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https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/04/08/the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-autocorrelation/>
"Have you heard of the ‘Dunning-Kruger effect’? It’s the (apparent) tendency
for unskilled people to overestimate their competence. Discovered in 1999 by
psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning, the effect has since become
famous.
And you can see why.
It’s the kind of idea that is too juicy to
not be true. Everyone ‘knows’ that
idiots tend to be unaware of their own idiocy. Or as John Cleese puts it:
If you’re very very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you’re very
very stupid?
Of course, psychologists have been careful to make sure that the evidence
replicates. But sure enough, every time you look for it, the Dunning-Kruger
effect leaps out of the data. So it would seem that everything’s on sound
footing.
Except there’s a problem.
The Dunning-Kruger effect also emerges from data in which it
shouldn’t. For
instance, if you carefully craft random data so that it does not contain a
Dunning-Kruger effect, you will
still find the effect. The reason turns out
to be embarrassingly simple: the Dunning-Kruger effect has nothing to do with
human psychology. It is a statistical artifact — a stunning example of
autocorrelation."
Via Murray J Brown and Christoph S.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
