AR&IO: The Dunning-Kruger Effect: a Myth that Sounds Like Science.

this is David Dunning you probably don't
recognize his face you probably don't recognize this I don't know the shirt he's wearing or anything like that but um he's famous his name became famous the dunning-kruger effect has been a joke on every TV talk show every sitcom it's become a staple of I don't know boardroom humor and it's definitely become a major area of scientific research in psychology the social sciences so called behavioral ISM study of human behavior and you know why did he discover something did he make some kind of scientific breakthrough did he make a light bulb that's 10% brighter or last 10% longer something no no no no no he told the crowd a story he told people a story that they really wanted to hear it just amused people the same way a mean becomes famous in the Internet this idea of the dunning-kruger effect just became a worldwide phenomenon that's not evil and it doesn't mean that David Dunning here is a fraud or even that he's intentionally trying to mislead you but right now in the year 2019 all around the world people starting with peer-reviewed academic journals people people like you and me on YouTube people are having to deal with the revelation that the whole dunning-kruger effect is fake it's not based on valid empirical data or research and the question is now can we let go of can we show appropriate detachment about this story that became so much more popular than the scientific facts it was supposed to describe so in this video you're gonna hear again and again that the famous dunning-kruger effect is fake that it's not real and it never was real that it's an idea that people found appealing in the same way that they might find an urban legend or a modern myth appealing the problem is this type of misperception becomes dangerous precisely because people think it is science now this isn't a digression at all I wish it was what you're looking at here with Sir Isaac Newton you probably associate the name Newton with the word scientist gravity and maybe a charming anecdote about an apple falling from an apple tree that's the story we tell ourselves what if I told you that he was a politician what if I told you that he was actually elected to Parliament after running for office twice what if I told you that he was a special agent for the government what if I told you he investigated and prosecuted people for for counterfeiting what if I told you that he wasn't merely religious but was a sure religious maniac who spent a large part of his adult life creating and propounding insane reinterpretations of biblical passages a side of his life that today nobody seems to be comfortable talking about wow you might think the image of this guy is a secular scientist is really a gross simplification a gross misrepresentation of a very eccentric character somebody who had a diverse and rich life experience isn't it a shame that we can't be honest about all the contradictions that are bundled up in the real history of this character and maybe some of the contradictions that are bundled up with mmm the production of new scientific knowledge new cultural ideas instead of telling ourselves these convenient little stories that really conceal more than they reveal here's the thing guys it's not that easy just think about the period of time this guy lived through look at his date of birth and his date of death were not just trying to distract ourselves from the fact that this guy was a religious maniac who worked in law enforcement for the National mint have you ever once even once in your life heard anyone quote or comment on Isaac Newton's views on slavery think about when he was born think about when he died and guess what we're really covering up here we're creating the idea of Sir Isaac Newton as a secular humanist progressive super genius but we're covering up genocide colonialism and slavery in the most mind-blowing peer of the atrocities the British Empire you've got to force yourself to ignore more than 90% of his extent writing and more than 90% of what he really cared about what he did with his own time during his own life to believe this I don't know feeble of who Sir Isaac Newton was or what he's supposed to represent for us today Isaac Newton really cared about politics maybe we should - this is part of the problem in thinking clearly about science history and politics especially when all three are overlapping in the world's sexiest Venn diagram take this dubious illustration of the dunning-kruger effect professional bikini model Caroline's that one welcome back to another video all right before I started filming this I checked my grade on an assignment I just did and I thought I did really well when I was turning it in I was actually pretty excited because I thought I were gonna get a good grade it turns out the teacher didn't think so cuz thank you me a 30% yeah that happened if we stop playing the tape here it seems like a perfect example of dunning-kruger the title of the original hypothesis let's not forget is quote on the skill and unaware of it but let's listen to a perspective for just one more moment I thought I did really well when I was turning it in I was actually pretty excited cuz I thought I were gonna get a good grade it turns out the teacher didn't think so cuz thank you me a 30% yeah that happened every nice schools not my thing um I do what I can I try my best but then I proceeded to spill water on my laptop so if we just pause and think about this juxtaposition for half a second it illustrates how implausible the dunning-kruger hypothesis really is now keep in mind the word implausible doesn't mean false it just means that would really need evidence compelling evidence to prove their case and as you probably already know because you're watching this video the math actually doesn't add up there were three really as possibilities here the first possibility is that the story she's telling is funny precisely because it's rare or extraordinary it isn't every day that driving instructors have a student proclaim that they're really great at driving a car and then minutes later utterly fail the test if you know someone who works as a driving instructor they maybe have a few funny stories like that from over the years but the stories are funny because they're unusual if it happened every day if it were 70% of people doing this it really wouldn't be funny anymore it would just be part of human nature we'd all be accustomed to right if that was just a normal way most people think and act oblivious to their own incompetence all the time there'd really be nothing funny about it for every one story you hear about an incompetent driver like this who's too confident in their own ability and then fails how many stories by contrast you hear about people who voluntarily refuse to drive at night you know people just tell you oh no no my I said isn't good enough I'm not a good neutral I don't drive at night only drive during the day how many people tell you that they would never drive in the snow or that they avoid driving on certain highways because they know they know they're not that good at driving they're aware of their own limited confidence okay that's what these peer-reviewed papers call metacognition and it's not really very rare at all the second possibility with this story is that this woman is just genuinely aware that she's not a very good student as she says herself but she's choosing to present this story in a funny way if you just reverse the order of the two parts of the story she's told you suddenly there's nothing amusing about it she's a bikini model who knows that she's a poor student she struggles to get a passing grade and then fails that's really sad through a sort of inversion of our expectations an unexpected