Knowing I'm Dumb Is the First Step

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is my favorite.

This effect has been the darling of journalists who want to explain why dumb people dont know theyre dumb.

It's where 'dumb' people don't know that they are 'dumb' and think they are better than more skilled people.

So maybe it's false?

Hillel

@hillelogram

This is seriously messing with my head: the Dunning-Kruger effect might not be real! I read all of the linked papers, and they make a convincing argument that it's more likely to be a statistical artifact than a psychological effect: mcgill.ca/oss/article/cr

18:33 PM - 23 Jan 2022

But I've found it helpful as a model of learning. Learning where you are ignorant is an essential step in understanding.

When you don't know anything about software development, and you want to learn, it seems like it will either be easy or impossibly hard. It's just a giant skill to acquire.

But as you learn, you start to recognize all the different gradations of learning. So this one big thing is actually a bunch of skills, and there are levels of each of them.

And the more you learn about, say, backend development, the more you realize there are other areas you don't understand, like not just frontend, but networking programming, phone development, OS development, and writing firmware. Every little area is fractal with so much knowledge in it.

Part of learning is just learning how much you don't know, so it makes sense that "dumb people don't know how dumb they are" because knowing how dumb you are is something you have to learn.

What do you think?