Expertise Fallacy” is absolutely a variation of Dunning-Kruger, and, IMHO, it’s a very dangerous one, because when we hear someone talk authoritatively about a subject they really aren’t well versed in, but it’s backed by the credentials or acknowledged expertise in another field, it’s often given far too much weight. Frankly, this is how I think a lot of junk science gets propagated.
And for the record, I really don’t know anything about psychology or the Dunning-Kruger effect. Hell, I’m probably well into said territory already. Ahh screw it, I can fix your computer, so I know everything.
For example, doctors thinking they are epidemiologists. Telling people "ask your doctor" in a society where medical facts are politicized is not a good idea. You have quite a few doctors (and nurses) totally convinced that certain scientific facts are hoaxes, or making up rules about preventive measures based on what they think they know.
Bro, wtf, no tl;dr?
@@aerynoftalyn1307
Damn, I thought I would be the first to bring the jab into this convo.
It's not just doctors, or academics in general. These days folks think they are experts just because they got the jab and didn't die on the spot. I wonder how many know that they can still contract and infect others? By my youtube experience, I'd say few of them.
Very well said. You can add expert writer of English language to your resume (tongue firmly in cheek).
I agree broadly with your point about the fallacy you identify (and I've read some similar arguments before, perhaps in The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols).
However I don't think the fallacy you identify is the main cause of the propagation of junk science. From my perspective, that phenomenon is caused by tensions within particular fields (commercial pressure; methodological/epistemological issues that cloud the validity of findings) but also then how particular pieces of evidence might find their way into the news cycle (and then perhaps into public consciousness) based on their apparent news values and/or thanks to the interest of the PR folks who want to spread the story.
Still, I don't mean to commit the fallacy that you have identified. After all, my Ph.D is in a slightly different area of media & cultural studies, so I guess I'm just speculating on the above matter. It is true that I have taught students at under/postgraduate level in relevant fields such as research; PR; journalism etc but I could not quite lay claim to "expertise" as such, but maybe this is part of the issue. To my students, I am the "expert" they consult, despite my sincere attempts to contextualise my level of knowledge ("not an expert in this particular area but I know enough to teach you something!"). People who may have genuine expertise in one area are often pulled into related areas for professional reasons, and the folks that they teach often have a poor appreciation of the distinction between "know enough to teach you something" and "expert"
This lack of appreciation is also related (in my mind, at least) to an inability to appreciate the way in which genuine expertise can be contested; how experts within fields can disagree; how different fields conceptualise the phenomena they investigate etc.
In short, people sometimes treat "experts" as "fact machines" and can do a wonderful job of ignoring disclaimers about your actual field of expertise.
This is not to say that "experts" don't also willfully discuss things as though they have expertise when in fact they do not. But I think we can all sometimes be quite strident in expressing our opinions and other times quite modest, and that this probably has no bearing on whether we know what we're talking about. :)
Am I the only person who laughed when he talked about how he didn't name it after himself? Lol
I also noticed that the audience sat there like a bunch of stuffed dummies. Quite a lot of his comments were funny. But they just sat there and nobody reacted to any of them. Strange.
I am, however, willing to admit that while I found his comments funny, I couldn’t figure out or understand any of those graphs. I didn’t know what the vertical numbers represented. I had no idea what that diagonal “actual” graph meant either. Maybe someone who knows can explain them.
@@lizwilliams14At 6:43 there is a chart that shows the person's actual test performance as a dashed line and then their actual percentile compared to others as the blue line and then their assumption compared to others as the red line. Is that what you mean?
I work in the field of lifestyle medicine. I am always amazed at the lack of ignorance in matters of lifestyle and how they impact health in the general public. Ignorance plays the most significant role. Most people are unaware of how little they know about good health.
This explains why there are so many people thinking they are Einstein in youtube comments.
Delusion takes place more often in life than we give it credit for.
