The Dunning-Kruger effect, sound like someone you know?

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Lava wrote:
everything I've said about physics is valid.

This is your problem. It is a ridiculous thing for you to say.

Everything I've said about physics is open for questioning. I have to prove that any mathematical claim I have made is correct. If I make a mistake, anyone who knows mathematics can point it out... and I will be able to admit my error.

Furthermore, everything I say about Physics must be supported by experiment. In the case of Newton's laws I have done most of the experiments myself. For any other concept in Physics, I can explain the experiments, and (more importantly) I can explain what experimental results would disprove the law.

Your claim that anything you say is correct is ridiculous.

In one of my favorite high school experiment, students predict the path of a projectile using math and Newton's laws. We have a contraption that launches a ball. The students measure the velocity the ball leaves the launcher... the ball pass through two light beams that activate a timer, giving us displacement and time.

After the students measure the velocity the ball leaves the launcher, they pick an carefully measured angle. The launcher can either be on the floor or on a table (either way they need to measure the starting height).

Then they use Newton's laws to calculate how far the ball will travel... and we tape a small paper cup at that location (about 5 or 6 feet away).

Sure enough, more often then not, the students can predict where the ball will land, and the ball plops into the cup in a very satisfying way.

This is fun experiment because it uses mathematics and physical laws to predict how real objects will act in the actual world. The students are able to test their knowledge in making a precise calculation that turns out to be experimentally correct. If they make a wrong calculation... the mistake is quite obvious (in that the ball misses the cup and bounces on the floor).

And that is what Physics is about.

3 Replies

@maxdancona,

used to LOOOVE Mythbusters for that very reason. I really get a kick out of Velocity or acceleration measurements they did with these huuge barn sized ruled measuring tapes. Theyd compute a cannons distance using size of projectile an its muzzle velocity.

One time they made a gravimeter to show the differences in gravity between two areas of California just by measuring acceleration due to gravity measured by a camera, a kitchen timer and a large vertical ruler and a ball bearing.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Lava wrote:
everything I've said about physics is valid.

This is your problem. It is a ridiculous thing for you to say.

Everything I've said about physics is open for questioning. I have to prove that any mathematical claim I have made is correct. If I make a mistake, anyone who knows mathematics can point it out... and I will be able to admit my error.

Furthermore, everything I say about Physics must be supported by experiment. In the case of Newton's laws I have done most of the experiments myself. For any other concept in Physics, I can explain the experiments, and (more importantly) I can explain what experimental results would disprove the law.

Your claim that anything you say is correct is ridiculous.

You couldn't understand how inertia works like a form of passive propulsion. All you could do is argue that passive momentum is different from active propulsion. That shows you don't really understand Newton's laws, even though you have them memorized and have learned how to do math.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

maxdancona wrote:

Lava wrote:
everything I've said about physics is valid.

This is your problem. It is a ridiculous thing for you to say.

Everything I've said about physics is open for questioning. I have to prove that any mathematical claim I have made is correct. If I make a mistake, anyone who knows mathematics can point it out... and I will be able to admit my error.

Furthermore, everything I say about Physics must be supported by experiment. In the case of Newton's laws I have done most of the experiments myself. For any other concept in Physics, I can explain the experiments, and (more importantly) I can explain what experimental results would disprove the law.

Your claim that anything you say is correct is ridiculous.

In one of my favorite high school experiment, students predict the path of a projectile using math and Newton's laws. We have a contraption that launches a ball. The students measure the velocity the ball leaves the launcher... the ball pass through two light beams that activate a timer, giving us displacement and time.

After the students measure the velocity the ball leaves the launcher, they pick an carefully measured angle. The launcher can either be on the floor or on a table (either way they need to measure the starting height).

Then they use Newton's laws to calculate how far the ball will travel... and we tape a small paper cup at that location (about 5 or 6 feet away).

Sure enough, more often then not, the students can predict where the ball will land, and the ball plops into the cup in a very satisfying way.

