

Ask HN: How Can One Correctly Assess Their Own Ability? - maybeunskilled

I am sure that most of you have, by now, heard of "Unskilled and Unaware of It."[1] This paper, authored by Justin Kruger and David Dunning in 1999, describes how the least competent tend to overestimate their abilities while the most competent tend to underestimate. The eponymous "Dunning-Kruger effect"[2], referenced on HN from time to time, serves as an explanation for those unfortunate individuals in our field and in others who possess that toxic mixture of ineptitude and intellectual indolence (they lack the drive to improve, because they see nothing that requires improvement). While providing us with a compelling warning against hubris, it does not seem to provide any further clarity concerning self-assessment; according to Dunning-Kruger, you likely succumb to illusory superiority or illusory inferiority, but either way your perception of yourself is likely to be illusory. One of the authors, Dunning, described how the study shook his confidence: "I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it."[3]<p>One might conclude from Dunning-Kruger that since accurate self-assessment appears difficult, you ought to just err on the side of caution and try to underestimate your abilities. After all, what harm can come from that? Unfortunately, this advice seems to contradict insight gleaned from other cognitive bias studies. Take the Pygmalion Effect[4]. Teachers were told that certain students chosen (unbeknownst to the teachers) at random had high IQs and would turn out to be high achievers. The result: those students ended up becoming the high-IQ high achievers that their teachers had been led to believe they were. It would seem from this that one should do the opposite of what Dunning-Kruger intimates; you should overestimate your abilities, assume you are among the elite, and with enough time and effort your reality will come to match your perception of yourself.<p>I feel somewhat torn between not wanting to end up as one of those arrogant incompetents but also not wanting deprive myself of whatever benefits positive thinking might bestow. After all, can you really be successful without some confidence? How do you manage self-perception, confidence and humbleness?<p>1. http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html<p>2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect<p>3. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL<p>4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect
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jacquesm
Competence is not a constant. Even if today you may not be as skilled as your
potential indicates you could be there is a simple way to change that:

Do stuff! And learn while you're doing it. Spend time reading and really
absorbing and integrating the stuff you read until it makes sense, then apply
that knowledge, repeatedly.

Nobody was born competent.

So use your abilities as they are today as a starting point and build them up
from there, and don't worry too much about where you are on the scale, as long
as you keep moving up you'll be fine.

Interaction with other people (here on HN there are some pretty smart people
and they're not at all scared to share their knowledge) can accelerate that
process, both because you can learn from others and because you can test your
knowledge.

The fact that you're posting this here would indicate that you already got
that last point :)

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RiderOfGiraffes
Clickable links:

<http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect>

[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/18/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect>

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RiderOfGiraffes
Find and spend time with people who know more than you. You will know
different things, and you might be clever, but you need to be in an audience
that drags you up, and keeps you honest.

There are things I'm really, really good at, and I know that because I can do
them and others - who I respect and admire - can't. There are other things
that I'm pretty poor at, and I spend time with people, learning from them and
trying to improve. They tolerate me because I try to have the right attitude,
and I give freely of my time and knowledge. In return, I receive their time
and knowledge, and we all benefit.

One side note: One's individual and personal "worth" is not derived from
skills or knowledge. Use comparisons to assess knowledge and ability, but not
your worth.

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Mz
Something that has been helpful for me: I try to separate the skills/knowledge
from my ego.

I went through a period where I was something of a "star" on a few small email
lists and was constantly heaped with public praise. I was uncomfortable with
that but was told I had "poor self esteem" and these kind, loving folks were
going to assist me in getting over it. Of course, the more some folks sang my
praises, the more others felt compelled to kick the living crap out of me and
try to bring me down a notch or twelve. Having concluded that my aversion to
public praise is rooted in wisdom, not neurosis, I have since worked hard on
learning to present good information that stands on its own merits while
simultaneously deflecting public praise since it actually undermines my
efforts to put out good info by putting too much of the focus on me and my
ego. In spite of still putting forth controversial ideas, I get beat up less
these days. With getting beat up less, I have less need to have folks telling
me I'm wonderful because I don't have all those psychic wounds to salve.

I suspect one reason very competent people underestimate their abilities is
because they tend to attract lots of criticism. In other words, they are a
threat to the pecking order and people make huge deals out of any tiny mistake
they make (basically a desperate attempt to say "you're not All That,
dammit!"). The approach I have worked out helps get around that issue. I am
perfectly willing to admit that I make mistakes and because I do not let
people paint me into a corner and make this all about me and my ego, I get a
lot less of that type of negative feedback than I used to. (It still happens,
but it's not socially and emotionally crippling anymore.) This helps remove
negative social bias (hostility) from my attempts to self-assess. That has had
a net positive impact on my confidence and self-assessment.

