Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the human race is the acme of a species wide Dunning Kruger Effect. We know just enough to make us arrogant but not enough to realize how little we actually do know. Of all of us, it’s our experts that epitomize this quality. They each know so much, about so little, they extrapolate it to all other areas of potential understanding. Which is one aspect of the Dunning Kruger Effect. I would go further. The “experts” who have all the degrees, knowledge and understanding it’s possible to have, about a subject… are themselves subject to the Dunning Kruger Effect, in that they aren’t as expert as they think they are. Because the future will prove, much of what they believe to be true… wrong. All of which makes us as a people do things that are stupid, in hindsight and in foresight.
The problem with thinking we know more than we do is that it makes us arrogant, risk takers and prideful. Arrogance, or the feeling we’re more important than others, comes from a surplus in something. Money, power and knowledge for example. The wealthy become arrogant due to their surplus of largess, making them important people, able to wield capital. The politically powerful are by definition, powerful, and that surplus of power to force others, makes them important. Then there are the eggheads, who’s heads contain so much surplus knowledge, they consider themselves the bank of human understanding. Is there anything more important than that? To a brainiac. Having been called a brainiac myself, on occasion… I say it with all due humility.
People who think they have it all figured out, take more risks, than those with healthy respect for their lack of knowledge. Someone may be a pretty good shot with a gun, but that skill doesn’t necessarily translate to artillery. You may be great at figuring the odds at Keno but does that make you good at poker? A skill or knowledge may make someone good at something, but that doesn’t make them good at everything. Not even things that are similar. A guitar player can’t simply pick up a trumpet and blast out the trumpet part of Classical Gas. Though the next skill may be easier to learn… one skill doesn’t make someone good at everything. Many of us presume so however, so take absurd risks, with the peace of mind of an ignoramus. The definition of the Dunning Kruger Effect.
Arrogance and pride go together like turd and stench. You don’t get one unless the other is close at hand. Since pride is literally the feeling of importance. Who’s more prideful than those groups that hold parades in their own honor? Like the homosexual movement, the progressives and the elite. Scientists are full of pride at the achievements of their parents. Let’s face it, we as a species are prideful of our ecological monopoly. Due to modern farming, the world sustains more people with less hunger, than 50 years ago. Exponentially more then the experts thought possible at the time. In their arrogant pride, they dreamed up the depopulation movement, to save the planet. An exercise in stupidity as history has proven. But sustained to this day by the arrogance, risk taking and pride of it’s proponents.
Pride, risk taking, and arrogance are a Venn diagram with a huge intersection. That intersection is the Dunning Kruger Effect. On individuals it can be amusing, humiliating or disastrous. The same is true of the human race. Our infatuation with our technology, science and raw power has made us poster children for the Dunning Kruger Effect. Our experts think themselves omnipotent and omniscient, our politicians think themselves the best people ever, while we’re bewildered by spectacle. So untested shots are forced on us, our kids are sterilized, as the elite replace us with people they think will be better suited to their enlightened despotism. Seen in the light of sanity… it’s stupidity writ large. Because, as a species, our most idiotic moves are always because of the Dunning Kruger Effect.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
