
Dunning-Kruger and Other Memes - kryptiskt
http://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/
======
krig
I don't understand what point he is trying to make about the Dunning-Kruger
effect. The only pop-sci version of the study that I've heard is that the
bottom percentile tends to overestimate their abilities while the top
percentile tends to underestimate their abilities. The data shown certainly
seems to support this interpretation?

edit: I read the article linked in another comment below [1] and now I think I
understand what claim the original article was referring to. It seems a common
misunderstanding of the D-K effect is that the bottom percentile would think
that they are as competent or more competent as the top percentile. However,
this is not what the study says, the bottom percentile is overestimating their
ability but the estimations are still relatively lower than the self-
estimations of those with higher ability.

[1]: [http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-
dunning-k...](http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-
kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/)

~~~
hasenj
When I read pop-sci interpretations of it (which is basically all I've ever
read) my impression was that the top percentile estimate themselves as _worse_
than the lower-percentile does.

The graphs cited in the article show that the top still estimate themselves
better than the lower percentile, which is new to me.

------
hf
The author states, as regards the interpretation of the Dunning-Kruger
diagrams, that

    
    
      [i]n two of the four cases, there’s an obvious positive correlation between
      perceived skill and actual skill, which is the opposite of the pop-sci 
      conception of Dunning-Kruger.
    

In my corner of the universe, you don't get to cherry-pick which pieces of
data (ie "what instances of two sets of random variables") you bestow the
golden twig of correlation upon. If I'm not entirely mistaken, correlation is
very much a global feature, not a measure of proximity of two points on a
chart.

So, yes, Dunning-Kruger (as evinced from the diagrams sported here) indeed
seems to make a weaker claim: that there's _no_ correlation between “perceived
ability” and “actual ability”. As such, this claim is as far from the "pop-sci
conception" of Dunning-Kruger as it is from the author's.

~~~
maxerickson
Yeah, the valuable conclusion to make from the Dunning-Kruger paper is that
self assessment isn't worth a lot.

~~~
Tenoke
Err, no. There is clearly a pattern to the data, and drawing the conclusion
that self-assessment and actual skill are uncorrelated is not what you should
do (the simplified pattern being that unskilled individuals overestimate their
skill, while skilled individuals underestimate theirs, or a regression to the
average if you will).

At any rate, even if we don't take that into account self-assessment is worth
plenty as demonstrated by many studies which manage to get coherent data from
self-assessments. Sure, you should take them with a grain of salt, and you can
expect biases, but no need to throw them out.

~~~
maxerickson
I apologize for not writing an essay carefully specifying what "worth a lot"
means to me.

------
throwaway9324
On income/happiness:

"It’s a little easier to see why people would pass along the wrong story here,
since it’s easy to misinterpret the data when it’s plotted against a linear
scale, but it’s still pretty easy to see what’s going on by taking a peek at
the actual studies."

 __ _Googling_ __

[http://wws.princeton.edu/news-and-events/news/item/two-
wws-p...](http://wws.princeton.edu/news-and-events/news/item/two-wws-
professors-release-new-study-income%E2%80%99s-influence-happiness)

"People’s life evaluations rise steadily with income, but the reported quality
of emotional daily experience levels off at a certain income level, according
to a new study by two Princeton University professors [...]"

So seemingly that has nothing to do with the scale used, but with the
definition of happiness. Guess someone didn't look "at the actual study"?

------
notacoward
The author only thinks his understanding of Dunning-Kruger is better than
average. No, seriously. As others have pointed out, the meme is not that
actual ability and self-assessment are negatively correlated. It's just that
ignorant people don't know how ignorant they are - i.e. that those at the low
end of the scale overestimate their position relative to the maximum. That
version is _very_ well supported by the graphs the OP cites. He has scratched
the iceberg of skepticism and now thinks he's enough of an expert to tell the
rest of us that we're Doing It Wrong.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
This. I work with a support guy like this. He has, at best, a hobbyist's
understanding of the technology we use. He tries to paint himself in meetings
as this expert who often tries to correct us and says completely mind-numbing
things. When discussing a fairly complex Drupal roll-out, "Oh, why even bother
with this open source stuff? We can make an access database on the network
shares and give people access to it! I hear it can do web now!" I've sat him
down and patiently explained to him why we do these things, how they are
common and best practices, etc and he just makes frowny face like I'm the one
talking crazy and he doesn't seem to learn as he brings up the same
suggestions over and over. Last week he was adament that a dedicated linux
server for our Asterisk PBX was overkill and that WindowsXP running some
windows freeware pbx on any old desktop would be better because PBXs need so
little power and XP is a super lean OS.