Funny
Learning of nincompoopery broadened my horizon
I am a mechanic by trade (4 year apprenticeship with Caterpillar, plus several years post trade experience in a variety of fields) and an engineering by profession (Naval Architecture). I've also been involved in sailing and fixing boats all my life. So I know a bit about nuts and bolts - or I thought I did. Yet I only learned this year why hot dipped galvanised nuts are loose on the bolts. It is entirely situational. The bolts used in machinery are typically "black" and boat bolts are typically stainless steel - again not coated.
So although I had specified hot dipped galvanised bolts in construction I hadn't had to handle them. Then on site earlier this year I was sorting through bolts and checking which were suitable when I noticed that the hot dipped galvanised nuts were loose on the bolts. So I researched it. Turns out that they are tapped oversize to ensure that the galvanising doesn't come off as the bolt is tightened.
So after more than 40 years of familiarity with nuts and bolts I learned something completely new. Had I not researched it I would have thought they were faulty - based on my previous experience.
My ignorance would have made an assumption based on previous experience. We extrapolate from what we do know to what we don't know - sometimes we're right - but not always.
As a journeyman electrician with a degree in Electrical Engineering Technology, I worked in a GM paint shop where pipefitters insisted on all stainless fittings, and Swagelock valves, never Festo. I was required to repair the hydro hoist on my dock, and some corroding fittings on my houseboat. I learned that in marine application, all stainless is the only long term solution. Everything galvanized eventually crumbles. You wrote an interesting article. Owning a boat is like a big hole that you have to regularly throw money into.
5:20 What people say to another about what they think they did on an exam and how they actually think they did are NOT the same thing! Shame and pride exist in one and differ in another!
I see this in the world today how much americans don't know about its history and a lot of this is in and from the politicians and people who follow politics
something along the line of "tell them what we want them to believe"?
For the 'Financial Terms' experiment: I would like to see it repeated, but with the three non-terms to be something that could not be inferred. For example, instead of saying "pre-rated stocks" say something like "Barklean Stock Valuations". This way people would either know it, or not, and not fall into the inference reasoning trap. Why? To eliminate the numbers for those inferring the knowledge, against those who really don't know. (or you could also add three more terms to the set that satisfy the non-inference category I just added).
I thought the same thing. I don't know what a pre-rated stock is but I could extrapolate a meaning from the words.
Flawed study. Also rating people in the bottom “percentile” doesn’t mean they did bad on a test, it just means they scored less than the people they’re being compared too. So if everyone got 80%-100% on the test your still considered bottom percentile even tho you passed mastery. Bs presentation. Charts and statistics can say anything with tactics like this
@@32kirby32 look at the chart again. Students self-reported their _percentile_ which is the same measure that was compared.
Flawed (and ironic) objection.
Not to mention one of those terms actually _is_ a thing now, or at least it's a term that's used reasonably often by sources like lexisnexus and taxinsider (both UK.) I don't know if they were at the time of the experiment but today it's not particuoarly unlikely that a participant could've heard of this term.
It's actually better this way. If I regale you with how "the hegemonic discourse normalizes a phallogocentric paradigm" and you don't feel like clarification is needed since every bit on its own sounds vaguely familiar, you've just been hoodwinked.
So, what you are saying is, "The ignorant do not realize they are ignorant, because they are ignorant." In a nutshell. Brilliant.
The real driver of ignorance or false information is the proliferation of facts. I suffer from several illnesses that require intense self management. Despite the fact that I have never taken a single course in the area of medical science I know more about several of these illness than my doctors. In fact I had one specialist respond to a question I asked with "Quite frankly I am feeling a little uncomfortable here because you have probably forgotten more about that than I've ever known." The point here is not that I am more intelligent than my doctors, the point is that medicine has become so complex and detailed that it's become virtually impossible for even a specialist to keep up. There are just too many facts and too little time. The best around this problem is to stress learning to think more than the memorization of facts.
A fool believes himself to know everything. The wise know they are a fool.
That is true. Wise people never have a problem saying 'I don't know'. Fools will pretend to know everything.
I know I know nothing, I think.
This should be the FIRST thing we teach in science class
Not just in science. Epistemology spans disciplines.
and four years later here we are
Best 22 minutes of the day. I now know everything about the Dunning-Kreuger effect. Great video.
congrats! you win the most ironic comment award!
