Why Stupid People Think They're Smart [The Dunning-Kruger Effect]

the English philosopher bertran Russell once said the whole problem with the world is that fools and Fanatics are so sure of themselves while wiser people are so full of doubt in Psychology what Russell described is more popularly known as the Dunning Krueger effect this effect finds that people who are bad at something tend to believe that they're actually good at it and people who are good at something tend to believe that they are bad at it elderly people who believe they're better drivers than most are actually four times more likely to make unsafe driving air

gun owners who think they're highly knowledgeable about gun safety score the lowest on tests about gun safety medical lab workers who rate themselves as highly competent in their jobs are actually the worst at their jobs the lowest performing college students dramatically overestimate their performance on exams the lowest performers in a debate competition wildly overestimate how well they do people with the unhealthiest lifestyle habits rate themselves as far healthier than they actually are people who score poorly on cognitive reasoning and analytical thinking tests severely overestimate their cognitive and analytical abilities but why does this happen to

understand let's break knowledge down into four quadrants so there are know knowns things that we know that we know like I know I know how to ride a bike there are known unknowns things that we know that we don't know for example I have no [ __ ] clue how quantum physics works and then there are Unknown Known things that you forgot you knew or you don't realize that you know like you still remember how to drive to the supermarket from your childhood home you just forgot that you knew that and then there are unknown

unknown stuff that you don't know that you don't know when we are an amateur at something we are very aware of the things that we know we know and we're completely oblivious to the things that we don't know let's use basketball as an example if you know nothing about basketball it seems simple enough you throw a ball into the net you know what you know and don't know what you don't know but as you start to learn learn more about basketball you discover that there are a lot of nuances how you shoot the ball the

mechanics of your elbow wrist and forearm how you position the ball in your hand understanding the different shots a fadeaway a jumper a layup a finger roll an Aly oop you're beginning to become aware of all the things you don't know and there's a lot that you don't know let's say you spend another year working on basketball you've mastered a bunch of different shots and learn the shoot with good form now you're getting into the weeds of defensive schemes hand checking picks and rolls setting various kinds of screens at this point you're no longer even

thinking about your shooting form or how to hit a free throw you've forgotten you know this stuff it's unconscious it's automatic it's the stuff you know but you forgot you know and there's a ton of it as you can see the difference between an amateur and a professional is that an amateur's knowledge is known to them therefore they get to feel smart about it but an expert so much of their knowledge is either unconscious and automatic or it's knowledge of what they still need to learn another way to visualize this shift is to think of

knowledge as a circle the area within the circle is what you know about a topic and the border is the Horizon of your knowledge or everything that you're aware of that you don't know yet this border is what determines our uncertainty or doubt interestingly as the size of your circle grows larger the Horizon of your knowledge also grows larger the more you know the more you know that you don't know but something else happens as well as you gain knowledge as you implement information and it becomes automatic you forget that you know it so there's

a second border inside the first this smaller circle is everything that you've forgotten you know so not only is the experts Horizon of Doubt much longer most of their knowledge is also unconscious they forgot that they know it because it strikes them as so obvious and immediate why even think about it the idiot thinks he knows everything because he literally doesn't have enough knowledge to know better meanwhile the expert thinks he knows nothing because he is so aware of all the ways in which he may be wrong now I know what you're probably doing right

now it's probably the same thing I did and most people do when they learn about the Dunning Krueger effect you think to yourself what a bunch of [ __ ] idiots good thing I know about this Dunning Krueger effect thing cuz you know I'm super aware of all my flaws that makes me like an expert at [ __ ] everything so this is the tricky thing about learning about cognitive biases we would like to think that because we're aware of all the ways our mind [ __ ] up that we are somehow immune to those

fuckups but once again we are so wrong because again and again research has shown that educating people about their cognitive biases doesn't really make them any less susceptible to cognitive biases and that is the most frustrating thing about the Dunning Krueger effect it is so hard to overcome both in others but also in ourselves because here's the thing they're called blind spots for a reason you can't [ __ ] see them how do you fix something that you can't see in yourself this is the Paradox of trying to overcome our own ignorance the very thing

