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Comment by md_ | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of seeming like an asshole:

I think for every highly competent person who just lacks a bit of social graces and is unfairly punished by a defensive bureaucracy, I have encountered many more incompetent people who, due to Dunning-Kruger, don't recognize their own incompetence, and instead ascribe the rejection of their (mediocre) ideas to the unfair defensiveness of the bureaucracy above them.

Or, in meme form: https://imgflip.com/i/8ks5kq.

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How have you ever gotten the full story so many times to know that these people exist in such numbers? You'd have to hear their bad idea (apparently be intelligent enough to understand them completely) and then you'd also be there to hear them griping and blaming management and again finding their complaints uncompelling.

Hmm, let me put it this way:

I have often run into people who seem to think management is stupid for not accepting their idea, which they then explain--and which I also think is a bad idea.

Maybe I'm also just dumb, though!

> highly competent person who just lacks a bit of social graces

I consider myself one of these people (let's say above average competency). I don't think management is stupid for not accepting my ideas. I begin to have an issue when they disregard the concerns my idea was meant to address. Too often, it feels as though they choose the path which leads us straight into what I think are clearly foreseeable and avoidable problems, and then I'm at fault for describing them as such after the fact.

This isn’t meant to respond directly to your statement because I’ve seen the same thing. BUT one fascinating thing I’ve learned is how scale plays into things. That $50 million project may be a Senior Director’s most important, career-making project … but less than a rounding error to their EVP.

Amusing anecdote: On average, people think they are above average.

> many more incompetent people who, due to Dunning-Kruger, don't recognize their own incompetence

You are right of course, I am myself a living proof of that, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy organization to give me a promotion. That said, this doesn't really explain why so many incompetent people end up being promoted, which Peter (I believe correctly) documented. His theory is admittedly a bit more elaborate than mine, but it obviously builds on an endearing naïveté regarding the nature of organizations, especially large and mature such.

Dunning-Kruger seems like an overused framework to explain just pure "lack of self-awareness due to immaturity / ego / lack of intelligence, etc."

Not to mention that if someone isn't a psychologist they shouldn't be spouting off about the Dunning-Kruger effect anyway because arguably they don't have enough competence in that particular domain to be able to talk about it intelligently.

Hell, I have a PhD in psychology and I don't know enough about this effect to talk about it intelligently.

Isn't people who don't know enough about Dunning-Kruger confidently spouting off about it...sort of evidence of Dunning-Kruger?

I kid of course. Or do I?

I don’t think the takeaway from the Dunning-Kruger effect is "don’t invoke basic aspects of human nature on internet discussion forums unless you’re a trained academic psychologist"

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