I often find myself recalling Yeats’ famous lines “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
It seems it is precisely the ones least entitled to it who have the firmest faith in their convictions and the strongest self-confidence? It seems that beyond a certain point of gross ineptitude the Dunning-Kruger effect is actually a competitive advantage.
It seems people are more concerned with whether a leader believes he is right and behaves accordingly than whether it turns out that he was actually right.
Maybe truth serves the same purpose as the trappings of a wedding. What is decisive is how the bride feels about the wedding — and that is why the dress, and the flowers and the location all have to be just right.
*
So what about those who have a strong intellectual conscience and find belief difficult and sometimes impossible? How do we give full justice to reality while maintaining firm enough horizons to act decisively and resolutely — especially when the suspicions of skeptics turn out to be true, again and again? Perhaps having the truth is less important than living according to what truth seems to be. But then we observe the victims of Dunning-Kruger, and we know we cannot choose that path.
Again, I like the things you are saying here. The Dunning-Kruger effect has long plagued me a persistent and infuriating wall. For for the past 3 decades of my life (well before I had any clue what to call it) I saw it as a confusing, invisible barrier , like a magical forcefield put in place to make me question my own sanity. Over time however I have come to believe that it isn’t not actually rooted in a problem of intellect and only appears to be when one chooses to stop following the chain of causality into the realm of the emotional which is where the causality leads as far as I can tell.
Every example i have on record of the dunning Kruger effect in action was an example in which desire was simply not present. Neither was understanding to be sure. But even the person who is the victim of the effect KNOWS that they are missing SOMETHING, unless there is no desire to know such things.
This is how I wrap it up, as:
“the Lack of desire to know that one doesn’t know something”.
There’s more to it than that: 1) incuriousity (lack of desire to know), 2) denial (desire to not know), 3) insularity (belief that one’s own sense of relevance/significance is built directly into reality itself), 4) zenophobia (belief that entertaining other patterns of relevance/significance is harmful), and 5) solipsism (belief that reality itself is a product or property of one’s own relevance/significance-bestowing mind).
and there’s also 6) hegemony (belief that whether there are or are not other patterns of relevance/significance, it is immaterial because those who perceive them are powerless to assert them)…
There’s no doubt dozens more form of participatory ignorance.
yes, it’s a Borromean knot….BUT all of these things:
incuriousity
denial
insularity
xenophobia
solipsism
an hegemony
Are not truly problems of intellect and so I think this is the the cause for the effect, that an appeal to an intellect shielded by wrongful valuation falls impotent because the problem is a problem of personal value (a lack of it or an opposition to it ).
The Dunning Kruger effect doesn’t present itself in situations of appeal to valuation at all…that I have noticed.
I can’t argue though that everything you listed is present and underpinning in the effect though. I usual simply opt out of situations where it presents itself…you know what they say about wrestling pigs.