that would help us see our mistakes is exactly what would prevent us from making them in the first place part of the problem is that there is a comfort in the feeling of knowing people don't like uncertainty settling on a belief whether it's true or not is a way to resolve anxiety within ourselves so our minds often default to believing things even if we don't have a whole lot of evidence for them and unfortunately ripping on people for being [ __ ] stupid doesn't really help the situation either anybody who's gotten in a dumbass argument

and comment threads can tell you this from experience again and again psychology has shown that when people's beliefs are challenged they don't change their minds they actually get more rigid and defensive so what are we supposed to do well starting with ourselves I think it's an important practice to perhaps hold fewer opinions or at least hold them less strongly this means being less emotionally attached to our beliefs in other words I think there's a lot to say for humility when you see something online that is upsetting or angering or frustrating instead of jumping to conclusions

about that person or that cause maybe sit back and say I don't know what the [ __ ] am I saying you guys aren't going to do that let's be honest you know last year I created an online course that helped people people challenge their own beliefs it helped people figure out how to hold opinions a little bit more softly uh funny funny thing nobody [ __ ] took the course um you know it it for some reason there wasn't a ton of demand for that and not to mention it's [ __ ] hard to

Market like how do you Market a thing to people that's going to make them feel wrong about everything they believe in their life that's not exactly like the most enticing sales pitch but if for some reason you want to take that you can find the link in the description good [ __ ] luck so when it comes to other people I think one of the hard truths that I've had to swallow over the years is that you can't really change the mind of somebody who's not willing to have their mind changed you can throw as

much data and statistics and logical arguments at them but it's they're just going to like Ninjutsu that [ __ ] you know pull a Neo in The Matrix and all the bullets are going to get by him I think this is because most people's beliefs are not based on logic or Reason most people's beliefs are based on identity and group affiliation and so when you show them contradicting data their thought process isn't oh I need to update my prior assumptions about the world their thought process is like I'm being attacked my tribe is being attacked

you know many years ago I used to coach people and one of the reasons I [ __ ] stopped coaching people is because it was it was often very frustrating somebody would hire me for a week or we'd do like a month call or something and uh it just felt like I was like beating my head against a wall like I was telling them the same thing over and over and over again usually like deep profound truths don't sink in for people the first time it it's almost like you plant the seed in their head

and then they need to go live for another year or two for that idea of the Sprout it's almost like we have to be in the right environment or context or or be going through the right phase of our journey uh for those seeds to Sprout so one thing that has helped me a lot in my own relationships and just [ __ ] tolerating all the nonsense that goes on in the world is understanding that that I'm not here to change Minds necessarily I'm here to plant seeds I'm here to drop an idea or an

argument so that one day if that person becomes fertile ground that seed can Sprout the most impactful things usually don't sink in right away they usually need like a few weeks or months or even a couple years to like incubate in a person's head and when I look at my own life this also feels true like there were things that people told me in my teens that I didn't fully appreciate until my 20s or 30s or hell even almost 40 ultimately I think humility is one of the most underrated values in our world right now

on the internet people are rewarded for false confidence people are rewarded for being bold people are rewarded for being zealots and Fanatics about things but while the algorithms May reward Bluster and [ __ ] the real world doesn't life is really [ __ ] difficult and complicated and most of us don't really know what we're doing most of the time so any sense of false certainty is really just going to cause more pain than necessary I think what the Dunning Krueger effect really teaches us is that humility is actually very practical by intentionally underestimating our

own understanding of things not only do we open ourselves up to learn and grow more but we also prevent ourselves from just being a [ __ ] narcissistic ass face on the internet that is of course until we decide that I'm the most humble person you ever met man I'm so [ __ ] humble you wouldn't believe it everybody thinks they're humble but I'm really humble like i' i' I've got this humility [ __ ] down they should bottle it up and put that [ __ ] on eBay cuz I'm going to make a [

__ ] killing humility like off the charts oh you can't even see can't even see how high it is up there man camera doesn't go that high it's that humble that [ __ ] humble and as as you can see now we're back to square one [Music]