At my previous job where I worked and managed a few young-ish support and jr
devs, I came accross a lot of the same attitudes. The funny thing is that two
or three years in, they tend to shed those attitudes (at least the smart ones
do). They realize that this stuff is a lot bigger than the limited experience
they've gotten in school or in their hobbyist projects. Suddenly the "lets
toss out everything and do it my way" motor-mouting gets turned down a notch
or two, especially after I let them do things "their way" once in a while only
to have it explode in their faces. Hell, 90% of managing young techies is
controlling their D-K until they mature into imposter syndrome. Then you have
to manage that, which is a million times easier to deal because you're not
being know-it-all'd to death in every meeting.

D-K is real. The graphs he points out literally supports it. Personally, I'm
getting sick of this kind of uber-skeptic mentality that's popular here and on
reddit. I think there's something ego gratifying for the INTJ male about being
this loud-mouth contrarian who tells everyone they're wrong. Especially if its
against some popular wisdom and if the argument is unusually pedantic and
trivial.

~~~
bkcooper
_D-K is real. The graphs he points out literally supports it._

What the author says is: _In any case, the effect certainly isn’t that the
more people know, the less they think they know._ And he's right; the data he
shows does not demonstrate that. The more talented people in those plots, at
worst, think they know as much as the less talented.

What the graphs do demonstrate is that the less talented people consistently
overestimate their ability, whereas the most talented people underestimate. So
what's actually negatively correlated isn't actual knowledge and perceived
knowledge, it's actual knowledge and the gap between actual knowledge and
perceived knowledge.

In conclusion,

 _Personally, I 'm getting sick of this kind of uber-skeptic mentality that's
popular here and on reddit. I think there's something ego gratifying for the
INTJ male about being this loud-mouth contrarian who tells everyone they're
wrong._

Um...

------
circlefavshape
In "Income & Happiness" you're missing that there are two complementary
definitions of happiness - "satisfaction" and "affect". Satisfaction, or how
you feel about your life, is what is shown in your graphs. "Affect" is your
direct emotional experience of your life. What you call "wrongness" is just a
failure to distinguish between the two - more money makes increasingly smug,
but (beyond a certain point) doesn't make your like any more _fun_

~~~
lambeosaurus
> more money makes increasingly smug, but (beyond a certain point) doesn't
> make your like any more fun

That's not necessarily money's fault, and I'd point out that there are
certainly rich people that don't fall into this category.

People who want to pursue happiness need the freedom to do so. Freedom to
pursue happiness can be directly correlated with how much money, or wealth, is
available to the person.

It's not money's fault that some people don't know how to be truly happy.
Money simply affords freedom.

The problem is that with enough freedom and no idea how to be happy in it,
you're going to end up in a worse place than if you didn't have the money in
the first place.

Money doesn't automatically make people smug and funless (new word?). People
make people smug and funless (when they have the freedom and inclination to
(unintentionally(?)) do so).

~~~
pharke
I believe what he meant by money making a person increasingly smug was perhaps
that (Western) society holds the expectation that the amount of money a person
controls is directly proportional to their overall success or fulfilment in
life. This is not always the case but it does create the expectation that a
person with money should represent themselves or think of themselves as more
successful. This attitude is often interpreted (often correctly) as smugness
given that it is rather the opposite of humbly acknowledging the fruits of
work or fortune.

Happiness means many things to many people. For some, work itself brings them
joy whether or not it results in earning a great deal of money e.g. charitable
work. For others it is close relationship with their family, a situation that
increased wealth often worsens. Many work their entire lives without
recognition or compensation to pursue art, giving up comfortable or successful
lives and careers in pursuit of something that, more often than not, they are
the only ones who see value in. Religious or aesthetic devotions have perhaps
the longest history of eschewing wealth and what most would consider a normal
life.

As a society, I think that we are beginning to understand the faults in our
current model of a successful life and so we've been seeing more of a trend
towards simplifying our lives to make room for these other generators of
happiness. We are starting to see that the freedom of money is not the same as
the freedom from money.

