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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.
Within the range of intelligence in the kind of people usually recruited for such psychometric studies? Probably.
But lower than that? I think someone with an IQ of say 60, in the retarded category, simply doesn't know how bad they are. It seems to me that that kind of general awareness of relative competence arises somewhere, even if most humans are past it.
My BP just shot up 20mm of mercury after hearing that phrase haha. Exceptions cannot prove the rule. They do the very opposite, at least in the sense most people use the phrase!
The origin of it, which is far more reasonable, is along the lines of seeing a sign saying "visiting hours 3-5 pm" at a hospital, from which we can glean that visiting isn't allowed outside this window. Thus the existence of an "exception" carved out from a general rule suggests the existence of said rule in a broad sense, but you're not using it that way :(
This is the hill I choose to die on, I'm digging trenches and planting mines as we speak.
Apparently there is some debate about this, with many internet sources supporting your interpretation, but this is not how I understand the phrase "the exception proves the rule." Your example about limited hours (at a hospital, or parking) is commonly used but I don't really think it demonstrates the true meaning of the phrase. My perspective is, as long as people keep visiting the hospital between 3-5 pm, we can't really know what would happen if someone visits outside those hours. Maybe it is really enforced, or maybe the sign is like those vestigial "Please maintain 2 meter distance" signs we see everywhere nowadays, and nobody really cares.
So the way we really prove (in the sense of to test, as in "the proof of the pudding is in the eating) is when a visitor shows up at the hospital at 6pm. If they are turned away, then there really is a rule that nobody can visit outside the hours of 3-5 pm. If they are let in, there is no such rule. So in other words, it's not the sign, but the attempted visit outside "visiting hours," that proves the rule.
Edit: For transparency, the Wikipedia article which I indirectly referenced here thinks I'm engaging in wishful thinking about what I think the phrase should mean, rather than its actual origin. Which.... may be a fair criticism.
The presumption, which I think is highly justified in reality, is that if someone went to the trouble of explicitly stating an act is allowed during a particular period of time/place/whatever, that implies that it's not allowed or at least discouraged outside of those specific circumstances.
Rules are not necessarily adhered to 100% of the time, in the hospital from which I'm shit posting, there is a rule regarding the timings when visitors are allowed, the typical person coming outside of that will be turned away, but if you're connected or have an important reason, you'll be let through. That does not invalidate the general principle that visitors aren't allowed outside the allotted time.
It might well be that the security guard was napping and didn't notice, but that doesn't mean there isn't a rule, in the same manner that successfully launching a heist on Fort Knox isn't proof that stealing is legal.
Yeah, it makes sense that sometimes it's just easier to state the exceptions than all the allowed cases. And apparently the Latin origin of the phrase, "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis," is something like "the exception demonstrates the rule for non-excepted cases", so I don't really have an etymological leg to stand on. I just like my understanding of the phrase so if we are going to move away from the original meaning, I'm trying to steer people towards my preference rather than the nonsensical "the counter-example that invalidates my supposed rule actually proves that my rule is correct!"
Edit: After discussion with AI, I have decided that I need to be charitable and allow that the common, modern usage also is sensible, under this interpretation: "the exception proves the rule" --> "the distinctiveness and memorability of an exception highlight the regularity or norm of other cases"
In cognitive psychology, there's a concept known as the "von Restorff effect" or "isolation effect," which states that an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" is more likely to be remembered than other items. Applying this to the phrase, an exception is memorable precisely because it deviates from the norm. Its uniqueness and the mental emphasis we place on it implicitly reinforce the understanding that it is an outlier, while the standard or usual cases don't stand out in memory because they conform to the expected pattern.
This is nice. I always assumed the intended meaning must be something related to this, until I learned the real origin. IE, something like "Okay, we admit this is an exception (points at really weird special case), but look how far we had to go to come up with an exception - clearly the rule is going to apply the overwhelming majority of the time."
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Stop making my sworn enemies seem reasonable, you're doing far too good a job at it!
shakes fist
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