Quote of the day 16th march 2020


Comments

Anonymous said…
Is that a swipe at the World King?
7:53 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
No, it's a universal comment.

Sowell was repeating in new and, I thought, helpful words a concept which had also been expressed by Socrates, Bacon, Einstein and other great philosophers and scientists.
9:03 am
Jim said…
I thought it was a reference to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
11:39 am
Chris Whiteside said…
Well, I think his comment has wider application than that, but yes, the Dunning-Kruger effect in which someone has delusions of competence at something because they don't know enough about it to understand know how utterly terrible they are, is an excellent example of what Thomas Sowell was getting at.

The Dunning-Kruger effect has the perverse consequence that if such individuals persevere with the activity, learn a bit, and begin to actually have the faintest clue what they're doing, their perception of their competence falls off a cliff at the same time as, and because, their real competence is actually rising
10:02 pm
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