A person's a person, no matter how small, if Mr. Geisel is to be believed. I suppose this must also apply to lawyers, neh?
Regarding the DK effect, it's an incorrect evaluation made by both the hypercompetent and the incompetent; the incompetent are not the only ones self-deceiving. Is it so difficult to believe that a person can be competent without constantly overestimating his peers and undervaluing his own abilities? Subscribing exclusively to the DK effect implies that the majority of hypercompetent people are blatantly incompetent at comparisons of efficiency, demonstrated skill and intelligence, and inventory of progress.
As I see it, when clever people underevaluate themselves, it's because they don't want to be caught in the act of feeling intellectually superior. In a generation raised by the voice of Fred Rogers, political correctness and modesty dictate peer interactions to a degree that borders on socially crippling. It's bad enough that a significant number of terribly bright people are also terribly introverted and poor at socialization, but when society forces them to underrate themselves as a way to gain incentives and avoid undesirable social pressures and work-related stress, it all but deprives them of the opportunity to gain adequate recognition for the merit of their skill and activity.
This generates an ugly loop in which the most competent individuals are passed up for promotions in favour of individuals who are better at self-promoting, simply because society has convinced them they're special. The competent introverts, denied incentive to continue to meet their own standards, eventually give up committing sincere effort to their tasks, and the overall morale and efficiency of the work group is dramatically decreased, since the visionary vanguard stops caring, and they're the ones setting the pace for laggards and designated followers. Everybody settles for mediocrity, and the numpties in the upper offices continue to assume that production and quality will remain a constant to what it was when they were proles.
...all this because it borders on taboo to take pride openly in quality work, in settings where the work of peers is significantly less appreciable than your own. People who are in the same semi-permanent economic strata tend to convince themselves that everybody within their stratum is also within the same intellectual tier; they don't like to realize how much more qualified their neighbour is for the same job or a better job, because they dread to be left behind. In an effort to seem 'level' with their more qualified peers, they overestimate themselves, just in case certainty and the associated charisma do them more favours than intelligence and competence do for the coworker.
As I see it, I can mentally distance myself from the intellectual competition or lack thereof sufficiently to make a relatively accurate comparative analysis between my abilities and the abilities of people around me. I don't make claims to skills I lack, but I don't underplay the skills I possess abundantly. Neither do I underplay the abundant skills of people near me. One of the least book-smart people I've ever known also happens to be the single best farm equipment mechanic I've ever known. He could give a run for pre-Algernon-Charlie Gordon's money in factual recall... but his kinesthetic and problem-solving abilities just blow me out of the water. Similarly, I know genuinely brilliant people who habitually lose their eyeglasses, leave remote controls in the refrigerator, and who definitely don't know the practical aspects of changing oil in a car. Still other people are both fantastically book-smart and quite talented at practical intelligences. As for me, I don't stake claims to too many things- I read more than anybody I know in person (which isn't hard to do, as prevalent as television and games are this decade), I'm great at picking up arts/crafts stuff I've never tried to use and turning a random pile of raw materials into something pretty or useful. I've played classical piano for sixteen years, clarinet for eleven, violin for six. I wouldn't compare my violin ability to piano, by any means, because it obviously hasn't received the same time commitment. I comprehend the mechanics of foreign languages quickly enough to have rudimentary conversations in several languages, full conversations in English and Welsh (the latter being difficult simply because there aren't any Welsh-speakers around for conversation, which additionally makes continued practice a bit tricky). I'm good at noticing patterns, whether it's patterns in form, in language, in mathematics, or in music. Most of my interests fall into areas where pattern recognition and definition are exceptionally useful.
Essentially, I'm an autodidact and an extreme nonspecialist. I pick stuff up, teach myself as much as I can of it, or just enough that it's useful to me... and then I move on to the next thing that interests me. If something persistently keeps my interest, I keep at it to the limits of my ability to self-teach, and then I find a person or text that can help me continue learning it. In the handful of activities where I do specialize, it's by virtue of long-term practice to develop skills in those areas... not by virtue of some nebulous 'gift' or 'talent'. It's easy to be decent at many things, but getting good at something, getting to a point where you can teach others how to do it as well as do it yourself... that takes time and work. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a brain because I use my time as optimally as I can short of losing interest in a task, and most of my time is spent in the willful process of learning more. I'm aware that all I know now isn't even a drop in the bucket of human potential or summary knowledge, but it's still pretty significant when set in the absolute scale of people my age, gender, and geographical and socioeconomic circumstances. I'm not an empty-headed ninny; I'm not a twit; I'm not illiterate. I don't grandly suck at decision making, problem solving, self-instruction, learning from demonstration and participation, pattern recognition, and social observation. Since I don't suck at those things, I have absolutely no practical reason at present to act as though I do. An untrue thing is an untrue thing, whether or not it's modest and socially compulsive. Untruths are a disrespect to the people on whom I could inflict them, so they are unsavoury to me.
Teal Deer.