~~~
lambeosaurus
Good points. I've definitely noticed in my own life a pressure to act like I
have money. Personally I think the Diderot effect is partly to blame.

I also agree that we seem to be reaching a better understanding of happiness,
thought it's still very fragile and may not last.

------
rfergie
My personal responses to these are interesting.

The first three I was all like "yes! So glad someone articulate is finally
saying this".

Then for type systems I was unable to overcome my current biases, thinking
"what a load of tosh! Type systems are obviously a good thing".

Makes me wonder what it would actually take to break the Dunning-Kruger meme

~~~
kpmah
You can still say type systems are obviously a good thing (I do too!). But
you, sadly, can't say this is supported by scientific studies. It's an opinion
based on your own personal experience.

The good news is that this opinion doesn't contradict evidence either! The
research just isn't there yet. Some of research I've seen so far is pretty
bad.

------
praptak
Here's a more detailed analysis of what the original Dunning-Kruger article
supports and what it fails to support:
[http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-
dunning-k...](http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-
kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/)

Key quote:

 _" I suspect we find this sort of explanation compelling because it appeals
to our implicit just-world theories: we’d like to believe that people who
obnoxiously proclaim their excellence at X, Y, and Z must really not be so
very good at X, Y, and Z at all, and must be (over)compensating for some
actual deficiency; it’s much less pleasant to imagine that people who go
around shoving their (alleged) superiority in our faces might really be better
than us at what they do.

Unfortunately, Kruger and Dunning never actually provided any support for this
type of just-world view; their studies categorically didn’t show that
incompetent people are more confident or arrogant than competent people."_

~~~
Chathamization
It's also worth pointing out that you almost never see people bringing up
Dunning-Kruger to say that they might be over estimating their own
understanding of a topic. It's almost always used as evidence that those that
disagree with them are ignorant; that it's a study that only says something
about their opponents, not themselves.

------
danohuiginn
people on the internet misunderstanding a paper? Might that be because 99% of
them don't have access to read the thing, since it's suck behind a paywall?

and to end a post about a paper people can't read with "Maybe I’m being naive
here, but I think a major reason behind false memes is that checking sources
sounds much harder and more intimidating than it actually is." \-- that's just
rubbing it in!

~~~
mhaymo
I find just reading the abstract of a paper is usually enough to debunk the
nonsense claims people are claiming it proves.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
What if they're the ones who've read the full paper while you haven't?

~~~
mhaymo
Then they'll be able to back up their claims.

------
m_y-n_a_m_e
I liked Tal Yarkoni's blog post on Dunning-Kruger
[http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-
dunning-k...](http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-
kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/) \- even David Dunning posted a comment

------
dang
All: please avoid gratuitous negativity in Hacker News discussions.

Angry venting against someone you think wrong is gratuitous negativity. So are
generic dismissals like "This whole article is just a bag of fail."

If you think someone is wrong, please say why substantively, or say nothing.

~~~
lowbloodsugar
"All: Please avoid generic criticism"

------
DanBC
Scientific reporting _sucks_ , even in quality media that take it seriously.
If I had money I'd pay a select group of bloggers to write about how a popular
bit of science has been misreported and then colate links to those on some
central site.

A bit like Behind the Headlines, but about any science and by a wide range of
science bloggers.

[http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx](http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx)

~~~
maaaats
One of Norway's biggest bloggers is a guy named Tjomlid[1]. His blog is
"skeptical", as in he looks into various things circulating in the media and
either backs it up or debunks it.

When media says "X causes cancer", he comes with a level headed blog-post
explaining the data. When anti-vaxxers point to a study, he shows that they
have misinterpreted it, etc.

Unfortunately, it's in Norwegian. I'm interested in reading more in this vein,
so please let me know if you have good, English resources.

