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Comment by robomc | Hacker News Reader

The tennis example is weird though. I don't think people who are bad at tennis go around claiming they're great at tennis, do they?

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They do, seriously it is very common with male interactions. I have seen it first hand with tennis, golf, chess, and bowling. With golf easily being the most common

Chess? Can't you just ask for their ELO? Or some proxy like chess.com rating? If you're good you must have played a lot of games. If you did, you got some number to back it up.

I find it helpful to tell people who I know only dabble in eg chess that I am "pretty good at chess" when they do not have enough context on things like Elo and FIDE ratings to be able to understand comparisons like that. Of course, if someone knows what Elo is or is an active chess player then I will more humbly just tell them I am only like 1600 on lichess.

I don't think this is necessarily bad. Compared to people who only dabble in things, someone who spends a decent amount of time on something actually is "pretty good" at it even though they might not be top tier to people within that same culture.

I think there is some popular (dan luu?) blog about this. You can actually pretty easily be in the top 1% of skill or knowledge on something, and while that doesn't make you a world expert by any means, it does kinda make you an expert to an average person. My 1600 rating is very good within the pool of people who know what chess is and can play it, even though it's not impressive at all for people who actively play chess.

Dunning Kruger would have us think so.

Also, most people who are good at something let their actions speak.

Tennis is competitive though and unlike golf there’s no form of handicap. When it comes to pick up tennis, it’s not fun playing against someone way below or way above your level. I refer to myself as mediocre at tennis so I can play against people who are around my level. People who are good refer to themselves as being good so that everyone enjoys themselves (and improves) on a court.

The difference between good and mediocre is significant. To the point that I cannot return a good tennis player’s serves. The difference between mediocre and post beginner is just as significant.

Having played both tennis and golf, I agree. It's a lot harder to play social tennis than social golf.

Two nice things about golf - the handicap system let's two players of different level engage in fun competition. (Yes, handicaps can be manipulated, but for the most part aren't. )

Second a very good player can play with a bad player, and both can have fun. The social factor is more important to the fun, and I've enjoyed tight games with people with hugely disparate handicaps.

With tennis I always want to play either someone just a little bit better than me. Someone who can help me get a bit better all the time. My enjoyment of the game depends a lot on their performance.

Both are enjoyable in their own right.

How do you overcome a wrong observation of a local maximum though (e.g. in your club maybe)?

I only experienced something like this once, late 90s. We thought of ourselves as pretty ok StarCraft players until we got some visitor to a lan party who basically demolished everyone. This was pre-ladder iirc so you only played a handful of games online.

In golf the handicap system is "global". Each player has a handicap index, which then translates into a course handicap. It's not perfect (different players have different strengths and weaknesses, which means some courses "suit" a game more than others) but generally the system is at least reasonably accurate.

Tennis of course is harder. You can only be as good as the people you are playing with.

Dunning Kruger is a cognitive bias in overconfident individuals, not a general characteristic found in every person.

There’s a little Dunning-Krueger in all of us. Well, everyone else, but not me, or you, dear reader.

That’s the appeal of Dunning-Krueger. It’s become a blanket label for every moment of ignorance or confident stupidity someone sees in others.

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