The Dunning-Kruger effect

I just came across this word in one of Digg's link. Basically the premise for that article was that digg users are typically a bunch of teenagers that think highly amongst themselves.

What is Dunning-Kruger effect?

From wikipedia, it is the phenomenon whereby people who have little knowledge systematically think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge. Accordingly these are the hypotheses presented by the two fellow who studied the effect,

1. incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
2. incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
3. incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
4. if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

Well these revelations are certainly an eye opener but not really a shocker. All throughout human history there have been people who think highly of themselves. There is a saying in India that states "a half-filled jug creates more noise than a full-filled one". Those who possesses little to no talent are the ones that are noisier compared to those who possesses more. Even the great Albert Einstein can reiterate on this. He was quoted as saying "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."

Dealing with it

It is already a fact of life that these effect has existed, is existing and will continue to exists. Learn to accept this fact and just let those intelligent fools make fool of themselves. There will come a time those people will learn the value of the saying "pretend to be silent and judge as unintelligent than speak up and lose credibility". Just think about this, even a bluff can win a poker but not all the time.