[gridlock]

Excerpted from a rather lengthy article.

Found this linked over at AndrewSullivan.com. Great stuff.

[Explorer89]

I thought this was hilarious.

[lodwick]

doh ;-)

[Citizen Tom Paine]

There are at least two states of unknowing:

Don't know and know that you don't know.

Don't know and don't know that you don't know.

Apparently, there are a lot of persons in the last category.

[Leisler]

Chicken and the egg problem. How do stupid people know that they are stupid? They don't.

[Billthedrill]

Wait a minute! Lemon juice doesn't keep bank cameras from taking your picture?

Uh-oh...gotta run...

[boris]

"Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain."--Frederich von Schiller, The Maid of Orleans.

[KC_Conspirator]

It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.

Exhibit A: Madelaine Albright

I get this. Its similar to a wise man understanding that he is really not all that wise.

[antidisestablishment]

Most interesting. I have a son who is MR, and can tell you that the inability to recognize or admit ignorance seems impossible to overcome.

[Desdemona]

Ping (I need to develop a list, because I keep forgetting people)

Long, but an interesting read. In light of recent spinning in circles on other topics....

See, I was right. When I was 20, I knew everything. By the time I reached XX, I realized I knew jack. Maybe I'm not so dumb after all.

[XBob]

good observations.

I am reminded of two specific examples -

1. A discussion with a liberal newsman who kept arguing how unbiased the major media news shows were, middle of the road, unbiased reporting.

2. A group of poor black drug users who kept arguing that they weren't afraid of using dirty needles because AIDS was curable and if they got AIDS, all they needed to do was to go get a shot.

[alaskanfan]

I don't know anything, and I can prove it!

[Cogadh na Sith]

I bet you'll like this...

[Route66]

"Although our analysis suggests that incompetent individuals are unable to spot their poor performances themselves, one would have thought negative feedback would have been inevitable at some point in their academic career. So why had they not learned?
One reason is that people seldom receive negative feedback about their skills and abilities from others in everyday life."

Of course, this article was reluctant to place any blame on public education, but it basically proves that the direction we have taken in the schools and have been told to take in parenting is [surprise!] completely wrong. We have been told that self-esteem is everything for a child - so much so that you should not correct them or tell them something is wrong.

This article shows that people do not develop proper self-monitoring skills if they are never properly taught the material AND are never forced to compare right answers to wrong answers. This applies to social, moral and academic areas.

In addition, I just heard of a study a last week that concluded most criminals do NOT suffer from low self-esteem, but from artificially high self-esteem.

So if you wonder why there are so many more 'clueless' people in our society today, it's because modern public schooling techniques and modern parenting techniques - both based on flawed psychobabble - are turning them out by the millions.

The most frightening part is...after a couple more generations of this, there will be not be anyone left who knows they don't know.

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[Steve0113]

Dunno who said it, but it applies here:

"He who is unaware of his ignorance will only be confused by his knowledge."

That includes an awful lot of people.

[hosepipe]

[ We argue that when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. ]

From a democrat think tank, no doubt.....
Guess I'm too incompetent to see the seriousness in this article.

[TotusTuus]

"But I wore the juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Mr. Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing one's face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to videotape cameras.

This reminds me of a true story I heard (well, it could be an urban legend, never can tell anymore).

A bank robber in the Bay area went into a particular bank, say a Bank of America branch, and proceeded to write a holdup note on a bank slip. Well, the line was too long so he decided to go to the bank across the street, a First Interstate branch, to rob it instead. When the teller received the note from him, she cooly explained to him that she couldn't accept a holdup note written on another banks slip and that he would have to rewrite it on a First Interstate slip. She was, of course, pushing the button. Frustrated and not wanting to write another note, he went back across the street to hold up the Bank of America branch. Just as the police arrived.

[supercat]

Many actions look easy, and seem easily understood, and yet are much less easily mastered than they would appear. Driving with a manual transmission, for example. It seems easy (just press the clutch when shifting gears, and shift into neutral when you don't want the car to be moving). Doing it effectively, however, takes a degree of practice which can only be appreciated by someone who has actually tried it. That isn't to say that it's "hard" (indeed, I can go between a manual and automatic without thinking about it) but until one learns the right "feel" one won't be able to do it smoothly.

In other fields, a common problem is that people often fail to grasp what may be called (depending upon your statistical mood), the "nines" principle: getting something to "90%" work is often not terribly difficult, but not terribly useful. Getting it to "99%" work is a bit harder, and may start to be somewhat useful. 99.9% is much harder, and still not totally useful. Each additional "9" adds a considerably more difficulty. Unfortunately, many people think that if they can do a "90%" job, they're almost able to do the whole thing. They fail to realize that the extra "9"'s are everything.

[stands2reason]

Well, I'm at least smart enough to know I'm an idiot.

[Belial]

This is pretty heavy stuff. Can they really be suggesting that dumb people understand less than smart people?