Zed A. Shaw, Painter

“The most severe-form of the Dunning-Kruger Effect afflicts those who are genuinely talented in one area of their lives, and believe this means they’re brilliant thinkers on all subjects, whether they have education or experience in those topics, or not. No cure has been found.”

I have a model for this behaviour. Consider a person who holds two correlated beliefs: 1. The Fixed Mindset, and; 2. Hierarchy. The first belief is that while training or practice can improve everyone, performance is dominated by innate, unchangeable factors.

This is what Dr. carol Dweck calls the “Fixed Mindset,” a belief that people are essentially unchangeable, and of you don’t have it, you’ll never get it. And if you do have it, you’ll never lose it.

People with the Fixed Mindset tend to generalize: You’re smart, or you’re dumb (not my word, theirs). And it follows directly from a belief in the domination of innate factors that nobody smart becomes dumb, and nobody dumb becomes smart.

This explains “I’m a neurosurgeon, therefore I’m an expert in Egyptology, and the Pyramids were granaries.” If you’re smart enough to be a neurosurgeon, you’re “smart.” And therefore, you’re smart about Egyptology.

And since you’re smart, you know that while you could be a little more informed if you do actual research and learning, it won’t make that much difference, because you’re smart or you aren’t, and studying Egyptology won’t make you smarter.

The second belief is that in any set, we can order the elements from best to worse. It’s a belief that everything is nature has a hierarchy. And that if a hierarchy is not apparent, we can and should force-fit one on top.