This is your brain on Dunning-Kruger
A visual of the Dunning Kruger Effect and what it looks like when you don’t know what you don’t know.
People vary in how they approach learning new subjects. Some tend overtly emphasize their understanding and aptitude for the subject at hand while others maintain a more humble and realistic outlook of their abilities and progress.
The Dunning-Kruger effect explains the cognitive bias that is seen in people in the first camp of the statement above. People who have a lower ability in a topic tend to overestimate their competency.
Now this isn’t always something that people with low ability in a topic consciously choose to engage with. It is also not a model of one’s intellectual and learning abilities.
In philosophy, there is a important concept which distinguishes between 2 types of statements:
- Normative Statements
- Descriptive Statements
A normative statement explains what something is ought to be. What it should be. It is a value judgment. Dunning Krueger is NOT a normative hypothesis. Therefore it does not claim that the this cognitive bias tells us anything about the character and ability of the subject.
A descriptive statement on the other hand is exactly what the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis and the majority of scientific theories claim. A descriptive claim merely tells us what so and so IS. Not what it should be and not what it should not be.
What do we learn from this model:
Be humble and open minded in your learning journeys. Do not get discouraged at the sight of new information. Discovering new info is akin to the fog-of-war style that is seen in some RTS games. As you explore the map, the fog is lifted and you discover new points of interest. This is what Dunning-Kruger tells us. Our limited knowledge and ability of a subject tends to be projected onto the field itself instead of a more accurate projection of recognizing our individual ability. In other words, if you feel very confidently in something that you are not very experienced in, hit the breaks, because it is way more likely for the thing you are learning to be way more complex and nuanced than you can imagine than you being the ultimate pro at this thing that you have barely explored.
