Now it is certainly not the first time that I have highlighted the Dunning-Kruger effect within these posts – which isn’t a surprise since the whole aim of anything written is primarily to learn – and perhaps hopefully manage to write something a little enlightening for someone else to read.
What triggered this post was the rather absurd spectacle of the effect being highlighted in a way that was not only demonstrating a certain level of ignorance but was also regarding the measurement of intelligence. It really cannot have escaped the notice of many that the very fact that someone believes that still being able to cope with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment is in any way illustrating a high level of intelligence is a real pointer to a lack of understanding of what high intelligence actually is.
I was reminded of some of the tests that I was given when recovering from my stroke last year – I didn’t gain much “comfort” that I could answer the questions – however I did feel a little bit of satisfaction that in many cases I was able to understand why the particular tests were being given – it didn’t necessarily mean that I could answer them any better, but it did mean that my brain was capable of working at that ‘different’ level.
Perhaps one day I might be proud of getting 30 out of 30 in a cognitive test 🤣🤣
The original version of this post stopped at this point, but it it worth exploring a sort of related viewpoint.
In the world of industry there was a common idea that the ‘normal’ career path was simply to keep chasing promotion – and that led to the phenomena of an unnecessarily high number of people who got promoted to their level of incompetence rather than stopping at the place that their skills had equipped them for. This, of course, gives rise to two equally unpleasant outcomes – the job that they had been doing excellently now suffers because no one else can do it as well and the person themselves find themselves struggling to do anything useful at the new ‘higher’ level that they find themselves.
Where this and the Dunning Kruger effect come into sharp relief is in many of those chosen to serve in the cabinet operating from the White House. So many seem to be lacking the skill/experience/knowledge (and perhaps also missing a willingness to confront that fact) to do the jobs that they have been – somewhat randomly it seems – appointed to do.
Unfortunately this is mirrored far too frequently in other parts of the political world. Whilst there are people who are good politicians – and many of them have some excellent skills – it seems that matching them to the ‘best’ role in the governmental job share is often found to be impossible. I am sure that I have talked about the inherent difficulties within the world of politics – the main one being that it is almost inevitable that those who rise to the top are the ones who simply crave power.
In politics – and in many other ‘worlds’ – things would get better if those involved owned up to the fact that the job is a huge one and perhaps no one has the necessary tools to successfully do it on their own.