another vaxhole commits vaxicide... (not really a bad thing)
(media.communities.win)
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Dunning-Kruger are two psychologists who helped to define a psychological construct that describes how people tend to overestimate their competency in any particular field or skill due to their ignorance of that field or skill. Because they defined it, it’s named after them.
Here’s an example to help you understand the idea: A typical boy passes his senior year high school math class and he does better than most of his classmates. For that reason, for the rest of his life, he tends to overestimate his ability in math and his knowledge of the field of math. But high school math probably only covers about 20% of all the math theory out there so the boy’s ignorance of how much math there is actually is one thing leading to his over-confidence.
If he is lucky he’ll get to go to college and study some more math. During that time he’ll probably encounter a lot of difficulties and that’s when his confidence level will fall. The greater amount of math he learns, the less confident he will become. Only if he becomes a math PhD professor will his confidence level in math ever rebound back to what it was when he finished high school.
Excellent explanation, thank you! It makes the OP's headline make much more sense. Appreciate the patient schooling.
Dunning-Kruger is important concept I have to teach all my science students.
Your typical physics PhD also tends to overestimate their knowledge of biology or medicine because they did well in a class during high school. But in fact, compared to a biology PhD student, the physics student doesn’t know squat.
This is why many people tend to be overconfident in their knowledge about the safely of vaccines because they learned who Louis Pasteur is during HIgh School. But the fact is, if you want to understand the modern medical industry you had better have an MBA. At least you’ll have a basic understanding of how money corrupts medicine.
I went to a bootleg, but accredited small school for accounting and earned a 4.0. Problem is, I started to burn out towards the end, and that 4.0 is probably closer to a 2.5-2.8 at a regular school.