Why Dumb People Feel So Smart | The Dunning–Kruger Effect

0:34 You just saw a clip of someone

0:37 expressing a strong political opinion with complete certainty,

0:40 yet unable to name the three branches of government,

0:44 which are essential to American politics and the country’s democracy.

0:48 Someone off-camera even questioned why such

0:51 knowledge would matter for politics at all.

0:54 Today, there’s no shortage of moments like these.

0:58 Time and time again, we hear strong opinions expressed with great confidence,

1:04 without much understanding of the subject.

1:06 You’ll see it among MAGA supporters, progressives,

1:10 religious fundamentalists, conspiracy communities, and everywhere in between.

1:15 It’s confidence over competence, presentation over substance,

1:19 and emotional appeal over careful reasoning.

1:22 As a result, we’re drawn to overly simplified explanations of reality.

1:27 We accept claims not because they are necessarily true,

1:31 but because they align with what we already believe

1:34 (or want to believe) or because they’re delivered with strong rhetoric.

1:38 For the same reason,

1:40 we embrace narratives such as conspiracy theories despite the lack of evidence.

1:46 So, how does confident ignorance arise,

1:49 and why does it spread so effectively in modern-day culture?

1:54 Let’s find out.

1:55 My name is Stefan.

1:57 This is not an AI voice, I’m a real person.

2:00 Subscribe to my newsletter on Substack to stay updated on all my content.

2:04 You can also support my work on Patreon and find my books on Amazon.

2:09 Thank you.

2:10 And I hope you’ll enjoy this video.

2:18 Let’s start with a little story.

2:20 Back in 2017, I decided to plunge into the hype of the moment:

2:25 the cryptocurrency boom.

2:26 I was still working at a bank during the day, earning a modest wage,

2:31 and trying to make it as a freelance writer at night.

2:35 I wanted to be self-employed.

2:37 And since my freelance writing career wasn’t really going anywhere,

2:41 I decided to hop on the crypto train, putting my small savings into the market.

2:48 Of course, I had no idea what I was doing.

2:52 I bought Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a couple of altcoins,

2:55 and started watching YouTubers talk about the latest assets and ICOs.

3:00 I tried to learn how blockchain technology really works.

3:04 After spending a full day watching videos about it,

3:08 I still couldn’t clearly explain it or explain why it

3:12 was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

3:15 But I was pretty sure crypto was it.

3:19 I had to be.

3:21 After all, I was highly invested in it.

3:24 During the 2017 boom, I was doing pretty well.

3:28 And I wasn’t the only one.

3:30 Friends, family members, colleagues; many of them were in the market too.

3:34 I couldn’t stop talking about crypto.

3:36 I was extremely confident about what I was doing.

3:39 It felt like I couldn’t go wrong.

3:43 Until the crash in 2018.

3:46 In reality, I didn’t know what I was investing in.

3:50 I hadn’t read any whitepapers.

3:52 I barely understood blockchain.

3:53 I hardly knew the difference between investing and speculating.

3:58 Yet I had been walking around like a crypto expert,

4:03 right up until the unavoidable humiliation.

4:05 So, what was going on there?

4:08 A number of psychological forces were at play.

4:11 One of them is known as the Dunning–Kruger effect.

4:19 In 1999, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that people

4:25 with low ability in a given domain often overestimate their competence,

4:30 largely because they lack the insight required to recognize their incompetence.

4:35 By contrast, those with real expertise often doubt themselves because they

4:40 understand how complex the subject is and how much they don’t know.

4:45 Tom Nichols, author of The Death of Expertise,

4:48 puts it more bluntly, by saying (and I quote): The Dunning-Kruger Effect,

4:52 in sum, means that the dumber you are,

4:55 the more confident you are that you’re not actually dumb.

4:59 Dunning and Kruger more gently label such people as “unskilled”

5:03 or “incompetent.” But that doesn’t change their central finding:

5:06 “Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices,

5:10 but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.” End quote.

5:17 In my case, it was funny when I look back on the conversations I

5:21 had about crypto with people who were just as ignorant about it as I was,

5:25 tossing around terms like HODL and early adoption.

5:28 “Just buy the dip, bruh.” We thought we knew stuff others didn’t,

5:33 but in reality, we were just reinforcing each other’s ignorance.

5:37 Luckily for me, it took one crash, a wake-up call,

5:42 to realize I was standing on what’s often called “Mount Stupid”:

5:48 peak confidence with minimal knowledge.

5:50 After tumbling down Mount Stupid,

5:52 I had to admit that I didn’t truly understand what I was investing in.

5:58 In many ways, I was simply gambling, and, to an extent, I was fine with that.

6:04 In the country I’m from, the Netherlands,

6:07 the Dunning-Kruger Effect runs rampant when our national soccer

6:10 team plays in the European Championship or the World Cup.

6:14 We always say that during these events,

6:16 our national team has 17,000,000 coaches,

6:18 or whatever the country’s population is at the moment.

