
Dunning-Kruger and other bogus memes - Illotus
https://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/
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alkonaut
Opinion: a log like decrease in happiness vs income is basically consistent
with "more money doesn't make you happier". Sketching a graph that is
completely flat is misleading however. The only question is, at what point on
the log scale is the increase small enough to disregard (compared to other
life factors).

Another one from the article: I'm arguing _without empirical evidence_ of the
superiority of good type systems (Note: I try to stay away from claims about
what those are). I also think it's not possible to make controlled studies on
this area - which is why it's such a contested issue. Studies use either
students and/or toy problems, or irrelevant datasets such as bugs reported
against github repos etc. The only way top make a valid study is to have N
teams implement and maintain a product with the same spec over K years and
then compare the results and try to factor out developer skill. I say it's not
a feasible problem to solve. We'll have to stick to arguing type systems
_without_ evidence to back up the argumebts. But that is the best kind of
arguing, after all.

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taneq
> Opinion: a log like decrease in happiness vs income is basically consistent
> with "more money doesn't make you happier".

I think you mean log-like _in_ crease.

Assuming so, then more money _does_ make you happier (although at a decreasing
rate per dollar per year.)

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dwaltrip
The GP is saying it may be negligible at a certain point, compared to any
other conceivable factor.

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avs733
So I write this as an academic who actually has read and cited Drs. Dunning
and Kruger's (in)famous work. This is a little off the cuff so it isn't going
to have the citations it should.

The generalized thing that the authors are talking about is information
literacy. It is the process that includes not just understanding the
information but identifying the need for information, locating it,
understanding the information, evaluating the information, and then applying
the information to some affect. Interestingly, it has found a home primarily
within the libraries because...well they are really solid place to go for how
information is organized.

“Making search easier for students can therefore be a double-edged sword:
while it enables students to get to information faster and easier, it can also
reinforce unreflective research habits that contribute little to the overall
synthesis of a research paper or academic argument.” [0]

More broadly from research I have been involved in on student information
literacy, self report data is spectacularly garbage because of underlying
misconceptions students' hold about what they did. One semi-famous
observational study showed that students strongly conflate finding a piece of
information with understanding it. That was a 'whoa' moment for me. Cognitive
conflation of access to a piece of information and deep coherent understanding
of it. Houston...well you know the rest.

I personally attribute that in large part to fundamental problems in how we as
a society think about education. This is philisophical about how we fail to
differentiate transmission of information from the development of insights and
understanding. We teach information as if it is both of those things. Science,
as much as people scream otherwise isn't facts. Facts are the result of
science. There is a lot of other work showing it is really hard to get faculty
to change teaching practices. The reality is it doesn't matter. Society, not
just teachers, need to think about information different and think about
knowledge different ly for us to break out of this loop.

[A]Dimmock, N. (2013). Hallmarks of a good paper. In N.F. Foster (Ed.),
Studying students: A second look (7-17). Chicago: ACRL.

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SecretAg3nt
Looks like the difference between perceived and actual scores fit the popular
understanding.

The people who perform the worst have the most inflated perception of their
performance, while the people who perform the best underestimate their
performance.

I think people take Dunning-Kruger and apply it to their everyday anecdotes.
They are thinking in terms of relative differences rather than absolute, and
thus the pop-sci understanding may not be that far off from the original.

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JSONwebtoken
Seems paradoxical that the Dunning-Kruger effect is being applied to the
Dunning-Kruger effect.

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crsv
This was my first thought.

I'm sure the noble prize awarded to the Dunning and Kruger's work in
psychology was just a result of a bunch of imbeciles who didn't realize it was
a "bogus meme".

This article was absolute drivel.

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dwaltrip
I just did some quick googling. It seems they received the Ig-Nobel award, not
an actual Nobel prize. This award is a bit strange, I don't fully
understand... It's some kind of parody:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize)

~~~
kthejoker2
It's simply there to highlight the wide and wooly range of things being
practiced under the umbrella of science. I find it pretty heartening - the
world needs research on slug poop and the psychology of sexbots, too.

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mikey_p
In regards to software engineering, The Leprechauns of Software Engineering
has lots of good examples of this type of thinking.

[https://leanpub.com/leprechauns](https://leanpub.com/leprechauns)

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notahacker
The most interesting thing about the graphs isn't the slope, but that
"perceived score" is far more tightly coupled to the individual's perception
of their overall ability than their actual score. But that could be an
artefact of how and when questions about ability were asked (conjecture: I
haven't read the original paper)

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Mysterix
"Perception of their overall ability" seems to have a different scale that the
2 others, so the important point is not the actual values but the correlation
measure.

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jasonmaydie
The money/happyness one is particularly interesting to me. If money does not
equal happyness why am I so happy when I get more? I make more than 75k so
obviously 75k isn't enough.

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wazoox
The fact that you want more is irrelevant. You may be unhappy and believe that
more money will make you happier, but it could be just a false belief or a
bias.

~~~
jasonmaydie
But the question presumes that somehow you are unhappy because you don't have
enough money. What if you are already happy but more money makes you more
happy?

Money is not a cure for unhappiness seems like a more accurate phrase.

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draw_down
Oh man, it’s the HN link I was born to read.

The way people throw around Dunning-Kruger in particular is so aggravating.
You can pretty much always tell they never got anywhere even close to reading
the research.