@@texasbuzzard4970 opportunity was too good to pass up.
not me I've noticed how ignorant people can be so I did not want to be like that so I started to learn more about things I don't know
This reminds me of a things my dad used to say all the time, that filled me with appropriate suspicion and doubt: "What do you know for sure?" Each time would be the beginning of a kind of intellectual game, dismantling whatever my answer was. Follow-up question after question would leave you eventually admitting something to the effect of "Well I can't say 100% for sure, but I'm fairly certain." He did it to me, even as a kid; in the beginning I would usually give him some fact I had picked up at school that day, but eventually I learned that only sentimental answers could eventually squeak by. "I know I love you" would only face a few follow-ups like "Why?" and "So would you still love me if that reason changed?" etc., whereas anything like the size of a planet or the biology of a rare animal would face unending questions that would have you eventually questioning abstractions like the meaning of life, or if existence was even real.
I think that is why I have a voice in my head that others seem to lack, which is always questioning my main internal monologue, and saying stuff like "yeah, but what if it was THIS way instead" or "how do you know that?" I call it my "Devil's Advocate" voice; probably because I grew up Catholic, and heard that term at a young age. It's especially active when considering political, philosophical, or ethical questions; I've been told that people can actually see me bouncing ideas back and forth in my head, because I actually tilt my head when making an internal counterpoint, and furrow my brow. Obviously, I can't know for sure if that is true (lol), but that's what I'm told. Also, to be fair, that could all be a false memory implanted in my head, and none of it even happened, or this could not be real, and there is no such thing as Earth, humans, or the internet, and it's all just some weird turtle's dream (lol). Can't say that I know anything for sure. Except maybe that I'm weird and longwinded.
You had a great dad. You say, "Can't say that I know anything for sure." That's a foundational epistemological principle- that there is no such thing as absolute knowledge of anything (except our incorrigible internal awareness of our own state.) I express that in my own motto- "Don't believe stuff." It's inevitable and OK to think that certain things are probably true. But "believing" in them? Never.
Humans Internal struggle
I admit, I may very well be a brain in a vat and none of you people may be real... but if you do exist, you probably know that for certain, don't you :P? Also - 2*2=4 in every possible universe out of definition... and if your tooth hurts, you know that it hurts for certain too (even if the tooth is actually gone; you still know it hurts if it does). That pretty much wraps it up...
@@VestinVestin Yes, your pain from the toothache is part of your own knowledge of your own internal psychic state. However, your belief that it is caused by a cavity is subject to some of the same doubt as belief about the external world. In other words, your brain in a vat could be being fed artificial sensory data. Your pain itself, however, is part of your certain knowledge. I suppose that 2x2=4 could be said to be certain because, as you said, it's definitional. Maybe all of math and logic could be called definitional, but this is stuff that's deeper in the weeds than I've yet gone, philosophically.
Most important of teaching is learning to learn not just facts 😇😇
Man's work is the stuff of legend.
"I don't know everything; I just know what I know."
This is a wonderful talk.
However in a competitive economic system on a finite planet, we should have adopted a collaborative economic system about the time Tesla gave us a practical electricity. Electricity is as significant as fire. But our competitive economic system has led the world to disaster.
The Buddha said: "Knowledge leads one forward, ignorance holds one back.
Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back".
“Our competitive economic system has led the world to disaster”,Yeah all our technological innovations,medical advancements, strides in longevity and advancements in quality of life have all been the result of what,sloth and mediocrity?
@@letavoss5938 These "improvements" are all the result of abundant high-quality energy and resource deposits, both of which are quickly declining in an economic system that pursues infinite growth on a finite planet. At a pathetic 2.3% growth rate, an amount of exergy (useful energy) equal to what was consumed in the last 500 yrs will be consumed in the next 30 yrs (60 yrs, 3x that 500 yr amount). Except it won't happen. Planetary boundaries of the limits to growth will curtail growth as civilization approaches them. Technological innovations and medical advancements will not outsmart the laws of thermodynamics. We are in overshoot. Collapse is inevitable. This is the disaster the OP mentioned. We are quite busy and clever little monkeys, but we are far from wise.