exposition it becomes acute anecdote if that kind of overconfidence were the default human condition it wouldn't seem funny or quirky or amusing if I tell you that when I feel hungry I eat a piece of bread that's not amusing if I tell you that whenever I'm hungry i angry shake my fist at a loaf of bread and I curse the gods for this affliction that's well sort of quirky and bizarre some people might find that funny because the point is here you don't normally bling the loaf of bread for your hunger that's an inversion of our expectations right the third possibility with this scenario the most implausible and difficult to prove of all is that this woman is actually incapable of metacognition all right metacognition is this fancy scientific sounding word for being aware of one's own thinking this is what the dunning-kruger hypothesis is inviting you to believe it's inviting you to believe that this anecdote isn't a joke but is an accurate description of the way a huge percentage of people behave a huge percentage of the time to really believe in the dunning-kruger effect you would have to believe that this woman is lying to you when she says I realize school is not my thing that she's incapable of realizing it that she can't be aware of her own incompetence because the research says so that sounds absurd right read it from the original thesis quote their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it close quote the burden of proof to support that claim would be huge if you think any significant percentage of incompetent people cannot recognize their own incompetence you should be able to prove that empirically right this is this is science not just religion um I do what I can I try my best do we really live in a world where the vast majority of incompetent drivers think they're great at driving and the vast majority of professional bikini models are sincerely expecting an A+ when they receive a failing grade the claim isn't just that this happens once in a while the claim of the dunning-kruger hypothesis is that your incompetence robs you of the ability to even be aware of your own incompetence it isn't just that you might be guilty of wishful thinking once in a while oh no no no the dunning-kruger theory is that you actually cannot assess yourself now why do I use vague phrases in summarizing dunning-kruger why do I say a huge percentage of the population have this problem instead of giving a specific number why am I so vague because the charts that they choose to show dunning-kruger the other social sciences who jumped on the bandwagon this the charts that they choose to show are vague look at this chart presented by Dunning himself this makes it appear that the vast majority of people think they're way more competent than they actually are where the blue line and the red line intersect way over on the right hand side there those are the people who accurately evaluated their own ability and then beyond that on the far right end of the chart those are the people who were more competent than they thought they were but this makes it look like the vast majority of humanity is to the left of that intersection right this chart intentionally does not tell us what percentage of people have significantly overestimated their confidence instead it creates the illusion that the vast majority of people really thought of themselves as much much more competent than they were at least in this particular test the dunning-kruger theory has created a cottage industry in this type of pseudo scientific presentation that audiences embrace without question in the empirical basis simply because they find it amusing uplifting entertaining maybe even a little flattering to their own egos the theory invites us to imagine ourselves as part of a small elite that can laugh at the vast majority of the population who are seemingly like cartoon villains believing in their own crazy schemes until the hero shows how they can all go disastrously wrong so this is where we begin our own little fable of scientific discovery a lowly professor of geology started evaluating his students performance in 1992 this involves surveys that ask some of the same types of questions that the dunning-kruger effect interested in asking students how much they know or how much they think they know and then comparing that to how well they could perform on exams their final grade in the course so on and so forth ultimately the purpose of this research was try to help students to learn effectively to help professors teach effectively so on and so forth it wasn't about performing a script in front of an audience at a TED talk it wasn't about trying to start a meme trying to get famous or I don't know to produce content for sitcoms in its way this really is a significant part of the story it's also interesting that Edie knew fur was not trying to challenge the dunning-kruger model as late as 2011 he was taking his own data and trying to create the same types of charts showing the same types of effects that were then very fashionable throughout I don't know psychology behavioral science and to some extent within educational evaluation as a special this one it was then that he had his Eureka moment it seems that any data he put through the same process of analysis and displayed with the same types of graphs which showed the same so-called dunning-kruger effect he could use random numbers and get similar outcomes using real data that he knew to be good and using fake data that he knew to be bad produced similar looking results to some extent he knew that the method of displaying the dunning-kruger effect in charts was either massively exaggerating the effect or conjuring it up like a mirage of course the other problem was that when you just displayed the real data in other types of graphs the Mirage seemed to disappear take a look real briefly here I have an earlier video on the topic but yeah we're talking about twenty years of psychological research and behavioral science based on a mirage based on something that is not real on a kind of made-up or misrepresented data that even a geologist could refute admittedly that geologist then spent years working with mathematicians to pin down the details and to get it all through peer review published but the fundamental problem did not require an expert to detect neither an expert in psychology nor an expert in human behavior nor even an expert in math and guess what I already have a video explaining that I already have a video that talks you through step by step what you're gonna find in the first two major peer-reviewed papers that break this story wide open prove it to you show you the evidence step by step guess what right now 2019 is the year when people finally start to figure it out this has been proven this is not a matter of opinion ultimately this comes down to hard numbers that nobody can just dismiss or balk at there are at least two more major peer-reviewed papers coming up this year 2019 dealing with the fact that the dunning-kruger effect is not real the depressing question I have to ask you and that we all have to ask ourselves is who is going to care are people really going to be open to dealing with this reality learning the lessons about the condition shaping the production of knowledge in the 21st century are we even going to take this as some kind of grave warning about how the peer-review process itself works or do people just want to construct another feeble that makes them feel good about themselves like the feeble of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree fable that's not completely false but that really conceals much more than it reveals thanks for your time support this channel on patreon or don't the facts don't lie but trust me a lot of people are making money by lying about the facts