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The Dunning-Kruger effect. What is it actually?

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tvtech

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Hi All

Please read this link first so you have a basic idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

The reason why I think that this should be published on ALL forums never mind ETO is because it explains many things that cause a lot of experienced people wanting to help to eventually loose it and turn away.

I speak from first hand experience. Not the Internet. I sit next to this person everyday of my working life....

Incorrectly trained or possibly no training from the start. So, I try and help this person and share every little bit of knowledge gained to help him learn....

No. Wont listen. For him things have worked fine so far. He regards himself highly as a TV Tech...even though he cannot explain how a TV works. Strictly trial and error or monkey see monkey do excellence. He will take a TV PCB and start changing things over and over again...until it works. Eventually.

Remember, someone is paying for his "hard work" and spares wastage in the extreme.

So, knowing all this (been here 6 years now)....remember this is serious Dunning Kruger country here....I give this guy a set I cannot fix and ask him to spend maybe 20 Mins on it and see if I have not overlooked something simple....

I explain exactly what I have done to the set so far. I tell him don't bother changing those spares again because IT WILL NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

Three days later on that same set....and what is the result? Everything I told him not to bother changing he changed over and over. Hoping for a new result after being told it will not solve the problem. Wont listen. As per Dunning Kruger he has the following issues:

Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy

I will make it my mission to make the Dunning Kruger effect known Worldwide.

That will let a lot of experienced good people around the Globe who try and help sleep better at night knowing that there is NO cure for stupidity.

Best regards,
tvtech
 
Been there done that and spent a few years on the forum as well. :mad:

It's largely why my participation is slowly dropping off. No point in telling the same person the same thing every week based on my own personal experiences and knowledge of the subjects at hand just to keep being ignored in the end only to see the same questions pop up from the same persons later. :(
 
I'm not sure that the link relates to rest of your post. The wikipage is about highly competent person with great skills, but can not work with others that do not have the same skills.. or assumes that everybody around him has the same skills. You are talking about co-worker that is simply stupid.

EDIT: Sorry.. I misunderstood the wikipage (read it too fast without thinking). tvtech is correct.. absolutely.
 
Been there done that and spent a few years on the forum as well. :mad:

It's largely why my participation is slowly dropping off. No point in telling the same person the same thing every week based on my own personal experiences and knowledge of the subjects at hand just to keep being ignored in the end only to see the same questions pop up from the same persons later. :(

Correct tcm. But, we as thinking people have to fix this mess. I mean, Forums are forums. If ETO has this problem....so do the others too..

In fact more so on other forums out there.... At least we have proper Moderation here. Not kids acting smart.

If ETO is slow...imagine how they must be ?

Regards,
tvtech
 
I think the problem is more extensive that you can imagine.. there was a study which concluded that because of internet, googling etc. kids today does not have the patience to read or learn properly. Because they have a phone in their pocket and they can google. Why bother to learn anything. You can see the same thing in hollywood movies.. stupid **** at fast pace. Remakes and cartoon films.. because nobody reads comics anymore.. or books.
 
Thanks misterT. I know how hard you have worked to teach the unteachable.

I read the article incorrectly because I had this assumption that it is about skilled people not able to teach unskilled people because they can not relate to them and therefore can not properly explain things at their level. I have that problem.. Every year I learn something myself when teaching junior students. I can't teach them too simple things, they would get bored and offended, but if I start with too complex things they can't follow.. well I'm getting there. Every year it is a mutual learning experience.
 
Correct tcm. But, we as thinking people have to fix this mess. I mean, Forums are forums. If ETO has this problem....so do the others too..

In fact more so on other forums out there.... At least we have proper Moderation here. Not kids acting smart.

If ETO is slow...imagine how they must be ?

Actually over at CR4 (world wide engineering forum) where I hang out the most we are encouraged to rip on the half wits and the lazy by the moderation team. It save them the work of banning people plus those of us who do have our poop half to gether get to blow off some steam and vent some frustrations too! ::D

Stuff that gets me banned for months at a time here doesn't even raise an eyebrow there. :p
 
Why bother to learn anything. You can see the same thing in hollywood movies.. stupid **** at fast pace.

I deal with that and its fallout on a near daily rate around home. My wife likes to watch those gawd awful reality TV drama shows and it bleeds over into her life when she has nothing to watch.

It seems like every day with her everything is a dramatic confrontation just for the sake of it. :mad:

Can't we just go and mow the frigging lawn or do much of anything else without a 20 minutes of dramatic BS over who does what or whose responsibility it is to do something this time or last time or next time or why this that or whatever should count as something for or against one of us either doing or not doing something? :mad:

That and I see the Dunning Kruger effect in full play here as well. I just assume that once I show her how to do something that she will continue to be capable of doing it without being retrained every single time.
That and she is very convinced that she is as equally knowledgeable and skilled in everything as I am however proving it is well beyond her in most everything.

As one example we did identical online IQ tests a while back. I told her I would give her a fair 10 point spread and call us equal. Well lets just say she didn't even make it that close but I got blamed for her low score because I wouldnt give her the answers when she was taking hers. :confused:
 
To the question, "What is the Dunning-Kruger effect," I suspect it is not much more than a modern-day, scientific reaffirmation of the old wisdom that a wise person knows what he doesn't know. Some people attribute that concept to Socrates (https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Socrates/socrates02.html); although, it may go back further in Eastern culture.

