dunning kruger definition, with help from stefan

stefan, the wine guy, the one who actually owns the vineyard, looked at me over the rim of his own pinot last weekend and said “you should write that down.” he was not being kind. he was being exact. so here, finally, is what i told him a famous psychology thing actually means. brace yourself.

at my desk on a 10 38am thursday carla is in training session the on the third i have floor conservatively until they break for lunch.

so. the dunning kruger definition, as delivered, on a tuesday evening, to a man named stefan whose own pinot was, on a careful taste, vastly better than the one he gave me. stefan knew this. stefan was, in this respect, also performing the phrase, but in reverse. he knew the wine. he poured the wine. he watched the lesser drinker, me, confidently explain a thing back to him. that is, frankly, how stefan’s saturdays go.

dunning kruger definition: the formal name for the gap between what a person thinks they know and what a person actually knows. the loud version sits at the top of the curve. the quiet version, much later, sits at the bottom of the valley. the entire pattern, in casual usage, is the polite name for confident wrongness across an audience that will, mostly, tolerate it.

EXPERTS. POUR. AMATEURS. EXPLAIN.

that goes on the wall. there is a cinematic shorthand for the tuesday-with-stefan dynamic, if you’d like one — see the 2004 film “sideways”, where two men spend two hours confidently discussing wine while a third party with actual training pours the wine and says, mostly, nothing — a structural template for ninety percent of saturdays in this country, and a fair description of the tuesday in question.

dunning kruger definition, as delivered to stefan

here is, roughly, what i said. i said the phrase mostly described a pattern in which people who didn’t know much thought they knew a lot. i said the phrase had a graph. i said the graph had a peak and a valley and a long climb. i said i was, on a good day, on the long climb. stefan, holding the bottle, said: “you’re at the top of the peak right now, in my house.” he did not, technically, smile. stefan does not smile. he does, however, refill, which is its own gentler kind of correction.

my dad, quoted often in these posts, would have said something similar. my dad, on the phone, said the smartest people he ever met were the ones who could tell you in one sentence what they did not know. i could not, that tuesday, tell stefan what i did not know about wine, except that i did not know what he, with three sips, knew about it. that, by the phrase’s own definition, is the part where i lose. the loss was, on a careful read, instructive.

what the formal version, technically, says

the formal version, more carefully laid out in the overview of the dunning-kruger effect, says the gap is largest at low levels of competence. as you learn more, the gap shrinks. as you learn quite a lot, the gap inverts: you start to suspect you don’t know enough to talk. that’s the curve. that’s the structure. that’s the part most people draw on a napkin and then ignore for the rest of the week.

the catch is that the curve, while accurate, is mostly used as a weapon. people use the phrase to describe other people. i looked it up, briefly, two months ago, and then proceeded, the very next evening, to use the phrase about a coworker whose error i was, in a small private way, savouring. that is, in itself, a kind of double-confidence. that is the working version of the trap. the earlier definition i drafted tried to flag this. i, the author, ignored my own flag within four hours.

stefan, on this, was right

stefan, when i finished, said: “you spent twelve minutes on a phrase you used twice.” i argued. stefan said: “i timed it.” stefan, on a tuesday, in his own kitchen, with his own pinot, was, technically, the most credentialed person in the room and also the quietest. he listened. he refilled. he timed. these are, in any real sense, the moves of an expert.

i, on the way home, walked past a microwave display in a hardware store window. the microwave plate doesn’t need to spin. i’d like that take on the record because it is, on a tuesday, a hot take i, briefly, defend. the spinning is performance. the heat is the work. these things are, frankly, separable. stefan, were i to ask him, would probably nod. stefan nods rarely. when stefan nods, it is, on a careful read, a kind of grade.

what the phrase actually means in daily life

this is the part i had to walk home to figure out. the formal definition is fine. the napkin curve is fine. but the daily definition, the one that actually applies, is shorter and meaner. it is: the loud guy is wrong, the quiet guy is right, the loud guy buys the round. that is mike’s version, from an earlier post. it is also, increasingly, my preferred version. it is the working version. the formal version is for class.

the daily version explains why, on a tuesday, stefan was quiet. stefan, in his own kitchen, did not need to explain wine. wine was, evidently, in his glass. wine was, evidently, in my glass. wine was, evidently, in the bottle on the counter with a label i could not, technically, pronounce. that is the working definition. you don’t need to talk about the thing if the thing is in your hand.

three signs the phrase is currently working on you

i wrote these on the back of stefan’s wine list, which i had taken without asking and which is, currently, on my kitchen table, next to the takeout menu and a coupon for a place that no longer exists.

• you defined a thing in someone’s house in someone else’s expertise. you, on a tuesday, in their kitchen, with their wine. you. them. their floor.
• they did not, in any meaningful sense, correct you. they, in fact, refilled. that refill, on a careful read, is the correction.
• you walked home thinking about the phrase you had been describing. not the wine. the phrase. that, frankly, is the diagnostic. the wine, by then, is incidental.

three for three is, on most saturdays, normal. you should aim for two for three. zero for three is, frankly, suspicious. that is its own kind of overconfidence.

stefan’s actual wisdom, paraphrased without permission

stefan, near the end of the evening, said one thing i did write down. he said: “the people who define things are usually the ones who don’t know them.” he said this in english, slowly, because his english is, on a careful listen, deliberate. he meant: people who know things describe them. people who don’t, define them. there is, structurally, a difference. defining is a flag. describing is a finger. the finger is more useful in most rooms.

i have, in this post, attempted to do both. i have defined the phrase. i have, in places, described it. the description, in my private estimate, is the better half. the definition, frankly, was for the search bar. you arrived here for that. you got it. now we can, gently, move on.

carla just walked past my desk. the training session wrapped early. she did not, on her way back, ask what i was working on. that is, in this office, a kindness. that is also, in some respects, a verdict. one of us, on a thursday morning, is being graded in absentia. it is not, technically, her.

the wine list, since tuesday, is on the kitchen table. the takeout menu is, since tuesday, beside it. the coupon is, since 2022, expired.

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