@@greenlampshade8909 Interesting,I suppose if your time line is sufficiently long all theories of man’s demise are inevitable.I do however agree there are constraints on our ability to adapt.I disagree it’s happening now and Armageddon is approaching at light speed.In 1798 Malthus agreed with your predictions of the inevitability of disaster.He was not willing to give up his life,and neither are you,as a leader in self sacrifice.You and other doomsday prophets are however more than happy to sacrifice the lives of others to reach Nirvana.
@@greenlampshade8909 Oh and peak energy,peak food,peak everything.You read up on Eugenics.I don’t know if you’re a believer In limiting population growth but if so what are you doing to help?
I have recently learned that none of this applies to the Millenial generation. After 15 years of undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate education followed by years of experience as a classical teacher, I was thoroughly schooled recently by one with an Associate's degree and one trade-school dropout. I was told that my generation is irrelevant, that their generation would take it from here, and that my opinion doesn't carry nearly as much weight as I think it does. So I think we need to assume that the new generation achieves conscious competence after just a few years of UA-cam and scrolling on their smartphones. We will soon reap the benefits of this leap forward.
I don't have a horse in this [your comment's] race, meaning that I am NOT a Millennial, but I have a query: Without doubting your qualifications, is it possible that NOT all (and possibly, not many) Millennials believe in such poppycock as the two clearly silly, arrogant, & ignorant youngsters have shown? Is it fair, therefore, to judge a whole generation by the comments of these two? Of course, I considered the possibility that you were somehow sarcastic.
Stupid is as Stupid does.- Forrest Gump
When you know you just know. When you don't know you just don't know.
My only problem with this is that people do not want to admit they don’t know something. Obviously a psychology professional knows how to conduct a survey, but since we don’t get an explanation of what controls were used in the surveys, I am not sure the data is comprehensive. In a survey situation people will claim knowledge of things they know they don’t know about, or say what they think the interviewer wants to hear. It isn’t ignorance in those cases, it is fear of being perceived as stupid. That skews the data and I just would like to know about the control groups data.
Assuring anonymity to avoid bias caused by embarrassment is standard operating methodology in psychological research. Answers to questions were almost certainly submitted on personally unidentified paper forms. You don't need a special control group to eliminate embarrassment bias. You say, "...people will often claim knowledge... of things they don't know about." Yeah, that's the whole issue that's being measured in this research.
Insecurity trumps ignorance?
I’m struck by the number of people I’ve met professionally who were not necessarily stupid but were totally ignorant of the fact that they were absolutely unsuited for the job they were in. No amount of negative feedback was enough to make them realize they should do something else, something more in line with their aptitude. It seemed like a badge of courage to them to keep rowing against the current. Is that stupid or just ignorant?
To me, ignorance is lack of knowledge. Stupidity is the inability or unwillingness to apply logic and reasoning and create knowledge.
Stupid people can know things, but they are bad at applying what they know to new situations. Aka: “figuring things out.”
Think about a trivial example:
2 + 5 * 3 is 17. 5 * 3 + 2 is 17.
What is 2 + 5 * 0?
A smart person will apply the rule of the first example and apply it to the second one.. More importantly, he will derive something about the order of operations from the first example (that you multiply first.) The ignorant-yet-smart person will learn from this and correctly answer “7” to the question. The stupid person will say “0”. Because anything times zero is zero.
This sounds like a dumb example, but I’ve seen it happen. And I’ve seen people who said “zero” argue repeatedly that they are correct.
I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but I’m going to suggest “a little from column A and a little from column B,” coupled with “I really like getting a paycheck and don’t want to wreck that.”
@@tomwilson2112 I get the paycheck thing but if you can get a paycheck for a job you’re suited for rather than paychecks for a unsuitable job the choice should be simple shouldn’t it ?