Regarding the DK effect, it's an incorrect evaluation made by both the hypercompetent and the incompetent; the incompetent are not the only ones self-deceiving. Is it so difficult to believe that a person can be competent without constantly overestimating his peers and undervaluing his own abilities? Subscribing exclusively to the DK effect implies that the majority of hypercompetent people are blatantly incompetent at comparisons of efficiency, demonstrated skill and intelligence, and inventory of progress.
As I see it, when clever people underevaluate themselves, it's because they don't want to be caught in the act of feeling intellectually superior. In a generation raised by the voice of Fred Rogers, political correctness and modesty dictate peer interactions to a degree that borders on socially crippling. It's bad enough that a significant number of terribly bright people are also terribly introverted and poor at socialization, but when society forces them to underrate themselves as a way to gain incentives and avoid undesirable social pressures and work-related stress, it all but deprives them of the opportunity to gain adequate recognition for the merit of their skill and activity.
This generates an ugly loop in which the most competent individuals are passed up for promotions in favour of individuals who are better at self-promoting, simply because society has convinced them they're special. The competent introverts, denied incentive to continue to meet their own standards, eventually give up committing sincere effort to their tasks, and the overall morale and efficiency of the work group is dramatically decreased, since the visionary vanguard stops caring, and they're the ones setting the pace for laggards and designated followers. Everybody settles for mediocrity, and the numpties in the upper offices continue to assume that production and quality will remain a constant to what it was when they were proles.
...all this because it borders on taboo to take pride openly in quality work, in settings where the work of peers is significantly less appreciable than your own. People who are in the same semi-permanent economic strata tend to convince themselves that everybody within their stratum is also within the same intellectual tier; they don't like to realize how much more qualified their neighbour is for the same job or a better job, because they dread to be left behind. In an effort to seem 'level' with their more qualified peers, they overestimate themselves, just in case certainty and the associated charisma do them more favours than intelligence and competence do for the coworker.
As I see it, I can mentally distance myself from the intellectual competition or lack thereof sufficiently to make a relatively accurate comparative analysis between my abilities and the abilities of people around me. I don't make claims to skills I lack, but I don't underplay the skills I possess abundantly. Neither do I underplay the abundant skills of people near me. One of the least book-smart people I've ever known also happens to be the single best farm equipment mechanic I've ever known. He could give a run for pre-Algernon-Charlie Gordon's money in factual recall... but his kinesthetic and problem-solving abilities just blow me out of the water. Similarly, I know genuinely brilliant people who habitually lose their eyeglasses, leave remote controls in the refrigerator, and who definitely don't know the practical aspects of changing oil in a car. Still other people are both fantastically book-smart and quite talented at practical intelligences. As for me, I don't stake claims to too many things- I read more than anybody I know in person (which isn't hard to do, as prevalent as television and games are this decade), I'm great at picking up arts/crafts stuff I've never tried to use and turning a random pile of raw materials into something pretty or useful. I've played classical piano for sixteen years, clarinet for eleven, violin for six. I wouldn't compare my violin ability to piano, by any means, because it obviously hasn't received the same time commitment. I comprehend the mechanics of foreign languages quickly enough to have rudimentary conversations in several languages, full conversations in English and Welsh (the latter being difficult simply because there aren't any Welsh-speakers around for conversation, which additionally makes continued practice a bit tricky). I'm good at noticing patterns, whether it's patterns in form, in language, in mathematics, or in music. Most of my interests fall into areas where pattern recognition and definition are exceptionally useful.
Essentially, I'm an autodidact and an extreme nonspecialist. I pick stuff up, teach myself as much as I can of it, or just enough that it's useful to me... and then I move on to the next thing that interests me. If something persistently keeps my interest, I keep at it to the limits of my ability to self-teach, and then I find a person or text that can help me continue learning it. In the handful of activities where I do specialize, it's by virtue of long-term practice to develop skills in those areas... not by virtue of some nebulous 'gift' or 'talent'. It's easy to be decent at many things, but getting good at something, getting to a point where you can teach others how to do it as well as do it yourself... that takes time and work. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a brain because I use my time as optimally as I can short of losing interest in a task, and most of my time is spent in the willful process of learning more. I'm aware that all I know now isn't even a drop in the bucket of human potential or summary knowledge, but it's still pretty significant when set in the absolute scale of people my age, gender, and geographical and socioeconomic circumstances. I'm not an empty-headed ninny; I'm not a twit; I'm not illiterate. I don't grandly suck at decision making, problem solving, self-instruction, learning from demonstration and participation, pattern recognition, and social observation. Since I don't suck at those things, I have absolutely no practical reason at present to act as though I do. An untrue thing is an untrue thing, whether or not it's modest and socially compulsive. Untruths are a disrespect to the people on whom I could inflict them, so they are unsavoury to me.
Teal Deer.
![[http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/khazrak/sheeple.png]](http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/khazrak/sheeple.png "http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/khazrak/sheeple.png")