As stated in that link:
Capture.PNG

John
 
To the question, "What is the Dunning-Kruger effect," I suspect it is not much more than a modern-day, scientific reaffirmation of the old wisdom that a wise person knows what he doesn't know. Some people attribute that concept to Socrates (https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Socrates/socrates02.html); although, it may go back further in Eastern culture.

As stated in that link:
View attachment 75683
John

John.

Am I understanding this correctly. (MyQ) Is to ask, is he going to be dis-appointed that, they including himself, have little or no wisdom or are lacking, thereof. Yet he posses the knowledge and experience to say they have less than he does?

If so, he might be trapped in a "Dunning - Kruger Effect

This is so twisted, it has to many variables for me.

kv
 
I suspect it is not much more than a modern-day, scientific reaffirmation of the old wisdom that a wise person knows what he doesn't know.

In way that's sort of saying that a wiser persons tend to keep their mouth shut when they are dealing with areas or topics they are not fully familiar with.

I don't know everything but I do know enough to tread lightly when dealing with things outside of my primary skill sets. However I am also spiteful enough to let someone who is clearly in over their head have all the rope they want just to see how high they will get before they hang themself too! :D
 
Actually over at CR4 (world wide engineering forum) where I hang out the most we are encouraged to rip on the half wits and the lazy by the moderation team. It save them the work of banning people plus those of us who do have our poop half to gether get to blow off some steam and vent some frustrations too! ::D

Stuff that gets me banned for months at a time here doesn't even raise an eyebrow there. :p

Joined
 
Hi,

So what D and K are saying basically is that everyone is messed up in some way or another :)

If someone is competent, then they view others as being competent even if they arent, and if someone is not competent then they view others as being less competent. So nobody can win :)

So are D and K competent or not competent? If they are competent then they view everyone else as at least as competent so they couldnt have come up with their conclusion. If they were not competent, then they overestimated their conclusion so it might be wrong :)

So if they are competent then they view everyone else as competent so their conclusion can not be reached, and if they are not competent then their conclusion is most likely wrong. So either way their conclusion is moot :)

So maybe one of them is competent and the other is not, so they tend to balance either other out :)

If the fool thinks he knows a lot but the wise man knows he himself doesnt know much and thus sees himself as a fool, then everyone everywhere is just a big fool :)

Seriously though, the human brain has to make fast decisions sometimes so it has to be very assumptive sometimes.
 
hi Al,

Your analysis makes a lot of sense to me.

The DK definition IMHO applies in general to all humans, however there are some people who are so obviously out of step with the real world, they could be called losers, at the other extreme are the people who we consider to be geniuses.

Eric
 
So what D and K are saying basically is that everyone is messed up in some way or another :)

If someone is competent, then they view others as being competent even if they arent, and if someone is not competent then they view others as being less competent. So nobody can win :)

Not necessarily. If person is aware of the general imbalances of perception and reality then being able to see and adjust ones own self awareness to the overall situations will put that person on a slightly more impartial perspective of everyone else giving them a slightly better edge over the unaware person.

Basically a person who is aware they are a skilled professional will have no trouble spotting the posers over the real professionals in a crowd whereas the posers have no clue as to where they or anyone else stand in fair comparisons.

For example I would say that there are maybe 15 - 20 honestly true and knowledgeable electronics professionals on this forum at best. They know who they are and they also know who the rest are. The rest of the people don't and couldn't pick half of them out of a list of the top 100 posers that frequent this site. :p
 
Smart people know what they do not know.. stupid people think they know everything.
 
Smart people know what they do not know.. stupid people think they know everything.

Now we are talking. Basically says everything ;)

I might add that those that know stuff don't brag about it. No reason to. Fact.
They are the helpers on forums like this. They know their stuff. They do not need Newbies or others to waste their time.

Or argue with solid advise given by questioning everything....over and over again. And not listening anyway....because the advise given is not what they want to hear....Dunning Kruger. Again.

Regards,
tvtech
 
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An example from my past, 25+ years ago.

I was on a visit to an offshore oil production platform to fix some equipment supplied by the company which I worked for.

I needed a low value (3 or 4 ohm) high wattage resistor (20 + watts) to test a DC power supply which was part of the suspect equipment.
I asked my host (an instrument tech) if they had such things in the workshop...
No, he said, we have nothing like that, but the telecomms guys will be able to help out. Use one of the PA speakers, they are 3 Ohm and rated at 100 watts...
Uh! I said, are you sure about this?
Yes he said, no problem.
At which point he picked up the phone and called the telecomms guy to say that I wanted to borrow a spare speaker, and then handed me the phone!
So there I am trying to explain to the telecomms guy what it was that I really wanted, while he was thinking "this bloody idiot wants to borrow a speaker to do what!!"
So in the end, he did not have a suitable resistor either, and I was ever so glad that he was not going to let us borrow a speaker to use as a test load for a power supply.

So, I think that the instrument tech was a bit Dunning Kruger when it came to PA speakers.

JimB
 
misterT said:
Smart people know what they do not know..

I think it is also true that smart people realise that there is something they don't know, but do not know what it is that they don't know.

ie, there is a big hole in their knowledge, but do not know what it is that goes in the hole and so do not know which questions to ask.

Makes sense to me anyway.

JimB
 
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