A study on incompetence

I stumbled across Unskilled and Unaware of It, and thought it was a rather interesting read. It is a summary of psychological research at Cornell on self-assessment. An oversimplification is that pretty much everyone considers themselves to be slightly above average, while in actuality may be at either end of the scale. Like I said though, that doesn't really tell the whole story, so I'd recommend reading it. They even quoted (sorta) Jefferson's "He who knows best knows how little he knows."

I was thinking while reading it that we could all be idiots and not have a clue. Thus one of the best parts of the article was this sentence in the closing remarks. "Although we feel we have done a competent job in making a strong case for this analysis, studying it empirically, and drawing out relevant implications, our thesis leaves us with one haunting worry that we cannot vanquish."

On a more serious note though, I find the whole topic rather interesting. There is some hypothesis about correlation with physical impairment and brain's interpretation of no problem. I don't really think it's that surprising though. No other system can really be designed to properly evaluate performance without having information on what that performance should entail. I think it's something to really keep in mind while learning new things.