"Then it is dark; a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains." - John Cheever

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The Dunning Kruger effect

I came across this reference to the Dunning Kruger effect. "The paper compares people's skill levels to their own assessment of their abilities. In hindsight, the result seems self-evident. Unskilled people lack the skill to rate their own level of competence. This leads to the unfortunate result that unskilled people rate themselves higher than more competent people." This poses the question - am I so competent that I downgrade my abilities, or am I just incompetent?!