Monday, June 21, 2010

Errol Morris and David Dunning

There have been many psychological studies that tell us what we see and what we hear is shaped by our preferences, our wishes, our fears, our desires and so forth. We literally see the world the way we want to see it. But the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that there is a problem beyond that. Even if you are just the most honest, impartial person that you could be, you would still have a problem — namely, when your knowledge or expertise is imperfect, you really don’t know it. Left to your own devices, you just don’t know it. We’re not very good at knowing what we don’t know.
Errol Morris talks with David Dunning about the Dunning-Kruger effect and “unknown unknowns”:

The Anosognosic’s Dilemma (New York Times)

A related post
The Dunning-Kruger effect

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