[1]: [http://tjomlid.com/](http://tjomlid.com/)

~~~
brianmcc
Ben Goldacre writes some interesting stuff: [http://www.badscience.net/about-
dr-ben-goldacre/](http://www.badscience.net/about-dr-ben-goldacre/)

------
cataflam
Good article.

However, I disagree with his interpretation of Dunning and Kruger's figures.
There is limited data in those figures of course (3 sets with 12 points of
data and 1 set with 8 points), and I don't know how big the actual sample
sizes were. But in all 4 cases, it clearly and significantly shows that people
with low actual ability overrate themselves and people with high actual
ability underrate themselves.

> The pop-sci version of Dunning-Kruger is that, the less someone knows about
> a subject, the more they think they know.

I can only guess that he is interpreting that too literally. I always took the
latter part as "the more they think they know [compared to what they actually
do]". You could plot "perceived - actual" or "perceived / actual" instead of
the figures in the paper to make it more obvious.

~~~
sergiosgc
> But in all 4 cases, it clearly and significantly shows that people with low
> actual ability overrate themselves and people with high actual ability
> underrate themselves.

I read the data quite differently. I read that people don't use the full scale
when rating themselves. The self rating scale goes from 60 to 90. If you
correct for that, people kind of seem to do a nice job in self evaluation.

It can be explained, too. People have social pressure not to rate themselves
near 100%, nor in the bottom half of the scale.

~~~
maxerickson
Presumably the plots represent averages. This hides the actual ranges of the
reported self assessments, but it is likely that there is substantial overlap
between adjacent test score groups. Just curving out the scale isn't going to
address that.

~~~
sergiosgc
True. Without knowing how are values distributed around the average, my
observation that people do good self-assessments is poorly justified. Worse, a
reduction in scale introduces worse granularity, so the end result is
guaranteedly less precise. My observation is on the formality level of back of
napkin calculations (i.e. it may be true, given the information provided, but
is not proven true)

------
phtrivier
I always sucked at stats, so can someone clarify the income / hapiness case.
From what I understand, we have :

* a straight line on a log scale - which _is_ misleading, since the man on the street is used to straight lines on linear scales - telling that money buys happiness

* a "log-like" graph on a _linear_ scale, which tells you that "money buys happiness a lot at the start, and then it doesn't change things a lot" \- and the graph uses a linear scale on both axis, so there is less deformation.

What am I missing ?

~~~
Dylan16807
People are making the claim that money buys happiness _up to a certain number_
and then stops.

But there is no inflection point. 10% more money always buys you the same
amount of happiness.

Nothing makes $75k the point where you have 'enough' money as opposed to $5k.
75 million is just as far ahead of 5 million (at least if it continues to be
logarithmic).

~~~
phtrivier
That's where I'm lost.

10% more money is much more money when you're rich than when you're poor
(Captain obvious to the rescue.)

So if you want to make me 10% more happy, that's going to cost you a lot more
actual dollars / euros / yuan / whatever ; and the last 10$ are going to make
me less "happier" (in absolute) than the first 10$.

Considering people don't buy stuff in percentage of their salaries, but in
absolute dollars (if i'm not mistaken), isn't that a case where the absolute /
relative difference is relevant ?

I'm pretty sure I'm having a stats 101-level argument, and there is something
obvious that I'm missing, so please forgive and educate ;)

~~~
msandford
So the point is that 10% more money always makes you a certain amount happier.

People trot this out and say "look, once you have a certain amount of money
you don't get happier by having more!"

Why should dollars buy happiness the same way they buy gumballs? It doesn't
make any sense.

The first gallon of water you have every day is pretty freaking valuable. The
1000th gallon of water you have every day is just about worthless unless
you're a farmer.

In engineering we use log-log charts to look at how systems respond to a HUGE
range of inputs from the very, very slow to the very, very fast. Like filters.
You want to know how it looks from 1Hz to 1GHz in a useful way. This is
generally done with a Bode plot which is log on both x and y.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bode_plot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bode_plot)

If your plot covers several orders of magnitude (and income is many orders of
magnitude) then the most informative way to understand it is by compressing it
via logarithm. Here's a good example only on the Y since the company is
growing X% per year.

[http://blogs-
images.forbes.com/naomirobbins/files/2012/01/li...](http://blogs-
images.forbes.com/naomirobbins/files/2012/01/linear_log.jpg)

~~~
phtrivier
> Why should dollars buy happiness the same way they buy gumballs? It doesn't
> make any sense.

Which is _precisely_ the point of the old "money does not buy happiness"
adage, isn't it ?

Science that says "This 1000ths gallon of water is gonna be as good as
worthless" seems to favor the point rather than oppose it.

