This article is part of an ongoing series that began with Fallacies and Cognitive Biases.
The above picture is a detail from "50 Cognitive Biases to be aware of so you can be the very best version of you"
"The less you know, the more confident you are. The more you know, the less confident you are."
This cognitive bias occurs when people evaluate the world based on their existing mental framework. The simpler the framework the simpler the evaluation.
"Dunning-Kruger Effect" is a term that finds use in many internet arguments. It is popular because it sounds sophisticated & frames the recipient as enthusiastically ignorant. What's not to like?
People with little experience know everything they know, and it didn't take them very long either. People with lots of experience spent a lot of time accruing it and have fewer illusions about the existence of more.
We are all vunerable to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. However, the relatively knowledgable have the fewest to call them on their absolute ignorance. It's a matter of scale; ignorance and knowledge are useful interpretations.
There is one hard threshold though: the ability to survive. This isn't a consideration of knowledge in itself but of capability. Does your mental framework allow you to successfully compete in your environment? Is it flexible enough to continue that competition in a changing environment?
Dunning-Kruger confidence is not the confidence that that promotes survival; it is based not on courage but on blind spots. Think, "Yeah I'll kill that bear!" vs. "What bear?".
Being good enough to survive the past is no guarantee of future results. The world can change in new ways to present challenges we have not seen.
Errata: in a world with mass communication, 'talk' is unusually elevated against 'performance,' historically speaking. It is easier today to know both what a person says and what a person does, but the first is FAR easier versus the second. Because confident people will promote themselves more than unconfident people, our modern world is unusually conducive to ignorant voices.
See Forer Effect
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