i was stumbling on the internet this morning and stumbled across this entry on wikipedia. after reading the first paragraph (below) i was amazed that there was actually a term to describe fox news and far right commentators! it almost (almost, but not) makes me feel bad for the righties. maybe it’s not o’leilly’s fault that he has a hyper-inflated ego. he can’t help it! this can also be applied quite accurately to creationists and evangelicals and their feeling of superiority over atheists.
“the dunning–kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which ‘people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it’. they therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average. this leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than relatively more competent people. it also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill. (george bush, glenn beck, michelle malkin, ann coulter)
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others. (again, all of the above and i guess you could include most of the republican congress)
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy. (this one perfect describes the bush administration. pretty much totally incompetent from beginning to end.)
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill. (i think we would be dreaming to think that any of these people named above could be trained.)
