Brilliant or Stupid

Annamaria on Monday 

This post is inspired by a conversation I had with Stan Trollip that began with lamb chops and ended (as my conversations with Dr. Stanley Trollip so often do) with my learning something really interesting and fun to know.  I share now, here my new knowledge about the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

I was complaining to Stan about how many ignoramuses think they ought to be in charge.  That is what Dr. David Dunning and Dr. Jason S. Kruger studied - the relationship between how much a person knows about a topic and how confident that person is likely to be.  Their conclusion: the less people know about a topic, the more confident they are.  And the more they know about it, the less confidence the have.

Here is a quick explanation of how this works:

Explanation 

This explains so much. All those overconfident nincompoops who stupefy us with their conviction. The kids who fail the exam because they think they already know the subject and therefor don't study. And perhaps we ourselves, thinking things are easy for everyone because they're easy for us.  There are the overconfident software engineers who think of themselves as brilliant and end up making it impossible to get this paragraph back to left-aligned.  

But I digress.

As a writer, this topic makes me how mystery authors might find this topic interesting when creating characters.  In our genre, we often see the over confidence character in stories where the private detective has to deal with overconfident police inspector. But what about making a story with buddy private detectives, one who thinks his own brilliance is nothing special and the other one who thinks of himself as genius.  I am not saying I could write such a thing, but I think it would be a lot of fun to read such a story. 

 Stan urged me to include John Cleese in my search, something I knew I would enjoy.  I think you will like it too.   

Dumb or Smarrt