This is fun experiment because it uses mathematics and physical laws to predict how real objects will act in the actual world. The students are able to test their knowledge in making a precise calculation that turns out to be experimentally correct. If they make a wrong calculation... the mistake is quite obvious (in that the ball misses the cup and bounces on the floor).

And that is what Physics is about.

That sounds fun, but many labs like this just work to motivate students to accept that the equations/calculations work without them achieving deeper critical understanding of physical laws and mechanics.

It's like doing a lab in chemistry where you get a liquid to change color or some other striking empirical effect without the students really getting deeper knowledge about how color is a product of electron frequency, absorption/emission spectra, etc.

If all you're teaching students to do is accept that science is right, you're not really teaching science. You're supposed to be teaching them how to analyze observable systems (including technologies) in a way that they can make sense of constituent mechanics.

So you could do your experiment predicting where the ball will land, but then make sure they analyze all the different factors involved so that they're not just doing what you tell them with equations and then doing the experiment to check how well they did the calculations.

0 Replies

@maxdancona,

Max, the dunning kruger applies exactly to you as well as anybody else.
But you insist that because you have digested a set curriculum from other suffers of dunning kruger, that you are smarter than anyone who dissagrees with you.

"To err is human. But, to confidently persist in erring is hilarious."
I don't claim to be smart, but seems to me that the over confidence exhibited by Einstein fans, in face of rational arguments against Relativity, is displaying D-K in all its glory.
You insist on making the exact same mistakes over and over, and justify the mistake because you always get the same answer!, So it MUST be correct!
If this is not D-K I don't know what would qualify.

3 Replies

@maxdancona,

0 Replies

@justafool44,

justafool44 wrote:

Max, the dunning kruger applies exactly to you as well as anybody else.
But you insist that because you have digested a set curriculum from other suffers of dunning kruger, that you are smarter than anyone who dissagrees with you.

"To err is human. But, to confidently persist in erring is hilarious."
I don't claim to be smart, but seems to me that the over confidence exhibited by Einstein fans, in face of rational arguments against Relativity, is displaying D-K in all its glory.
You insist on making the exact same mistakes over and over, and justify the mistake because you always get the same answer!, So it MUST be correct!
If this is not D-K I don't know what would qualify.

The D-K effect is only relevant for people who care more about intelligence as a status item than as a tool.

Just use whatever intelligence you have for problem solving instead of worrying about how smart you are compared with others.

0 Replies

@justafool44,

justafool44 wrote:

I don't claim to be smart, but seems to me that the over confidence exhibited by Einstein fans, in face of rational arguments against Relativity, is displaying D-K in all its glory.

There are no rational arguments against relativity.

justafool44 wrote:

You insist on making the exact same mistakes over and over, and justify the mistake because you always get the same answer!, So it MUST be correct!

Max has an unreasonable belief in the infallibility of experts. However, I have not noticed any errors in his scientific claims.

And I'm pretty good at noticing errors.

0 Replies

@justafool44,

Quote:

Max, the dunning kruger applies exactly to you as well as anybody else

Not in Physics, it doesn't. An educated person knows a lot more than an uneducated person (about their area of study).

I developed my expertise the hard way. I literally did my homework. I solved the problem sets. I did the experiments. I wrote the papers. I took the tests. I spent years studying physics, and I came with a level of expertise about Physics that someone who didn't spend the time getting an education doesn't have.

Dunning-Kruger doesn't say that no one is an expert. They are saying that some people are experts and some people are not... and that people who aren't educated still pretend to have expertise.

When you ask me questions about the law, or economics I have no real claim to expertise. You will notice me having opinions, and probably sometimes I cross into Dunning-Kruger territory.

But if some lawyer, with a legal education and a legal degree, comes and tells me I am wrong about my understanding of the law... I am sure going to listen to him.

