An intriguing YouTube video starts with this question:
Have you ever been in an argument with someone who’s completely wrong, but absolutely certain they’re right?
This is known as
the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The idea that stupid people don’t know they’re stupid. That incompetence prevents people from recognizing their own incompetence. But what most people don’t know is this. Arthur Schopenhauer figured this out two hundred years before Dunning and Krueger ever proved it scientifically.
The video runs for 25 minutes and is worth every minute. The narrator focuses on Schopenhauer’s writings on the subject, and the video is full of delightful, quotable phrases.
On the positive side, this effect gives us a way of finding the right people to evaluate certain skills. Only those who are skilled or knowledgeable in an area can truly evaluate the skills of others in that field. “Monday morning quarterbacks” fund football and other sports, but most of them have no real idea of the demands of the game.
Dunning-Kruger shows that only someone skilled or informed in an activity can evaluate the performance of others in that field. Sport scouts are often former athletes who reached elevated levels in their game. They got to see and understand the difference between their skills and those of the more successful players. As scouts, they look for that kind of difference.
You have seen it in your own life. People at work or in your community range from the barely competent to the truly skilled. You have lists in your head of who to talk to on different subjects. The “blowhards” are the ones who know nothing and think they’re experts.
On the other end are the real experts. I’ve had a variety of medical problems in my life, and I’ve been fortunate to be treated by some of the most renowned doctors in their fields. They’ve always talked about trade-offs, “might be,” and “probably.” They know about risks and uncertainties. As it turns out, some of the treatments they used in the 1950s and 60s are no longer used and are now considered dangerous. It was the best they knew at the time.
I started my career in the computer field in 1968. I’ve worked with some truly brilliant people. I’ve also studied some elegant technology implemented in the early days, which is still essential today. I am furious when I hear politicians say we can take all kinds of displaced workers and make them programmers. Coal mining and farming are distinct kinds of work, but those skills have no connection to computer work. Politicians who don’t know which end of a bull to milk or a punch card from a USB cable think the jobs are interchangeable. They’re not. I know you don’t milk a bull, but that’s not enough to make me a farmer.
But there is a downside to the correlation between low information and high certainty. If political leaders can create many of these people, they have a political force they can manipulate and, if useful, turn into a violent force. They become convinced of their moral purity and the need to protect society from opposition. They stop acting like members of a democracy. A democracy is a contest between moral equals. When you fight evil, you must win by any means necessary.
The solution to this would be to have them hear other ideas. George Orwell addressed this in 1984. The party created Newspeak. A language designed to make it impossible to have an unapproved idea. Today, there is a concept called the Overton Window.
The “Overton Window” describes or delimits the range of ideas that can be considered. In one sense, it is used to provide the politicians with a framework of the ideas the public is currently dealing with. For those looking to understand the anger and tension in a society, it would be useful to examine the extent to which simple, narrow-mindedness, and a lack of understanding of the other side of the issue are fanning the anger and venom.
“Hate speech” and “misinformation” are terms being used to block attempts to provide alternate views on certain subjects. European governments are using restrictions on social media and “hate speech” to block opposition. Konstantin Kisin was born in the Soviet Union and is now a British citizen. He noted that in a recent year, there were 400 arrests in Russia for social media posts and 3,300 in Britain. The Trump administration has intervened on behalf of American internet providers facing European countries that are trying to limit the speech of American customers.
Blocking any information that would give people reason to doubt a one-sided view of events creates Dunning-Kruger fanatics willing to support extreme actions. It will lead to the end of civility and a democratic society.
Again, the video is –