I appear to be the first to comment, and i am not surprised. i don’t really know what the article is saying. The DK effect is explained, but the counterevidence just has me confused. In fact, it doesn’t appear to counter anything.
Do less knowledgeable people understand themselves and their capabilities far less than knowledgeable people? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing? I have no idea. But I have observed that those with some knowledge in one subject and who might consider themselves experts often think that that confers on them a wider omniscience and they can make pronouncements on other subjects with the same degree of authority. Academics come to mind.
RF
Robert Forde
3 years ago
I feel compelled to ask if the replicability crisis is unique to the social sciences. My suspicion is that it is not, and that the more traditional “hard” sciences are equally prone to replicability problems. I may be wrong, but if so I want data!
This view is despite having written a book which debunks a lot of psychology in my own field (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ba…. One of the problems is that people (including scientists) are great at stringing facts together to make a coherent picture, even when they don’t merit it. It’s like one of those “join the dots” puzzles but without all the dots present.
David Jennings
3 years ago
Thank you Mr. Chivers for another insightful article. While avoiding Twitter entirely, I still encounter too often in media and in personal conversations this assumption that disagreement must be a result of stupidity of the other person. Walter Lippmann in his famous article on free speech, “The Indispensable Opposition” writes “the essence of freedom of opinion is not in mere tolerance as such, but in the debate which toleration provides; it is not in the venting of opinion but in the confrontation of opinion.” Thank you for your contribution to encouraging such debate to occur rather than a dismissal of any opposing ideas. One small note: was the labelling of the X Graph in the first table showing the Dunning-Kruger effect “No Nothing” intended to be funny or just poor grammar, a la Dunning-Kruger?
I appear to be the first to comment, and i am not surprised. i don’t really know what the article is saying. The DK effect is explained, but the counterevidence just has me confused. In fact, it doesn’t appear to counter anything.
Do less knowledgeable people understand themselves and their capabilities far less than knowledgeable people? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing? I have no idea. But I have observed that those with some knowledge in one subject and who might consider themselves experts often think that that confers on them a wider omniscience and they can make pronouncements on other subjects with the same degree of authority. Academics come to mind.
I feel compelled to ask if the replicability crisis is unique to the social sciences. My suspicion is that it is not, and that the more traditional “hard” sciences are equally prone to replicability problems. I may be wrong, but if so I want data!
This view is despite having written a book which debunks a lot of psychology in my own field (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ba…. One of the problems is that people (including scientists) are great at stringing facts together to make a coherent picture, even when they don’t merit it. It’s like one of those “join the dots” puzzles but without all the dots present.
Thank you Mr. Chivers for another insightful article. While avoiding Twitter entirely, I still encounter too often in media and in personal conversations this assumption that disagreement must be a result of stupidity of the other person. Walter Lippmann in his famous article on free speech, “The Indispensable Opposition” writes “the essence of freedom of opinion is not in mere tolerance as such, but in the debate which toleration provides; it is not in the venting of opinion but in the confrontation of opinion.” Thank you for your contribution to encouraging such debate to occur rather than a dismissal of any opposing ideas. One small note: was the labelling of the X Graph in the first table showing the Dunning-Kruger effect “No Nothing” intended to be funny or just poor grammar, a la Dunning-Kruger?
The last sentence is a nice way to round off the argument, as with a good chess problem the finish is both effective, and elegant.