The Dunning-Kruger effect is, famously, a purported cognitive bias that leads people to overestimate their competence about something they know little about while, in contrast, increased competence leads to a more accurate self-assessment of an individual’s performance.
I would like to propose the existence of the Dunning-Dunning-Kruger-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that leads people to overestimate the likely truth of something if it called a cognitive bias and, more and most importantly, if the cognitive bias that is being granted credence is one that should lead us to grant less credence to it if it is an actual cognitive bias.
As applied to its namesake, an individual who believes in the Dunning-Kruger effect but lacks sufficient competence in psychology and assessing psychological studies should not believe that they have the competence sufficient to accurately assess whether the Dunning-Kruger effect is actually real.
That is: Most people upon being told that the Dunning-Kruger effect is real, if they believe it is real, should not believe they can accurately assess if it is real and so should not believe in it.[1]
(Author’s note: I will likely look into the literature for the Dunning-Kruger effect at some point in the future and write on it.)
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At least, not confidently.
The Dunning-Krueger effect doesn’t mean that you should think all propositions you aren’t expert in are false. It means you should reduce credence in them. There’s no law of mathematics which implies that after you reduce credence in them, your credence in them will be so low that it counts as “not believing in it confidently”.
Ohh maybe that’s true if the Dunning-Krueger effect is true! I’m not confident that it is. That’s as a result of me not having looked into the evidence for it, though, so I might need to update my view upon further reading.
If we should give credence though to some claim a witness, expert or otherwise, is making, I do wonder: if the Dunning-Krueger effect is true what the foundation for our assessment of the credibility of their witness testimony would be. I dont think we should simply believe purported experts on the basis of credentials, degrees, published papers, or any other marker of ‘expertness,’; rather, belief should be granted on the basis of the ability to accurately asses their claims. So, if a psychologist were to tell me that the Dunning-Krueger effect is real and I lack the expertise sufficient to asses that claim and, believing in the effect, don’t overvalue my limited knowledge, I’m not sure where sufficient credence would come from for me to have a rational foundation for belief in what they’re telling me.
I might be misunderstanding, though. Let me know!