(Using examples from my time as a writer and a martial artist, I will discuss how the Dunning-Kruger effect could negatively effect any dreams or aspirations you have.)
Psychologists call it the Dunning-Kruger effect. It is a study in cognitive bias, which demonstrates how competent people tend to believe they are incompetent, and incompetent people tend to believe they are competent. To put it bluntly, smart people think they’re stupid, and stupid people think they’re smart.
This is easy to understand, and makes perfect sense once you think about it. If you’re reading this, then you’re probably one of those that constantly researches, and so you’ve probably even noticed the Dunning-Kruger effect yourself, you just didn’t know the name for it. You’ve probably noticed that people who know what they’re talking about tend to be quiet, attentive, and always listening to what others have to say because they usually feel that they still don’t know everything they should about a topic. The old adage, “The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know,” comes to mind.
Conversely, you’ve probably noticed how people that are constantly saying how amazing they are (braggarts) are almost always the lousiest at their job. That’s because unskilled people tend to suffer from what’s called “illusory superiority.” In short, they erroneously rate their abilities much higher than others.
The reason for all of this is simple: The very same skills it takes to know how good you are at something are the exact same skills you need to actually be good at that thing. What’s even more dangerous about this cognitive bias is that people who are incompetent tend to be very confident. After all, they think they know everything. Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, said of this effect, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Of this effect, the comedian John Cleese, he of Monty Python fame, said, “It explains a great deal of life.”
When thinking of writing, reaching a goal, or simply improving yourself, it is vitally important that you not fall victim to this lazy and self-deceiving mindset, either by convincing yourself that you’ve “seen it all” (thus closing your mind to new knowledge), or by falling for a lot of the nonsense that confident, incompetent people will feed you when trying to sell you on their latest security tech, martial arts system, or surefire ways to get published.
In other words, it is important that you do all the research yourself. This means maintaining a discipline of both training and constant vigilance—vigilance against the bad guys out there, and vigilance against the scammers who will try to feed you “junk information” and tech that doesn’t exactly suit your needs, and, in fact, may only further endanger your life and your dreams.
We see this constantly in martial arts training. Magazines, commercials, and billboards are constantly clambering for your attention, making claims of having the end-all-be-all of security and self-defense. It’s enough to make a person’s head spin, and make you feel like you’re always chasing your tail.
A lot of so-called “experts” in the industry have obviously fallen victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, and perhaps on some level even know it, because they have to constantly deceive their customers by claiming all sorts of things they cannot possibly back up.
Here’s a typical example in the martial arts: A martial arts practitioner at roughly a mid-grade level (sometimes even low-grade) decides to open up a school. He’s only actually ever achieved a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu at some school in Texas, but he moves to Georgia (where nobody knows him), slaps a black belt on himself (which he can purchase on Amazon), and claims to be a ten-year veteran and expert. Not only that, but he’s got a few pictures up on the wall of himself with some martial arts celebrity, such as one of the Gracies, probably taken at a random seminar that anybody can attend if they pay the $500 admission, and then allows the incoming new students to draw the mistaken conclusion that he was taught personally by one of the Gracie family members, therefore authenticating his black belt and expertise in their minds.
It’s a sad reality, but since martial arts is a self-regulating industry, just about anybody can do this, and it happens all the time.
My chief instructor, Alan Baker, who has been in the martial arts for 35 years and has sixteen black belts in various arts, says this about these kinds of people: “If they spent as much time actually training to become the thing they say they are, as they spend on saying that they are that thing, then they would actually be that thing.” It takes a lot of time to convince people of your own self-deception—every time you are challenged, you have to think of some excuse why you won’t test your knowledge or skills against theirs. You have to constantly fend off the naysayers, instead of being able to silence them by showing them logically how your opinion or philosophy has merit. You spend all your time trying to convince the world that you are an amazing martial artist, and not enough time training at actually being a martial artist.
All this to say that you should beware that you don’t begin to deceive yourself like these people. If you’re going to train to use a pistol, do the research first, on both the gun and the firearms instructor you are receiving training from (don’t just take their word for it), and then train your best and never let yourself start thinking that you know it all. You must constantly remind yourself that there is always something more you can learn. Because there is.
There are two more crucial things you should know about the Dunning-Kruger effect. First, not only do psychologists’ tests show that the effect makes it so a person overestimates their own skill, they’ve also demonstrated that the effect also has the terrible drawback of making it so that those suffering from such a bias invariably fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
That’s right. If you do not possess the mental tools to recognize your own lack of skill, then you obviously don’t know what great skill is supposed to look like, and so obviously you can never have the skills to recognize true skill in others.
Mastering one’s own ego isn’t just good for holding arrogance at bay, and it’s not just the stuff of wishy-washy, touchy-feely philosophies on self. It is a practical and necessary survival skill.
And the last thing you should know about the Dunning-Kruger effect is this: Tests show that once an unskilled person is given suitable training, they are able to look back on their previous level of skill and see just how wrong they were before. That’s good news, because it means that the Dunning-Kruger effect isn’t incurable. You just have to keep training, and remember that there is always more you can know.
The lesson? Don’t fall victim to illusory superiority. Ignorance may be bliss, but it will get you killed faster than a bullet. In the case of the writer, falsely belieiving that you are at a higher skill level will simply get you rejected until the end of time. You will garner no fans, and you will receive no rewards, all because you reject criticism. Just as ignorance will get you demolished in a contest of martial arts, so too will your dreams be forever beyond your grasp until understsand the principle of why you're not yet getting readership or publishing done.
Train hard and finish strong.
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Check out the author's novel Psycho Save Us: http://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Save-Us-ebook/dp/B009DL5WEQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365778940&sr=8-1&keywords=psycho+save+us
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