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Notes -
The Dunning-Kruger effect is autocorrelation
Huh. I can only apologize for the relatively bare link, but I feel like it's worth drawing attention to something so widely accepted yet utterly worthless, especially when it comes up so often here.
The thing about the DK effect is that it makes intuitive sense. To extend it past the realm of typical human intelligence, an ant or a chimp isn't very good at knowing how dumb they are because they're not very good at most things. However, I suspect that the average dumb (human) person does know they're a bit dim, so it confuses me how this finding can even arise.
Is it possible to salvage a non-trivial version of the DKE? The one we know and once loved literally works for random data, so that's right out. In other words, what's the cut-off where a stupid person becomes smart enough to know they're stupid, or at least worse than their peers?*
*In a more general sense than a chimp knowing he's not as strong or big as the alpha male.
It might just be that the effect is bullshit and there is nothing to salvage.
I'm not some genius, but just because I can use relatively advanced English grammar and I know a lot about some things like history and math compared to the average person (though not nearly as much as someone who has dedicated himself to those fields!), I often get people I just met telling me how smart I am and how they feel that they are not capable of doing a bunch of things that come easily to me. To the point that I often find it embarrassing and I try to get them to have better esteem about their own intellectual abilities.
In other words, I have a lot of experience of people who actually are not good at certain things telling me that in their opinion, they are not good at those things.
On the other hand, I rarely experience someone telling me that they are good at something and then just utterly failing to demonstrate it. I imagine that most people who are inclined that way quickly learn from the embarrassment that they feel after failing to not go around boasting about those particular skills.
I have also met exceptions, of course, but perhaps they prove the rule.
My experience with the DKE can basically be translated as 'I am knowledgeable and skilled at one thing, therefor, I am knowledgeable and skilled at everything.'
Often with lawyers.
The topical example right now is surely "I can build electric cars and rocket ships (in both cases with a level of intense study that took me a year or more and would take someone without my IQ or work ethic decades) so I can run a social media company by winging it and still have time to shitpost."
I mean, he turned out to be right, did he not?
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