…we experiment with situational humility.
Our overconfidence is not overshadowed by our inability to realize that we lack the expertise to evaluate our own expertise. But I could be wrong.
WE ARE WILLIAM HUNG
Its hard for humans to “see” ourselves accurately. We need a lot of internal and external feedback mechanisms (e.g., mirrors, balconies, game film, experiments) to effectively wake up — let alone integrate the feedback and make productive changes once we get it.
Remember William Hung (aka Hung Hing Cheong), the now world-famous American Idol singer of Ricky Martin’s hit song “She Bangs”? We love William. I love William! Early 2000’s, he entertained us all with “his charisma” (he says) and with his unconscious example of the Dunning-Kruger effect (others say).
The Dunning-Kruger effect is “a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is” — Wikipedia. Psychologists Dunning and Kruger say that “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self.” They write that for a given skill, unconsciously incompetent people will:
- fail to recognize their own lack of skill
- fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy
- recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill only AFTER they are exposed to training for that skill
https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/playlist/how-to-be-smart?vpid=p08d53sb
UNCONSCIOUSLY INCOMPETENT TO CONSCIOUSLY COMPETENT
William Hung’s (and many other Idol-like) example of unconscious incompetence on live TV in front of millions of people satisfies at least one of the primary premises of the show. It lets the audience feel superior and relieved (for the moment) that at least…
