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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.
Sure, a great example is to look at people who hear of the DKE once on Reddit, and never shut up about how they see it everywhere.
I think something we don't think about enough is how dumb people use heuristics to help them navigate a world where they are vaguely-aware that they don't have the intellectual horsepower to participate.
My wife and I argued for a whole drive to Philly about a tweet she saw that went something like: If you're more intelligent than your partner and better at arguing logically, winning every argument with them by arguing logically is abusive. She thought it was retarded, I said that while the use of the term "abusive" was rather florid, the point has some validity. Picture a couple, one a well-educated motte-ian wordcel able to deconstruct and reconstruct a logical argument about anything at any time, the other a nice and well intentioned imbecile who can't string two sentences together. If they agree on logical argument as the way to settle things, the motte-izen will win every time, and the imbecile will never get what he wants, even if the imbecile happens to be right. One side getting what they want every time is bad for the relationship in the long term, even if the imbecile agrees that they lost the argument, they will notice not getting what they wanted later, and they will resent it. They may resent it incoherently, unable to logically explain why the outcome is unjust, but they will resent it nonetheless. This will be deleterious to the relationship.
The idiot moves through life thinking that salesmen are evil, because he knows that a good salesman can talk him into something he'll regret, it's happened before. I will never forget a waitress at my parents' favorite restaurant, telling them about how she needed a new car, and she went to the dealer intending to buy a used Jeep Liberty (a bad car, but a small and economical one) and wound up getting talked into buying a brand new Jeep Commander (a $50k seven passenger monstrosity that FCA's CEO would later call "not fit for human consumption" and state should never have been sold). She had no kids, she had no outdoor hobbies, she had zero need for a seven passenger SUV, but she got talked into it. On a seven year loan at a crazy interest rate.
The dimwit chooses tribalism, because the black skin good white skin bad is an easy meme to keep track of. He'll only benefit modestly, if at all, by his tribal champions being elevated, but it's easier than figuring out actual policy questions, and it avoids the salesman problem again.
The moron assumes that everyone is out to get him, because he has precious little ability to defend himself if they are. Everyone has an angle, he intones sagely, because he has been fooled so many times. Paranoia is adaptive, like a skittish rabbit.
Yes, there's a general meme that stupid = idealistic, trusting, gullible and that being smart means being cynical, rational, distrustful. If anything I see more of the reverse.
I think we're looking at two divergent versions of the word Smart. For an analogy, consider NFL quarterbacks. A frequent contrast is drawn between the Hyper-Athlete QB (Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen) who combines arm strength, running speed, strength, creativity to make crazy plays out of structure; and the System QB (Kirk Cousins, Brock Purdy), a savvy game manager who follows the playbook, makes the right passes at the right times, takes what the defense gives him, but rarely makes extraordinary plays. The former uses extraordinary ability to do great things, the other follows good rules from his coach to put him in a position to do great things.
That's the contrast I'm drawing in Smart, we're talking about both at the same time. Smart = intellectual horsepower, IQ, ability to process quickly and examine and analyze. Smart = making good decisions using good heuristics, never being in the position of needing to process quicker than you are capable of. Just as Josh Allen puts himself in terrible positions then pulls a rabbit out of his hat because he's such an outlier athlete, the smart guy will put himself in a position where he needs to process a lot because he ignores the rules. "How does a smart guy act so dumb?"
Very bold of you to assume these quarterback analogies will make any sense to anyone on The Motte. Consider rewriting using HPMOR characters.
I think what's going on here with the trope of an "idealistic, trusting, gullible" simpleton and your knuckleheaded distrustful simpleton is that he's the same man, before and after getting taken for a ride. Real stupid people are not like Lennie, jumping into water when you tell them to, then forgetting about it, and being glad you saved them from drowning. There is a switch from total trust to total distrust. The boomercon who had a child's faith in US foreign policy in 2003 believes the US government is populated by satanist pedophiles in 2023.
The reason old fiction has so many trusting yokels that we don't see IRL anymore is that the world changed. The simpleton gets scammed early and often in the modern world, and updates his heuristic accordingly.
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