2 Replies

@farmerman,

Mythebusters were frequently full of sh*t. In fact, I would blame the Dunning-Kruger effect. They reached a point at which they were commenting on subjects about which they frequently didn't know squat, but they painted themselves into a corner from which they pontificated when they clearly didn't know what the hell they were talking about. On one episode, they commented on splinter damage in wooden warships. They fired a nine-pound cannon at long range, and it produced a splinter like an over-sized pencil. They concluded that splinter damage was negligible. That was the D-K effect writ large. At the battle of the Nile in 1798, Nelson's fleet had to approach the French through raking fire (an enemy fires at you whose position is perpendicular to yours--he fires his entire broadside while none of your guns will bear). One ship, I believe it was HMS Vanguard, Nelson's flagship, received a 32-pound cannon ball on the cat-head, a heavy beam from which the bower anchor hangs. It knocked out a splinter six feet long. It struck the forward carronade, killing or maiming the entire gun crew, and was only stopped when it hit the next carronade behind it. Another ball striking Vanguard's forecastle produced a splinter which flew the length of the main deck (the gun deck was 168 feet long) and struck Nelson on the head, effectively scalping him. (The surgeon poured wine over the wound, pulled the scalp back into place and sewed it up; Nelson returned to the quarterdeck.) When U.S.S. United States engaged and captured HMS Macedonian, Samuel Leech was aboard as a ship's boy. He acted as a "powder monkey" for one of the 18-pound guns on the main deck. In his memoirs, he tells how Decatur, commanding United States, stood off wrecking Macedonian's masts and spars before closing to slug it out. By the end of the fight, Leech reported that he was wading knee-deep through splinters on the deck to go for more powder cartridges.

Them boys at Mythbusters didn't know what the hell they were talking about. I highly recommend Thirty Years from Home: A Seaman's View of the War of 1812, by Mr. Leech. As far as history is concerned, that's how one accumulates expertise. (His memoir was originally published as Thirty Years from Home: Or, A voice from the main deck : being the experience of Samuel Leech, Boston, Tappan & Dennet, 1843. I highly recommend fhat.) Under the first title give above, Mr. Leech's book was pubished as a trade paperback, in 2008, I believe.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
Max, the dunning kruger applies exactly to you as well as anybody else

Not in Physics, it doesn't. An educated person knows a lot more than an uneducated person (about their area of study).

I developed my expertise the hard way. I literally did my homework. I solved the problem sets. I did the experiments. I wrote the papers. I took the tests. I spent years studying physics, and I came with a level of expertise about Physics that someone who didn't spend the time getting an education doesn't have.

If any of your education was really as effective as you imply it was, you'd be talking about other things besides how great your education was.

Quote:

Dunning-Kruger doesn't say that no one is an expert. They are saying that some people are experts and some people are not... and that people who aren't educated still pretend to have expertise.

I'm no expert, but it sounds to me like the D-K effect is about nothing besides a psychological state where people sincerely overestimate their own intelligence. People in this thread are turning it into a stigma to use to ridicule others, but that is like any other abuse of psychological diagnostic terms for stigma and ridicule.

No one is in this thread because they're concerned with anyone else's mental health, or their own for that matter. They just want to pin the D-K on others as a fancy-sounding way of telling them they're stupid and arrogantly unaware of it.

Quote:

When you ask me questions about the law, or economics I have no real claim to expertise. You will notice me having opinions, and probably sometimes I cross into Dunning-Kruger territory.

But if some lawyer, with a legal education and a legal degree, comes and tells me I am wrong about my understanding of the law... I am sure going to listen to him.

You're obsessed with credentials. You're an authority-worshiper who can't grasp that 2=2=4 whether the person saying it has a PhD in math or a GED.

The real irony is that you once posted that facts should stand on their own separately from other facts, yet by focusing on whether someone is a mathematician instead on the math itself, you are implying a situation where facts are not judged independently but with regard to the credentials of the person claiming them.

If you are to honor your own view that facts stand on their own independently, then you have to let go of your habit of always focusing on educational credentials, status, etc. etc.

