I like and endorse the general theme of this post, but have some issues with the details.
The takeaway is this: if you’re the kind of person who worries about statistics and Dunning—Kruger in the first place, you’re already way above average and clearly have the necessary meta-cognition to not fall victim to such things.
I feel like this is good motivation but bad world-modelling. Two important ways in which it fails:
Social interactions. You gave the example of people not really knowing how funny they are. I don’t think worrying about statistics in general helps with this, because this might just not be the type of thing you’ve considered as a failure mode, and also because it’s very difficult to substitute deliberate analysis for buggy social intuitions.
People being bad at philosophy. There are very many smart people who confidently make ridiculous arguments—people smart enough to understand Dunning-Kruger, but who either think they’re an exception, or else pay lip service to it and then don’t actually process any change in beliefs.
The world is being run by people who are too incompetent to know it; people who are only in power because they’re the ones who showed up, and because showing up is most of the battle.
I dislike lines of argument which point at people on top of a pile of utility and call them incompetent. I think it is plausibly very difficult to get to the top of the society, but that the skills required are things which are really difficult to measure or even understand properly, like “hustle” or “ambition” or “social skills” or “pays less attention to local incentive gradients” or “has no wasted mental motion in between deciding that x is a good idea and deciding to do x”.
From now on, unless you have evidence that you’re particularly bad at something, I want you to assume that you’re 15 percentile points higher than you would otherwise estimate.
Nit: I prefer using standard deviations instead of percentile points when talking about high-level performance, because it better allows us to separate people with excellent skill from people with amazing skill. Also because “assume that you’re 15 percentile points higher” leaves a lot of people above 100%.
I like and endorse the general theme of this post, but have some issues with the details.
I feel like this is good motivation but bad world-modelling. Two important ways in which it fails:
Social interactions. You gave the example of people not really knowing how funny they are. I don’t think worrying about statistics in general helps with this, because this might just not be the type of thing you’ve considered as a failure mode, and also because it’s very difficult to substitute deliberate analysis for buggy social intuitions.
People being bad at philosophy. There are very many smart people who confidently make ridiculous arguments—people smart enough to understand Dunning-Kruger, but who either think they’re an exception, or else pay lip service to it and then don’t actually process any change in beliefs.
I dislike lines of argument which point at people on top of a pile of utility and call them incompetent. I think it is plausibly very difficult to get to the top of the society, but that the skills required are things which are really difficult to measure or even understand properly, like “hustle” or “ambition” or “social skills” or “pays less attention to local incentive gradients” or “has no wasted mental motion in between deciding that x is a good idea and deciding to do x”.
Nit: I prefer using standard deviations instead of percentile points when talking about high-level performance, because it better allows us to separate people with excellent skill from people with amazing skill. Also because “assume that you’re 15 percentile points higher” leaves a lot of people above 100%.
This is good feedback—thanks!