6:22 Why?

6:22 Because almost everyone and his neighbor

6:24 has an opinion about the team’s performance,

6:27 and people are not reluctant to share these opinions, often very confidently.

6:32 And I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of people are not experts on soccer.

6:39 Being wrong about soccer as a layperson watching

6:42 a match on TV is pretty harmless, in my opinion.

6:46 But there are subjects in which ‘confident ignorance’ isn’t fun and games.

6:51 I’m talking about essential topics; the stuff that concerns our health,

6:56 well-being, safety, and how we treat each other.

6:59 And that’s where Mount Stupid becomes dangerous.

7:02 Especially when people don’t come down, meaning,

7:05 when they hold strong convictions about these issues

7:08 without recognizing the limits of their understanding.

7:13 Let’s face it.

7:14 Mount Stupid is a pretty nice place to be.

7:16 It feels good if you’re an expert on what you’re talking about;

7:20 if you have the world all figured out.

7:23 You’re free of doubt, free of ambiguity.

7:26 Consider the ‘meaning of life,’ for example.

7:28 You may have heard someone say something along the lines of: “Listen…

7:32 I don’t understand these people endlessly discussing the meaning of life,

7:36 as it’s so obvious that we are here on Earth

7:40 to procreate!” I’ve heard that one often, by the way.

7:43 But once we look more closely,

7:45 it becomes clear that describing a biological function

7:48 as the “meaning” or “purpose” of life is a bit simplistic.

7:54 But for some, the oversimplification is the point.

7:58 It’s easy, it’s digestible, and, often,

8:01 it aligns with how they want to see the world.

8:05 But when people begin to adopt these overly

8:09 reductive explanations and premature conclusions about vital topics,

8:13 such as medicine, climate, different cultures and religions, politics,

8:18 or the economy, it could make things… pretty dark.

8:21 And things may even get darker if such views get

8:26 amplified and people refuse to give them up or update them.

8:35 Convincing people you’re right is often not so

8:38 much a matter of substance but of confidence.

8:41 At least, studies in psychology show that people

8:44 tend to trust confident people more than unconfident people.

8:48 And so, bad information is often

8:50 perceived as good because of confident delivery,

8:53 while good information is often not valued because of unconfident delivery,

8:59 which then influences people’s decision-making.

9:01 We can see this phenomenon,

9:03 also known as the ‘confidence heuristic,’ in many areas of life.

9:08 We see charismatic politicians “fascinate

9:11 the fools,” as Bertrand Russell worded it,

9:14 by presenting misinformation as absolute truth.

9:17 We see religious leaders convince the masses

9:20 of fundamentalist ideas that aren’t grounded in facts.

9:24 We see door-to-door salesmen with charming, slick sales pitches.

9:28 And we also see confident employees climbing the corporate ladder,

9:34 while more qualified but unconfident ones are overlooked.

9:39 Back in my crypto days,

9:41 those crypto-bro-YouTubers I was watching were usually very confident.

9:45 They talked as if they were experts in their field.

9:48 Especially those pulling up these graphs and throwing

9:51 all these terms around like falling wedges,

9:54 golden crosses, consolidation, RSI, moving averages, and Fibonacci retracement.

9:58 And I’d listen to it, thinking they really did their homework.

10:02 And so, when they’d confidently make

10:04 a prediction or praise some new altcoin project, they sounded pretty believable.

10:09 And I suspect that many people thought the same thing,

10:14 often leading them to get “rekt”.

10:18 Confident speakers often present complex issues as simple and clear.

10:23 This is persuasive because many people are

10:26 uncomfortable with ambiguity and naturally gravitate toward certainty.

10:31 Psychologist Arie Kruglanski introduced the concept ‘Need for Cognitive

10:37 Closure,’ pointing to the desire for a firm,

10:39 definitive answer on a topic to avoid ambiguity and uncertainty.

10:44 And this is exactly what many confident speakers offer:

10:49 quick, simple, and definitive explanations of complex issues.

10:54 Another thing confident speakers do is use

10:58 impressive-sounding jargon that most laypeople barely understand;

11:02 language that feels authoritative, even when it isn’t,

11:05 simply because it is delivered decisively.

11:07 In such cases, people listen to incoherent word salad without much substance,

11:12 but delivered in a convincing way,

11:15 and believe they just heard a wonderful piece of supreme knowledge.

11:21 Yet the appeal of confidence is only part of the story.

11:25 There is another reason why people hold their beliefs so firmly.

11:29 And it has less to do with how something is

11:32 said and more with how we wish to see the world.

11:39 Are Democrats stupid?

11:41 I’m not going to answer this question, but I think it’s a nice starting point

11:47 to explore a possible cause of ‘confident ignorance’.

11:50 At the moment, American politics is a daily spectacle.

11:54 For some news commentators, it’s the only topic they talk about.