People have the right to discuss topics without being told they can't be right because they haven't gone to school for the topic they're discussing.

If someone wants to question relativity, the universality of the speed of light, or whatever; just listen to their point and respond to it with your reasoning that you understand. That's so much better than telling people they can't be right because of what their background is or isn't.

2 Replies

@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

If any of your education was really as effective as you imply it was, you'd be talking about other things besides how great your education was.

I recall Max making some scientific points. His points were largely ignored though, so the discussion didn't go anywhere.

I'm not really keeping track of which of these "science denial" threads is which though, so I might be remembering something from a different thread.

livinglava wrote:

You're obsessed with credentials.

Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that his scientific points are correct as far as I can see.

0 Replies

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
Max, the dunning kruger applies exactly to you as well as anybody else

Not in Physics, it doesn't.

So stick to Physics.

0 Replies

@livinglava,

Quote:

You're obsessed with credentials. You're an authority-worshiper who can't grasp that 2=2=4 whether the person saying it has a PhD in math or a GED.

We dont hire people who can add. We take all that for granted. If you try to get a technical job as a scientist or engineer and its found later that youve lied about having the credentials a advertised in the career ad, especially if youre applying for a govt position, this could be considered a felony. In many states, certain positions require a license to practice. As far as I know, geology is the only physical science that requires a license (like engineers, surveyors, architects, medicine, electricians etc). Other positions, like physicist, chemist , , biologist require educational credentials since most states dont license these positions except if one wishes to teach the subject.

Theres really no "obsession" with credentials. Its just a fact where one tries to develop a career in many of these fields. You seem to be obsessed with being an amateur who is rying to pass himself off as a professional.
Ive spent a few years in undergrad, and grad schools including specialized training in chemistry and applied geology and in the military in explosives use.Ive practiced under the responsible authority of several licensed senior scientists and Ive sat and taken and passed several tests for licensure.
Im not going to submit to your poppycock that assumes that "Anyone can do it with only a library card or a wikipedia membership".
Many of these positions involve conditions of care where incompetence can result in hundreds or thousands of people getting hurt or killed.

Just try applying for a job that has degree, experienece , or license requirements and Id guarantee, after listening to most of your "double speak" herein, you would quickly be found out as a poseur in a field in which you are bluffing your competence and education.
Ive been part of hiring teams at a NAtional Lab in the mid 1990's and we had candidates prove their educational experience in isotope chemistry, their research areas of competence (As someone said, a particle physicist is not hired by the same teams as an optical or EM physicist) and we ask the candidates to give a series of seminars to research staffers about their past projects that are asymptotic to why they'r even being interviewed.
You should write to Sandia or Lawrence Livermore National LAbs and get subscriptions (theyre free) about ongoing research in applied physics and chemistry in a number of arenas where such research has applications in all walks of life.
Credentials of authors are clerly displayed and their affiliations. Each issue will list awards that some of the National Lab professionals have been given , or elections of scientists or engineers as "Fellows" of their professional societies.

Youre howling about an arena that you hve little knowledge and and therefore are totally ignorant about what " education and other credentials" are actually about.

They are a display of MINIMUM qualifications for taking part as a professional worker, and one of the minimum qualifications e try to monitor is character and honesty at the entry level. Certainly there are later examples of scientists who "Sell out" their Confidentiality Clearance Status iin order to engage in selling their research secrets to an enemy or an industry. This is a whole other area of misdeeds and often coincides with a definition of treason.
In engineering and Geoscience licensure quarterly NEWSLETTERS published by the responsible bureaus of the various states, They do publish DISCIPLINE activities of folks whove lied about their license status or fail to comply with the governing regulations of their license board.
Practicing WITHOUT a license ,i all governing authorities, is a crime that can lead to disbarment or even fines and imprisonment. So, while you can opine all you wish on a sound board as this, might I advise you not to go off making believe youre a licensed scientist or ngineer or degreed scientist seeking responsible employment.
You could have a very bad week

2 Replies

@farmerman,

I agree with farmerman...

