How Good Are You at Recognizing Your Own Incompetence Asks Fry?

It’s all to do with the Dunning-Kruger effect says Fry, the tendency for the least mentally proficient people to often overestimate their own abilities.

Research into this area was inspired by a story so incredibly ridiculous it’s hard to believe that it’s true.

In 1995 a man by the name of McArthur Wheeler learnt that lemon juice can be used as an invisible ink.

He took his new-found knowledge one (rather large) step further and robbed two Pittsburgh banks, his face covered in lemon juice, convinced it would render his features invisible to CCTV.

When police later showed him video tapes of himself robbing the banks, he muttered: “But I wore the juice.”

Speaking of research into the Dunning-Kruger effect, Fry says: “The skills they lacked were the same skills required to recognise their incompetence.

“The incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.” 

In a new clip that Pindex put together, Fry also explains how Salience Bias and the power of repetition help shape views more than facts.

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance,” Fry says in the clip. “It is the illusion of knowledge.”

Reproduced from the Huffingdon Post