@@tomwilson2112 Sorry, I don't get it. How is 2+0=7? What did I miss?
@@TarpeianRock
Wouldn't incompetent people draw pride from holding down a job that they do poorly? If gettting paid for being a lawyer without ever helping anyone...wait a minute, what do politicians do exactly, other than pretending to have all the answers?
@@TarpeianRock
Your answer is wrong, Mr. Kruger.
The opposite of knowledge is ignorance.
The opposite of reason is emotion.
Reason leads one to knowledge.
Emotion leads one to ignorance.
There is a difference between information, knowledge and wisdom. The world is good at sharing information, less so for knowledge and fails at wisdom.
“Everyone I know is a genius, but I am aware that some of them are mistaken.” (The protagonist asks a professor to assess his ability.)
There has been a great dumbing down of the school system since the 1970s and it has resulted in at least two generations of adults who now believe they were well educated, but who were anything but.
@@GaryR55 Yes....and it was much worse in the seventies. ;)
I have no idea what you are responding to. The quote is from “Of Human Bondage”, written by Somerset Maugham, over a century ago. Dunning-Kruger was not invented. Like all sound science, it was recognized and demonstrated by people.
@@GaryR55 We have here two examples of The Effect in action.
@@BrianMcGuirkBMG Thanks for The Effect Lesson.
Person. Man. Woman. Camera. TV.
MAGA!
Thx for reminding me 🙂
David Dunning is my hero, but If I had to explain to most people why he is a hero, they would not understand.
This is be why, "Ignorance is bliss".
I sometimes feel guilty when I say or criticize the ignorance of others because I also know that there are pockets of ignorance within me also.
Very true and apparently we all have blind spots that we are ignorant about but don't know it or recognize it. It's our ego that gets in the way thinking that we know more than we do. At least that is only my opinion because I could be wrong. 😅😂
In the UK the Dunning-Kruger effect has been renamed “Gove Syndrome”.
Certainly
Or The Truss Effect or The Frost Malady
Primary school teacher room banter
Waw. As an individual, I think I've got food for thought for at least a week (probably much more). As an educator (I teach in secondary schools) I probably have food for thought for a lifetime. Or the other way round.
Thank you so much!
A couple of weeks ago I tweeted a comment about a female interviewer who on CNN (!) interviewed former president Donald Trump .I referred to (re: her performance)the Dunning-Kruger effect.Since that tweet, I have seen this looked up dozens of times, and discussed on You Tube.
What makes me less happy about that is that many people who read /listen to this will assume it Never applies to them.
P.S.Many years of my asking for balanced feedback has given me a fairly accurate read on how I'm doing on a task.
Thanks for your shedding a light on human hubris.😊
It's cool hearing from one of them himself. Interesting this video has so few views.
Simpler people only know what they "know" so they dont tend to recognize what they dont know.
Intelligent people are at least aware there is so much more they dont/can't know.
An intelligent person tends to continuously process nonstop, often to the point of indecision and paralysis.
"and so it goes, and so it goes, and you're the only one who knows.." W. Joel
Mass education teaches what to think, not how to think
@ 22:20 is a perfect example of what he is talking about; it went over the audience’s head by a million miles.
"It would behoover us...." Lol. The mind is funny.
Great talk. Helpful in understanding how the US has become so "institutionalized."
I was wondering if the Doctor was pulling our leg with behovering 😝. The problem with that is I hear misspoken phases all the time in news media as well as everyday speech. I always thought a degree in journalism would brush against some mastery of the English language. Talk about ignorance of a particular bit of knowledge on my part.
"it would be hubris to think..." 🙄
Oh, I get it. You're proving Dunning-Kruger correct. 😝
@@prezadent1
By George I think he's got it.
"It would behoover you to clean up your room."
Jordan B Puttinuson.
I thought that was a metaphor for self improvement, it turns out he's actually talking about house cleaning.
this subthread is made up of my kind of people. he said it twice, and i was like....wtf? new word!??! but, yeah, definitely 'hubris'
I thought I was wrong once, but it turned out I was mistaken.