11:59 What strikes me is how different each

12:02 news outlet reports about the exact same events.

12:05 For example, when CNN says that Trump’s State

12:08 of the Union was misleading and full of lies,

12:12 Fox News says that he slammed the democrats.

12:15 And we see these contradicting views all across the board.

12:18 What’s perceived as a disaster for one is a ‘win’ for another.

12:23 So how can the same reality produce such radically different conclusions?

12:28 We can look at ourselves and our convictions honestly and ask:

12:34 do we want the truth or rather a truth we prefer?

12:39 Of course, I claim that I want ‘the truth’...

12:42 but could it be that there’s a little bias there,

12:45 a little tendency to pick a more convenient

12:49 and preferable version of the truth over another?

12:52 We like to think we are seekers of objective truth.

12:56 But for a great part, we might actually be seekers of confirmation.

13:01 Truth is messy.

13:03 It’s ambiguous and often uncomfortable.

13:06 So instead, we lean toward information that aligns

13:10 with our existing beliefs and resist information that threatens these beliefs.

13:16 Psychologists call this ‘confirmation bias.’ Nichols describes it

13:21 as “the most common—and easily

13:23 the most irritating—obstacle to productive conversation,

13:27 and not just between experts and laypeople.” People with this bias tend

13:35 to cherry-pick information that supports their pre-existing

13:38 beliefs and ignore any challenges to them.

13:42 Counterarguments usually don’t stand a chance.

13:45 They’ll just discard them and confidently stick to their version of the truth.

13:51 You’ll hear things like,

13:52 “I agree to disagree.” Or you’ll see them rejecting statistics from a trusted

13:57 source “because I don’t believe in numbers.” Pythagoras is rolling in his grave.

14:02 I’ve even heard (and read) academic research

14:05 dismissed as “leftist indoctrination,” followed by the suggestion

14:08 that one should “do their own research.” But if academia cannot be trusted,

14:13 what reliable sources of knowledge remain,

14:16 and do we even have the skills to recognize them?

14:21 Today, we see plenty of people online (there are a lot of them

14:25 on YouTube) who aren’t experts on what they’re talking about… which is fine;

14:30 I’m no expert either.

14:31 But things become problematic when such people pose as experts,

14:35 as authorities of truth, claiming to provide the real facts,

14:40 while opposing those with better credentials and track records,

14:43 as well as more reliable sources, such as peer-reviewed studies.

14:47 By appealing to what people want to hear (often exploiting

14:51 distrust of authority and science) and delivering their message with certainty,

14:56 they can build massive followings.

14:59 We also see communities emerge in which

15:02 the same ideas are repeated again and again, rarely questioned or challenged.

15:07 I’m talking about echo chambers:

15:10 mostly online spaces where opposing views are filtered out

15:14 and the same ideas are repeated over and over,

15:20 often keeping people stuck on Mount Stupid.

15:25 My father once said to me, and I paraphrase:

15:28 “There’s a difference between today’s dumb people and those of the past.

15:33 Those of the past were at least aware that they were dumb.

15:36 Today’s dumb people often think they’re actually quite smart.” At the time,

15:42 I found the remark harsh and arrogant.

15:45 I remember laughing it off.

15:47 But beneath the bluntness, he coined an interesting idea about human awareness.

15:53 It’s not necessarily bad to be ignorant.

15:56 There’s no shame in not knowing something,

15:58 or being uneducated, or not having a certain expertise.

16:02 Ignorance is human, and we’re all ignorant about most things,

16:07 if we’re really honest with ourselves.

16:09 Following my dad’s observation, it could be that acknowledging one’s ignorance

16:14 was more socially acceptable in the past.

16:17 We live in a culture today that rewards confidence and constant expression.

16:23 We also expect our opinions to be treated as valuable, regardless of expertise,

16:28 and many think their opinions are just

16:31 as credible and substantive as those of experts.

16:34 And speaking up with conviction seems to matter more than being well-informed,

16:39 just as winning the argument seems more important than speaking the truth.

16:44 In such an environment, people may feel they cannot afford to say,

16:49 “I don’t know.” I remember my father literally telling

16:53 me that there’s nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know”.

16:57 He also felt comfortable just shutting up when people

17:00 were talking about a subject he knew little about.

17:03 We haven’t spoken in years, for reasons I won’t get into here,

17:08 but he had his moments of insight.

17:11 So, after looking into this subject (and yes, I did my own research),

17:16 I’ve come to believe that the real danger isn’t ignorance itself,

17:20 but the absence of something called ‘metacognition,’ the ability

17:24 to recognize the limits of our own understanding.

17:27 Put bluntly: if we cannot see our own ignorance,

17:31 we may feel completely confident that what

17:34 we believe is true, even when it isn’t.

17:37 And when beliefs rooted in delusion turn hateful and divisive,

17:42 the consequences can be catastrophic.

17:45 As Mark Twain once said: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble.

17:49 It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Thank you for watching.