Living in the Era of Dunning-Kruger

American culture has a blind spot or a fatal flaw in its response to unproductive, sensational, or cancerous behavior. Today, many Americans celebrate and implicitly support people who act stupidly, immorally, and even criminally. They gravitate towards celebrities who promote chaos and away from those who are boringly competent. Our social media algorithms are aware of this and reinforce exciting, often moronic behavior. Moreover, the facilitation of mostly negative excitement is contagious. A rumor about someone we barely know becomes “truth” worthy of telling all our friends.

The root causes of this stupidity, immorality, and criminality are varied. This article focuses on one root cause, on what psychologists refer to as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This effect comes easily to many Americans because they believe they are inherently exceptional. They think they live in a special, God-blessed country filled with extraordinary, rugged individualists. So, if they live in God’s chosen country and they wear a flag lapel, then they must be exceptional.

The textbook definition of the Dunning-Kruger (D-K) Effect is:

“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It was first described by the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Some researchers also consider the opposite effect, where high performers tend to underestimate their skills. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about the general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of the specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task.”

The key takeaway from this effect is that wealth, intelligence, morality, political orientation, and other factors have no bearing on this effect. A liberal, conservative, wealthy, intelligent, and morally sound person can exhibit this cognitive bias as easily as a polar opposite. Anyone can demonstrate this mental bias. Countless studies have validated this effect, despite its counterintuitive nature.

Many low-skilled people believe they are more highly skilled than they really are. An example would be a singer in a karaoke bar or shower who thinks they are an excellent singer. Likewise, there is a student who does not study but still feels they understand the subject matter and, in any case, should get good grades. Low-skilled people often resort to rationalizations to compensate for their lack of objective success. They blame their teachers, the “lame” students who study and cheat, their parents, and so on.

A key finding of the D-K research is that some high achievers in one domain tend to overestimate their abilities in other domains. An example would be an accomplished physicist who thinks he is an expert in economics. A person can be an expert in both physics and economics, but it is unlikely. Like low-achieving individuals, high-achieving people can also overestimate their competence in a different area of expertise. Both high-achieving individuals and those around them tend to believe that a PhD confers the status of a genius in every field of endeavor. Like largely unskilled individuals, these experts in one field often rationalize their deficits in a different field. Usually, many of the “experts” possess the credentials but are mediocre at best in their respective fields of expertise. These “mediocre” experts are the ones who most frequently fall into the D-K trap.

I am confident that D-K has been around since the beginning of humankind. However, we should become concerned when this effect becomes acceptable, ubiquitous, and glorified. It has become evident to many that the celebration of self-delusion and worse behavior has diluted our culture. It seems that we have begun to accept arrogance, self-deception, and bad behavior as “normal.”

A perfect example of D-K is Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest person. I believe he is a very talented man, but he has and undoubtedly will continue to dig even deeper into the bottomless D-K hole. He has supreme confidence in his ability to manage rockets, cars, holes in the ground (The Boring Company), chips in the head, and DOGE. DOGE decisively proved to any objective person that his unlimited abilities have limits. Despite his chutzpah and PR minions, DOGE was a colossal fiasco on every level. He promised trillions of dollars in savings, but under his leadership, perhaps only one percent of his promised savings will be realized. Many of DOGE’s savings dismantled 70 years of goodwill and progress with foreign countries. History is likely to show DOGE to be one of the most foolish governmental activities since our war to kill Saddam Hussein. To add salt to Elon’s wounds, his sycophancy to President Trump backfired. The two White House bros busted up at the end in a nasty name-calling circus. Musk’s ill-fated DOGE experience severely damaged his brand, particularly his Tesla one. If he continues to try to be the master of the political world, he is likely to end up as the villain in a future James Bond movie. Elon should stick to engineering; he is a political moron.

If our country is known by those who lead us, then how are we doing? Today, we have leaders in the Trump administration who openly flout successful American traditions and are clearly unqualified for their positions of authority.

I grew up in the 1950s, when education, true patriotism, and community-mindedness were highly valued. Those who worked hard were rewarded. Maybe I am delusional about the “good old days”, but I recognize, as most of us who grew up during this period do, that Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were leaders who helped to make America great. They were not perfect, but they valued education, truth, equality, prosperity, and freedom for all.

Our most recent leaders have fallen well short of these men. In the 1950s and 60s, our society was heading to the moon. Our tax structure allowed working-class families to join the middle class. We rewarded education, inventiveness, fairness, and honesty. With some exceptions, we collectively agreed on facts. We were not at each other’s throats.

Today, the script has flipped 180 degrees. One South African immigrant wants to use American tax money to send “human consciousness to Mars.” Our tax structure favors the ultra-rich, to the detriment of those with assets under $10 million. It is especially harmful to the lower half of our economy.

The current administration is now promoting the use of professional soldiers to police domestic urban areas, rather than preparing them for their traditional role of defending the country from foreign adversaries. Why would anyone believe that military men could or should be competent to act as urban police officers? President Trump is clearly an example of the D-K effect.

The federal government is now attacking every element of the American educational system. It is not reforming education (and it needs reform); instead, it is taking a wrecking ball to it. The current administration’s health leader believes in fringe, pseudo-medicine. However, his meager qualifications consist of being a lawyer and having a famous surname. Yet, this example of the D-K effect has cancelled hundreds of promising medical research programs and has replaced them with homeopathic and pseudo-scientific programs.

Americans no longer agree on facts. In reality, a huge contingent believes in provable nonsense. If America no longer trusts in the science of men like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, and Albert Einstein, what are we left with?

The following is a brief video interview with Carl Sagan, conducted shortly before he died in 1996. To quote from this interview, he said, “This combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces.”

If we continue to follow those whose role in government far exceeds their qualifications, then sooner or later, things will blow up in our faces. These inferior leaders are consumed by delusional thinking, and their delusions infect our country.

President Biden and his enablers engaged in delusional thinking about his diminishing mental acuity. He exhibited the D-K effect by thinking he was competent to serve another term.

Our current President is a better example of the D-K effect. He, like his predecessor, is mentally declining. Additionally, he has never had the aptitude or talent to be a president. Foreign leaders understand that they are dealing with a petulant child, not the American president. Moreover, he is such a compulsive micromanager that his appalling lack of competence in so many domains causes him to be very insecure and hyper-defensive. Predictably, people who are both insecure and arrogant spend most of their time fighting those who attempt to ask questions that they cannot answer honestly. They engage in an endless loop of pretending, denying, attacking, and failing.

The increased prevalence of the D-K effect has taken the wind out of everyone’s sails. This includes people who know they cannot sing in the shower, but accept or condone the reality of the effect on others. Instead of fighting those who exhibit D-K behavior, they take it as fate. By their acquiescence, they are willingly led by brazen fools who think they can sing like Pavarotti.

We can all be foolish and have fun at a karaoke bar. We all need to let off steam. However, when we leave the bar and sober up, we should not quit school, quit our job, or divorce our spouse in favor of a music career. Likewise, we should not elect false Pavarottis.

We cannot afford to divorce ourselves from our reality. We are each born with gifts and limitations. Each of us needs to understand ourselves and our circumstances. We also need to scrutinize those with whom we do business or choose to represent us. Electing representatives who are extraordinarily arrogant and self-delusional is a prescription for societal and cultural collapse. We place more emphasis on exciting chaos than stable progress. We allow unqualified people to hold essential offices because they receive high ratings on a particular news channel. Just because an actor can play a good doctor on television does not make the actor a doctor. To use another medical analogy, Americans are now selecting butchers with their big knives to remove our children’s tonsils instead of trained medical surgeons with their scalpels.