I don't know if "happinness == gumballs" would make "sense" to anyone (I
personnaly doubt it), but that's the subtext of a lot of messages in a
consumer society (and we're leaving the realm of maths from the realm of
politics. Stats 101 vs PolSci 101, all over again, I know, sorry.)

As for your graphs, what I was saying is precisely that, unless you've been
trained to read graphs (and most people are not), you're going to be "fooled"
more easily by the second one, won't you ?

~~~
msandford
> Which is precisely the point of the old "money does not buy happiness"
> adage, isn't it ?

Not the way I read it, really. If money doesn't buy happiness, then the graph
should be _completely flat_ right? Or at the very least a uniformly
distributed scatter plot? But it doesn't really seem to look that way. While I
suspect that there's some truth to the adage, it's definitely not absolute.

> Science that says "This 1000ths gallon of water is gonna be as good as
> worthless" seems to favor the point rather than oppose it.

That's not the point. The point is that as you have more of a thing, it takes
more to move the needle. EVERYTHING has decreasing marginal utility, and money
does too. But I don't think the marginal utility of money ever becomes zero,
or goes negative. Do you think that? If so, please start sending me your money
so that you can be happier!

Here's a great example for you. Raises are nearly always percentages right?
Why not just give everyone a $100 a year raise? I mean, that $100 is supposed
to be the same to everyone, isn't it? 10% more money increases your happiness
approximately the same, no matter what number that 10% increase is applied to.

> As for your graphs, what I was saying is precisely that, unless you've been
> trained to read graphs (and most people are not), you're going to be
> "fooled" more easily by the second one, won't you ?

I think that if you want to understand the way a system works across many
orders of magnitude the only way to do so without fooling yourself is to look
at a log/log plot. If you don't, only the most extreme change on the plot
shows up and all the rest gets compressed into a "straight" line by the
vagaries of turning an infinitely variable thing into a finite set of pixels.

------
Nimitz14
I don't get his part on Dunning-Kruger. Where is the "obvious" correlation?
Why doesn't he specify which figures he's talking about?

Each figure shows how the bottom quartile is overestimating their ability. And
that's exactly what people call the Dunning-Kruger effect.

~~~
emodendroket
What a gazillion pop-sci articles and blog posts suggest is that there is
actually a negative correlation between self-assessment and performance --
i.e., that the higher people rate themselves, the worse they will perform.
Looking at the graph we can see that while poor performers overestimate their
performance relative to reality, there is still a positive correlation between
performance and self-assessment.

------
delibes
Looks like only people in the 3rd quartile are any good at estimating
performance, and so perhaps they should immediately all become project
managers?! :)

------
serve_yay
Oh, it makes me so happy to see this. I have to cringe whenever I hear or see
"Dunning-Kruger" these days.

------
delibes
I think there's an error in the blog post, because the 4th graph is the same
as the 3rd.

It should probably be [http://danluu.com/images/dunning-
kruger/dunning_4.png](http://danluu.com/images/dunning-kruger/dunning_4.png)
which shows a positive correlation for "perceived logical reasoning ability
and test performance". That then helps explain the statement "In two of the
four cases, there’s an obvious positive correlation between perceived skill
and actual skill".

------
Tenoke
This looks like a very uncharitable interpretation of the pop version of
Dunning-Krugger. For one, people who use an explanation like that pretty much
always talk about unskilled individuals in particular. I might be projecting
but it seems like a more charitable interpretation of what they are saying
would be 'The less someone knows about a subject, the more they [overestimate
what] they know' which is roughly correct.

------
asuffield
Without commenting on the various claims about memes in this article, I can
offer a hypothesis on the closing paragraphs: the most obvious reason why
misinterpreted science is much more commonly seen is that sharing an
unsupported meme takes far less time and effort (~few clicks) than finding the
research paper and reading it, so we would anticipate seeing a lot more of the
former.