It isn't about the credentials. It is about the hard work needed to earn the credentials, and the understanding that comes with the credentials.

If you hire a PhD in Physics, you know that this person has done their homework. They have spent years studying; doing math, running experiments, interacting with peers. To get a PhD you have to do original research and pass it through an acceptance committee.

Getting a PhD is hard work. But this hard work is fully worth it to employers. Employers want to hire experts.

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The Dunning-Kruger effect in action:

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Quote:
You're obsessed with credentials. You're an authority-worshiper who can't grasp that 2=2=4 whether the person saying it has a PhD in math or a GED.
We dont hire people who can add. We take all that for granted. If you try to get a technical job as a scientist or engineer and its found later that youve lied about having the credentials a advertised in the career ad, especially if youre applying for a govt position, this could be considered a felony. In many states, certain positions require a license to practice. As far as I know, geology is the only physical science that requires a license (like engineers, surveyors, architects, medicine, electricians etc). Other positions, like physicist, chemist , , biologist require educational credentials since most states dont license these positions except if one wishes to teach the subject.

Theres really no "obsession" with credentials. Its just a fact where one tries to develop a career in many of these fields. You seem to be obsessed with being an amateur who is rying to pass himself off as a professional.
Ive spent a few years in undergrad, and grad schools including specialized training in chemistry and applied geology and in the military in explosives use.Ive practiced under the responsible authority of several licensed senior scientists and Ive sat and taken and passed several tests for licensure.
Im not going to submit to your poppycock that assumes that "Anyone can do it with only a library card or a wikipedia membership".
Many of these positions involve conditions of care where incompetence can result in hundreds or thousands of people getting hurt or killed.

Just try applying for a job that has degree, experienece , or license requirements and Id guarantee, after listening to most of your "double speak" herein, you would quickly be found out as a poseur in a field in which you are bluffing your competence and education.
Ive been part of hiring teams at a NAtional Lab in the mid 1990's and we had candidates prove their educational experience in isotope chemistry, their research areas of competence (As someone said, a particle physicist is not hired by the same teams as an optical or EM physicist) and we ask the candidates to give a series of seminars to research staffers about their past projects that are asymptotic to why they'r even being interviewed.
You should write to Sandia or Lawrence Livermore National LAbs and get subscriptions (theyre free) about ongoing research in applied physics and chemistry in a number of arenas where such research has applications in all walks of life.
Credentials of authors are clerly displayed and their affiliations. Each issue will list awards that some of the National Lab professionals have been given , or elections of scientists or engineers as "Fellows" of their professional societies.

Youre howling about an arena that you hve little knowledge and and therefore are totally ignorant about what " education and other credentials" are actually about.

They are a display of MINIMUM qualifications for taking part as a professional worker, and one of the minimum qualifications e try to monitor is character and honesty at the entry level. Certainly there are later examples of scientists who "Sell out" their Confidentiality Clearance Status iin order to engage in selling their research secrets to an enemy or an industry. This is a whole other area of misdeeds and often coincides with a definition of treason.
In engineering and Geoscience licensure quarterly NEWSLETTERS published by the responsible bureaus of the various states, They do publish DISCIPLINE activities of folks whove lied about their license status or fail to comply with the governing regulations of their license board.
Practicing WITHOUT a license ,i all governing authorities, is a crime that can lead to disbarment or even fines and imprisonment. So, while you can opine all you wish on a sound board as this, might I advise you not to go off making believe youre a licensed scientist or ngineer or degreed scientist seeking responsible employment.
You could have a very bad week

Read the part of my post that you quoted in your response. All I said was that a fact is true regardless of the credentials of who says it.

2+2=4 is a fact, whether the person saying it has a degree in mathematics or a GED or just passed the 5th grade.

Truth is true regardless of who says it, their credentials, etc.

