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Kamrul Miah's avatar

If the very best you have encountered tend to underestimate their abilities significantly, they are ALSO TERRIBLE at judging where they are in the skills distribution. That's sort of the whole point.

Additionally, it should be noted that Dunning-K does NOT suggest that the less skilled believe they are more competent than the highly-skilled. It's that the less skilled believe they are more competent than they really are. In fact, the less skilled still understood that they were in the lowest quartile of accomplishment -- they just didn't realize how bad they are! So it's not as if you have some loudmouthed idiot who truly believes he is the BEST. It's more a case of the rubbish not understanding just how rubbish they truly are.

Speaking anecdotally, I've generally found that the most highly competent individuals I encountered [in some given domain] were roughly aware of how good they were, but the absolute cream of the crop were neither arrogant or drum-beating about it, nor were they totally wilting flowers. Generally, they tended to be generous with their knowledge and rather confident [in their abilities]. When you can easily bench-press 450lbs, it's pretty hard pretending that you are nowhere near such a strength level. The same applies with skill.

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Kamrul Miah's avatar

Carl, but that's anecdotal, and we have no idea how reliable a source you are ☺.

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