The pithy version is "a lie can run round the world before the truth has got
its boots on", with thanks to Pratchett.

~~~
jacquesm
> the most obvious reason why misinterpreted science is much more commonly
> seen is that sharing an unsupported meme takes far less time and effort
> (~few clicks) than finding the research paper and reading it

I think your comment contains a highly recursive component:

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/)

~~~
asuffield
I'm aware that it has history. The version I quoted is Pratchett's ;)

------
chrisdone
Regarding the “Income & Happiness” section the following section of a talk by
Will Self comes to mind, on quantifying people's happiness and feelings:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFNOWnklxAA&t=7m00s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFNOWnklxAA&t=7m00s)

------
herendin
The tendency of poorly-informed people to misunderstand the Dunning-Kruger
Effect appears to be a clear example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect

~~~
SilasX
Indeed, in that the typical usage of DK among the poorly informed is just
"hey, I can accuse people of being too misinformed to realize it, without
actually refuting their argument, all because I can cite a paper".

------
mhomde
It would be ironic if the author overestimates his interpretation of the
Dunning-Kruger study...

------
jmmcd
The fourth image on the DK effect is identical to the third. Copy-pasted link,
maybe.

------
rthomas6
Looks like I should consider moving to Brazil.

------
lucio
looks like a troll article to me.

------
michaelochurch
He's more right than most people are on the Dunning-Kruger effect. What it
actually tells us is that self-assessed competence estimates carry low signal:
the correlation is almost zero. This might be a regular, pointwise regression
to the mean, or it might be an artifact of the aggregation (i.e. it could be
that some people are great self-estimators but others are way off the mark).

What Dunning-Kruger tells us is that, with regard to certain abilities and
especially social skills, people are bad guessers of their own competence and
that most people think of themselves as slightly above average.

I think that he's also somewhat right on money vs. happiness. Self-reported
happiness is not the same thing as actual happiness. You might rate yourself a
"7" at two times of life, but be behaviorally different. Your "7" when you are
poor might be, "commute sucked, but no one yelled at me at work today"; but
when you're rich, it might mean "hotel is nice, but staff forgot to fold the
toilet paper into a triangle". Self-reported contentment is the same, but
stress levels and behavioral measures of happiness are very different. It is
true that after $75k per person, other factors have more of an effect on
happiness than money itself. You have to account for cost of living and family
size, of course.

Then there are job quality issues. A writer who reliably makes $100k per year
is a smashing success; a professor earning that, at 40, is more than
respectable; but someone who's a "Software Engineer II", making that, at age
40 is a failure. I think that success is much more strongly correlated to
happiness than income. People with Harvard MBAs making $250k per year are
often the most miserable people on earth, while famous artists who make a
fraction of that often love their lives.

His relating this to type systems is a bit silly. You can't put all "static
typing" languages in the same bucket. Java's static typing is a hindrance with
little power. Haskell's static typing is extremely effective-- if you know how
to use it. Also, quality of the engineers matters more than the language
itself: I'd much rather work on a disciplined Clojure or Ruby team than a
sloppy Scala team that's still using Java patterns. If it is properly used, a
Haskell-like type system can make code quality very high indeed. That said,
most businesses aren't willing to budget the time for quality code, and that's
a language-independent problem.

~~~
bkeroack
The income graph strongly suggests to me that increased happiness scales with
the _proportionate_ increase in income, rather than the absolute increase in
raw dollars. That is to say, a 20% raise will increase everybody's happiness
roughly equally, regardless of the absolute magnitude of the raise (eg, $10k
for someone earning $50k/year and $100k for someone earning $500k/year).

This probably has to do less with the utility of the money itself and more
with psychological positive reinforcement ("I'm smart and successful and my
boss recognizes that") as well as increasing the person's relative social
status. I've read that, given the choice, people will prefer to (for example)
earn $70k while their peer group earns $50k, as opposed to earning $100k while
the peer group earns $150k. Income is an indicator of social status and is
largely valued relative to the rest of your social cohort.

Interestingly, the Japanese are said to be more efficient because their
corporations tend to award social status directly to "salarymen" (sic) rather
than indirectly through differential wages.

------
whoisthemachine
I've always thought the Dunning-Kruger meme went: "The less you know about a
given subject, the more you think you know, and vice versa", which I don't
think is disputed by those graphs.

It's just saying that people tend to overestimate their knowledge of a subject
when they are under-educated and tend to underestimate their knowledge of a
subject when they are over-educated.

Of course, the study participants were asked to give their own estimates. What
they were actually thinking of their abilities is a matter of debate that
would need a more clever study to deduce.

~~~
emodendroket
How is that not disputed by those graphs? While there is distortion at both
ends (particularly the lower end), it nevertheless shows self-assessment is
positively correlated with ability.

