dunning kruger, the 2-name verdict

47 tabs. 47. one was a tutorial on a psychology effect, one was a tutorial on the standing desk where i sit, and one was a video, somehow, of a hamster on a scale. water, while we are here, is a scam in the ways that matter. i am fairly sure about all of this.

writing this from the standing desk where i sit, on a monday at 11:34am, with the WIP 2022 list parked on the second monitor and the printer two rows over sounding, briefly, like the loudest thing in the building. the all-hands wrapped at the half-hour mark — the version of mercy a corporate calendar offers when it isn’t paying attention. the morning is mine. the tab count is not.

the phrase under the lamp today is the short one — dunning kruger, no effect, no graph, no second sentence. people use the two names like a single word and drop the rest because the rest sounds like homework. for the long-form version with both names attached and the full chart, see the dunning kruger effect explained by someone who definitely has it. that one is the pillar. this one is the anchor — the short name a confident person says before checking anything.

dunning kruger: the short anchor name for the longer dunning-kruger effect — the gap between how good a person believes they are at a thing and how good they actually are, where the people least equipped tend to feel the most certain. used as a two-word noun in meetings, group chats, and the second half of arguments. the short name keeps the diagnosis. it loses the second sentence. most days, that is enough.

TWO. NAMES. NO. EFFECT. THAT’S. THE. PHRASE.

i typed dunning kruger into the search bar at 9:14am with the kind of confidence a man uses when he is, technically, working on something else. the bar wanted me to add the word effect. i did not. for a cinematic frame on a confident person announcing a verdict before checking the facts, see the 2004 film “anchorman” with will ferrell, in which a man with a microphone identifies many things correctly in tone and almost none of them correctly in fact.

dunning kruger, the short version

the two-word phrase does the same job the longer phrase does, with less furniture. dunning kruger means the loud-guy thing. it means the meeting where the least informed person has the most to say. it means the cousin at the dinner table. it means me, on certain monday mornings, before the second coffee has finished doing whatever it does. you say it the way you say “rush hour” or “tax season” — a label for a known shape of the day.

the longer phrase, with the word effect attached, asks for the second half of the idea — the part where competent people sit quietly and assume the room is full of peers. the short phrase quietly cuts that half off. it points outward. it does not, easily, point at the speaker. for the misspelled cousin a barista wrote on a coffee cup with a smiley face, see the drugger kruger effect, a typo a barista handed me on a saturday — same idea, different vowel, longer apology.

the 47 tabs audit, what tab 4 contained

i counted them, against my own rules. tabs accumulate the way pennies accumulate in a drawer — slowly, then suddenly, then in a way you don’t want to think about. the count was 47. tab 4, opened on a thursday i no longer remember, had been sitting for eleven days unread.

tab 4 was titled, in the browser bar, “dunning kruger — short explainer.” three paragraphs long. one image of a graph. a sidebar selling a self-assessment quiz for $14. i had opened it with the energy of a man who intended to read it and the follow-through of a man who closes the laptop the second a notification arrives. the rest of the audit, briefly, no editing for dignity:

• psychology i clearly need (9 tabs): the short explainer, a forum where men in t-shirts argue about whether the effect is “real,” two ChatGPT screens i opened to “verify” a phrase i had not bothered to look up properly, and assorted paywalls.
• standing desk research (6 tabs): height adjustments, anti-fatigue mats, the model number of the desk i actually sit at, an article titled “is sitting the new smoking” that i did not read.
• finance i will not handle (5 tabs); cooking i will not do (4); sleep i will not get (3).
• everything else (20, by my count, possibly off by one).

the audit is the post in miniature. i opened tab 4 to learn about the dunning kruger phenomenon. i did not read tab 4. i was, on the same morning, the live demonstration of the thing tab 4 was trying to explain. the tab waited. the irony, if you choose to call it that, kept its receipts.

the standing desk, where i sit, where i thought about this

the standing desk where i sit was, a year ago, an aspirational object. i ordered it on a sunday after an article — possibly a different tab, in a different audit — argued that sitting was a slow form of self-injury and the cure was a desk you could raise. the desk arrived in three boxes, six pieces of metal, four bags of screws, an instruction sheet in two languages neither of which fully matched the parts, and a small allen key that bent on screw seven.

i now sit at it. the height adjustment, last touched in november, is currently set to a number that is not the recommended seated height and not the recommended standing height — it is the height i landed on the day i gave up calibrating. the desk was bought to solve a problem and now serves as a witness to my inability to solve it. it stands. i sit. we have arrived at a working compromise.

the dunning kruger point, here, is small but specific. i was confident about the desk before i had assembled the desk. i was confident about the desk after i had assembled the desk. i remain confident, today, in a way the desk does not, on the available evidence, deserve. the desk is the metaphor. the desk is also, more importantly, the desk.

why the short name is enough for most days

the short name is doing triage. when somebody at lunch says “that’s pure dunning kruger”, the listener does not need a graph. the listener needs the label. the label is enough to file the loud guy in the meeting under a category and move on with the sandwich. the short name is, in this sense, a verdict. the long name is a paper. most people, at lunch, do not need the paper.

the short name also lets the speaker off the hook for the harder half — the part where the competent overshoot themselves into invisibility, which pulls the speaker into the example. without it, the phrase points outward, cleanly, every time. you can use dunning kruger as a noun on a coworker, a relative, a man on a podcast, and never once worry that the noun might, on a careful read, fit you. the short name is a one-direction mirror. mirrors that point one way are, frankly, just windows.

findings, write it down

so here is what i wrote on the index card next to the keyboard, after the all-hands had wrapped and the printer two rows over had finally stopped pretending it was a heart monitor.

1. the short name is the working name. people use dunning kruger without the effect attached because the effect is the part that asks for a graph. nobody at lunch wants a graph. the short name is a verdict, served warm, no plate.
2. tab 4 was the joke. i had a tab open, for eleven days, on the very subject i had not yet bothered to read about. the audit caught me. it caught me cleanly.
3. the standing desk is honest. the desk does not pretend to be more than it is. metal, three boxes, one bent allen key, and a height i no longer touch. the man at the desk is the variable. the desk is the constant.
4. i wrote it down. on the index card, in the same handwriting i use for grocery lists. “the short name does the job. the long name is for the post.” then i underlined the word “post,” for reasons i cannot reconstruct.

the wip 2022 list is on the second monitor, untouched since february. the ChatGPT screens i opened last night to verify a phrase i should have looked up properly are still open. they are not, at this point, going to help me.

and water is the most overrated drink, since we are still here — three companies spending a combined billion dollars convincing me otherwise. the dunning kruger of beverages is, frankly, the bottle that costs four dollars and tastes like the tap.

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