Now you can go on about all these other institutional issues, but the fundamental fact remains that if a fact is true, or if reasoning is true, etc. that is doesn't become less true because the person saying it is a circus clown, a schizophrenic, a serial killer, or whatever.

2+2=4, water freezes at 0C and boils at 100C, etc. and if you arrive at such facts by taking some other path besides institutionalized/academic education, your findings are not any less true than someone who learns the same facts and/or understands such things because they went to school to do so.

You need to grasp that all these institutions, educational and otherwise, that have evolved to structure culture/learning/etc. exist in the way they do because people tried to design and implement them to achieve ideals, just as Jeremy Bentham designed the panoptic prison to achieve the ideals that he expected would be achieved. The same panoptic prison complex could have been designed by someone else, or some other method for using surveillance and discipline could have been implemented by someone else, or people could just behave themselves without having to sit in a prison cell being watched. The point of the prison is to discipline behavior, and if the correct behavior outcome is achieved without the prison, or with some other prison, the outcome is the same.

Truth is just well-disciplined knowledge. Technically all 'knowledge' must be true to be called, 'knowledge,' but the fact is that there is information passing as knowledge, as there has been throughout history, that is not true or not fully true. The discipline of knowledge to more refined levels of truth can happen as a result of academic discourse in classrooms, journals, and conferences; or it could happen within an internet discussion or over lunch.

If some crazy lunatic comes online and states the universe is contracting and not expanding and people dismiss the claim and ridicule the poster, it could still turn out at some point in the future that he was right and then those who did the ridiculing will have been wrong and the crazy lunatic will have known the truth all along. That is the just basic reality of truth. Anyone could stumble upon it and not even know why it's right, but if it later turns out that what they said was right, then they were right and you can't argue that they weren't.

2 Replies

@livinglava,

Actually... to what point are you open minded LivingLava? You seem to close your mind awfully fast.

If someone who has studied a lot more mathematics than you tried to explain to you that mathematically speaking 2 + 2 is not always equal to 4... would you be open to the fact that there is a lot about mathematics that you don't understand, or would you close your mind and declare him an "idiot"?

If you studied mathematics in college, you would get to a point where you would studied vector spaces and operations. If you ever get to this point you would understand why even this rant is nonsense. In order for you to learn more advanced mathematics, you need to open your mind and learn from people who know more than you do.

My education is in Physics. People who majored in mathematics know a lot more than I do about this. I have taken a couple of classes (it turns out to be useful in Physics) and there is a lot more to know about mathematics then you could even imagine.

You are so sure you are right, and so sure that you know everything, that you have closed your mind to education. When someone who knows more than you says "hmmm.... there is more about that then you understand", you attack them rather than listening and maybe learning something. There are a couple of areas in which I can claim a fair amount of expertise... because I have spent time studying them. In any area, when I find someone who knows more than I do... I am happy to learn.

And that is Dunning Kruger.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

Trying to redeem yerself wh? Im sorry Ll, but youre just wallowing in denial about expertise , especially degreed or "license to practice"- based on degrees required , experiece and testing , as I said previously , these are merely minimum competence bios to land a job in some professional or technical field.
I can guarantee that, with your lack of any of the above, coupled with your inane attitudes about"you dont need no educashun", you wont ever have to worry about landing such a job and begin a professional career path.

2 Replies

@farmerman,

There is a funny dance between PhD Physicists and PhD level Mathematicians. The Physicists will come to the Mathematicians and say... we have a new theory we need to test and we have this erm... new mathematical problem, a function that we don't know how to solve. Could you look at it for us?

Then the Mathemeticians will chuckle, and say "oh... that little thing, so-and-so figured that out as a little puzzle 20 years ago. We had no idea that it had any practical use." That is the weird thing about mathematicians, they play with weird mathematical ideas just out of the joy of it. They don't care whether their mathematical musings will ever be useful or not.

Quite often, when Physics catches up to where where they need it, the "new" branch of mathematics has already been quite well developed years ago.

1 Reply

The Dunning-Kruger effect, sound like someone you know?

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