Its easier to lie to someone than convince them they have been lied to, this seems like that is a similar situation which is all to common !
A discussion about flat earthers without mentioning the term.
The paucity of 'views' for this vid, speaks volumes.
Perhaps people are reluctant to comment for fear of perceived ignorance?
Considering you factored out how the youtube algorithm works, the fact this channel only has 1.6k subs and that this is actually intended to be embedded on the website for students to watch, discounting those views as well. I learned all this by simply clicking on the channel itself and viewing the video list and history. It took all of 3 minutes.
You literally just proved his point, unless I'm misunderstanding you and you're implying that people won't watch it because it's out of their reach, that I agree with. it has no clickable title or thumbnail, hence doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator, which youtube's algorithm calls for.
Fancy words for little research.
@@ronmccombs9133 You mean some self awareness that they maybe aren't as smart as they think they are? People don't comment on things like this because they know the will get refuted, with fact and evidence. Nobody who is suffering from this will gravitate towards that. I question everything I know and constantly look it up after someone brought this subject up to me. My life went from nothing to extremely productive. It's amazing what a little self doubt and a lot of motivation will do.
@@Skippy0330
Humility + investigation. (Conversely, "Pride", false pride, thinks it knows, and cannot see past its own blindness.)
I am reminded of two of my favorite quotes: From Sir Joshua Reynolds-“There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” And another which I forget who said: “We always forgive the people who bore us, but never those whom we bore.”
The patience involved in thinking clearly and reasoning effectively is what is missing. When we run up against those who habitually think and reason less we face the dilemma of a battle of wits with an unarmed person. Can you influence people into thinking more clearly and effectively? To me, essentially the answer is it depends on whether they have the patience with their own mind to improve it or simply let it coast. Educators call this quality “grit”, those who fail to give up in the face of a challenge. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best: “What is the hardest task in the world?: To Think.”
Well said!
Whom we bore?
I just experienced a moment reminiscent of the old UA-cam recommendation system: came from a Bonhoeffer video discussing the danger of stupidity, thence here. It was beautiful.
To me, this effect seems to be rooted in personal pride and ego. People cant admit a fault or deficiency, especially an intellectual one. I wonder if there have been studies on this effect as it correlates to culture. Not all cultures are as prideful and arrogant as my current American society. I’d wager this Effect might be more cultural than it seems…
I guess ego could play a part, but only in making us resist to the impulse of correcting ourselves.
What is ultimately very dangerous about ignorance is that not only that knowledge we don't have could have helped us fight preconceived ideas that we instead hold as true, but that ion having such a limited pool of knowledge, we can't appreciate how little that pond is because most of the ocean of what is unknown to us is out of our sight.
So, while I would agree that ego can help in making us pretend to not be ignorant, ignorance also boosts our confidence and ego by making us to believe we are more knowledgeable than we are. Think of people who are absolutely ignorant about biology believing that checking a few dubious videos about vaccines make them knowledgeable enough to develop and share their own conclusions.
@@johnkingsize
I see you are smart enough to be vague enough about your analogy to let people draw their own conclusions. It's easy to look smart while saying nothing useful at all. That's called politics
My ex girlfriend, bullied at school, got a top grade for primary school teacher degree at university. My other friend was bullied at school, got a top grade in physics at university.
I've just fucked it twice. And it's dawned on me that I'm arrogant. it's embarrassing it's taken me this long and with this stupid comment I vow to have another stab at university part time so I've got more attention it and will hound the teachers etc.
I've clearly gotten my arrogance from my father. I mean, if he received no consequences from being that... If anything he benefited from it financially.
I clocked on that the USA is financially in decline and China is booming. Americans have it really rough yet I noticed their patriotism masks the inevitable economic destitution. Why can't they see it? Same reason I keep fucking up university.
Hey wait! What kind of other senses do we have? I'm super curious
I see dumb people.
"We don't know who it was that discovered water, but we can be sure it wasn't a fish."
- Marshall McLuhan
"Your good family names" will always be associated with greater knowledge (...or in some cases, the lack thereof), Good Sir.