What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010)

What was really enlightening for me was that DKE is really just plotting two lines, perceived ability and actual ability.

Now if people were perfectly accurate those lines would be drawn on top of each other.

But because either people underestimate their differences or correctly guess their true ability which the test doesn't full capture. Let's make the perceived ability line flatter.

People tend to overestimate their own ability, so we should move the perceived ability line up which leads to an intersection on the right. Causing us to find that the best performers are the most accurate, explaining DKE.

But the harder we make a task the more we push that perceived ability line down. And if we make a task sufficiently hard then the worst performers are the most accurate judge of their own ability showing the opposite of DKE, due to the intersection being pushed left.

So really DKE is an artifact.

The way I interpret DKE is that low level people don’t (yet) know what they don’t know.

One thing that I think often gets skipped over in discussions on Imposter Syndrome is that imposters DO exist (that’s kind of why we use interviews when hiring people).

One application I don't see discussed much is how this is useful for personal learning. Knowing the effect exists is useful when learning about a totally new topic: you know you need to hit that first peak, so to speak, to figure out (roughly) the scope of what there is to know. This helps avoid actually having that false confidence early on.

One of the most memorable examples of this for me was early on doing calculus in high school. There was a time where I was like "ok, yeah, I understand all the maths stuff now," then I hit that first peak and suddenly realized "oh wow, I know only a tiny, tiny fraction of what there is to know!" When I later learned about Dunning-Kruger it resonated because it described what I had experienced years earlier and had being thinking about since.

If curious see also

2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10145480

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1498136

Related from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25546787

The thing I find sad is that there are people who realized that they are a mismatch for their position, not always because it is too high but sometimes because it is on the wrong track. Making the change is usually very difficult, as companies do not see "demotion by the demoted" as something normal.

A case I witnessed was a VP of Engineering who realized (after many years at that position, performing well) that he is more an engineer than a manager. His results were good but he did not like the work he was doing because his true talents were under-utilized.

He wanted to move to a position where he would have a more "technical" role, on the official "technical ladder" but it was very difficult for him to make his point. He liked the company very much though (in Europe).

I did not know what to really tell him at the time, I wish I had some good arguments for him to help his case.

One of the key things is that he did not want to change the company - he loved it, he loved what they did; he just took the wrong turn at some point.

One possible explanation for why the DKE is biased towards incompetence is any bias that derives from favorably redefining a problem. Over achievers don’t need to redefine a problem set to more narrowly qualify their performance.

For example an expert JavaScript developer can quickly produce an MVP with an original code solution. A less competent (confident) developer might also be able to produce a similar MVP but only in certain contexts, such as requiring a particular framework. The less competent developer may refer to themselves as an expert developer in React, or whatever other framework, but in doing so redefines the problem to fit a more narrow context not immediately aligned to the product.

What do you call it when you mistake "I know OF x" for "I understand X". I used to do it all the time; I think that because I have heard of something, I somehow know how it works or how to use it. For me, it's kind of like going "Oh, I've seen that meme before!" and somehow going meme++ in your head, so of course I am 'more familiar with it', but I am doing that for advanced topics I have no demonstrated practice in. I am much better now at realizing my incompetence, but I wish it could be studied in more detail, instead of people just looking at someone who is demonstrating confident incompetence and going "Dunning-Kruger?" "Dunning-Kruger!".

I think one of the key takeaways was that people are biased or wishful to think that Dunning Kruger effect is stronger than it really is because people want methods to shut down anyone who brags or thinks very highly of themselves

In setting out Dunning's & Kruger's own explanation of the data (incompetent people lack the skills they’d need in order to know they’re incompetent), the author asks, rhetorically, "If you don’t understand very many words in another language, how can you evaluate the size of your own vocabulary in relation to other people’s?" Well, as in my case, if you know many words in your native tongue that you cannot express in another language, surely that's a clue available to anyone in the same situation?

The most aggravating aspect of the Dunning-Kruger effect occurs in people who know about the Dunning-Kruger effect: often they believe there can be _no_ case where the bulk of a distribution is above average. The easy example is: The average number of legs on a human is "1.98", the bulk of the population is indeed above average.

Those who claim they understand the Dunning-Kruger effect are typically less competent than those who don’t.

These days I associate “Dunning-Kruger” with “humblebrag”. I have similar feelings about Imposter Syndrome. I wish both terms had never been popularized.

I personally think the DKE is more likely to be found in knowledge based tasks requiring some level of gatekeeping. Like programming for example...

It has been quite a while now ~9 years, but I had the chance to work at a pretty prominent tech company for about 8 months when it was roughly 13 people in engineering. It was my first job experience in "tech" proper; and I think, I was most fortunate, to have had the opportunity. Immediately, and without question, I knew for sure I was absolutely the most junior person there. It's not because anyone was unkind, quite the opposite; everyone else was so unbelievably experienced it was obvious. I had, up until that point, not encountered such levels of professional experience, or expertise in a field, outside of university.

It gave me perspective for my (own lack of) ability I likely could not have gotten otherwise. It was humbling in a wonderful way because it meant I had, and have, a great deal to learn. I was happy to be resolutely at the bottom.

While undeniably good for my person, and who I want to be in life, it has also come to cause me a lot of pain.

Having worked pretty tirelessly since that original job, in the pursuit of learning and mastery of my craft. And if I am honest, to my chagrin, found I now underestimate my abilities. I only realized this because I generally give people the "benefit of the doubt" and it kept/keeps (still trying) biting me. It's very much insanity: doing the same thing again, knowing it won't work, expecting a different result... "'cuz someone else must be smarter than me." What I should learn to say instead of "smarter than me" is "less experienced and very confident."

Erik Dietrich wrote an article about the Dunning-Kruger where he coined the terms "Advanced Beginners" or "Expert Beginners." Like Dietrich, I tend to observe these folks, have the capacity, to cause the most harm for people in the competent/proficient areas (like I find myself). I believe they mean well, in most cases, but disregard anything not directly from an expert. The worst case being there is no expert available to help check them, and they will unrelentingly default to themselves. A close second, when they are the gatekeeper to the expert, and are unlikely or unable to explain someone else's ideas.

It's easy to see why it happens though. Unable to scope problems/tasks correctly; the problem's resolution becomes rooted in "beliefs," and generally speakings, people view other's beliefs as equivalent. With equivalent choices, we tend to then make decisions based on our preferences.

... but I digress, I've ranted and rambled enough.

[1] - Link to the referenced article: https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th...

I think this article needs to be tagged that it's from 2010.

Correlation does not imply causation. Regression to the mean and other statistical artifacts haven't, afaik, been proven to explain any part of the dunning kruger effect. This is, like the article, of course, speculation.