Do you have an ego? If so, keep reading! Would you like an ego? If so, keep reading!
This post is dedicated to us, the thinking, educated people. Pats on the back for everyone, we are all the best humans on earth. Go us.
In short, the Dunning-Kruger effect is thus: a cognitive bias in which “people who are unskilled… reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.”
Effectively, this is a strange behaviour where the incompetent do not realize their own incompetence, due to their incompetence. They never recognize they’re doing anything wrong, indeed they outright lack the ability to even reach such a conclusion. Thus, they think they’re doing fine, nay, fantastic, and as such develop a hugely inflated opinion of themselves.
The inverse of this is also true.
The competent do not realize their own competence, because they are competent. They see greater skill in others, recognize their own failures and mistakes, and thus try to improve. Inevitably they do improve, becoming much, much better than where they used to be.
But the competent (usually) never realize it. They get better, yes, but they still think themselves the abject incompetent failure they used to be. They still make mistakes, they still see others better than they.
The incompetent unskilled develop massively inflated opinions of their own ability, whereas the competent skilled vastly and consistently underestimate themselves.
Just read the wikipedia page already.
How many of you are nodding “that is so true”? I know I am.
How else do you explain the absolute failtastic cock buckets pulling 2k DPS in 245 gear espousing their supreme uberness?
How else do you explain how Tamarind who quite obviously is a fantastic healer continues to think himself largely incapable of healing a blade of grass through a light breeze?
Consider. Let’s say you wipe. Everyone is dead, the boss is not. Where does the blame get shifted?
Incompetent people will blame others. It’s not them defending themselves, or trying to shirk the blame, trying to deflect blame so their failure isn’t revealed in front of their peers. In actuality, they are incapable of even seeing their own failure. They can’t. They flat out cannot comprehend themselves failing in any way. It must be someone else who screwed up, because they didn’t make any mistakes.
These guys do not improve, because they don’t see that there is anything that needs to be improved.
Competent people will blame themselves. It’s not self loathing, or a martyr syndrome of any sort, they are simply capable of recognizing their own short comings. They know perfectly well they can fail, have failed, and will fail in the future. They second guess everything they’ve done, analyze their own performance and say “if only I did that, if only I did this.” They “logically” come to the conclusion that it was their own fault, that they failed and single handedly caused the wipe.
These guys stop, think and talk it over, try new strategies, do research online, doing everything within their power to improve.
To all of us competent players… cheers. We rule. Now if only we could get past that crippling self doubt thing, we’d be good to go.
I tell you, right here right now, that you are awesome. You are a skilled player capable of great things. “But I-” NO! SILENCE! You are awesome! “But there was that one time where I-” OF COURSE there was! You think skilled players never make mistakes? You think skilled means flawless? NO! Skilled players make mistakes, always have and always will. What makes a skilled player skilled is that they learn from those mistakes, that they can even realize a mistake was even made.
WARNING: Critical levels of happy detected. Dumping joy to disc, loading QQ. Please stand by.