Recently, I've enjoyed reading essays from Science for Hippies. One recent article deals with the rise of the "armchair experts", those people with Google PhDs.
There is a tendency these days to believe that a bit of time watching some YouTube videos and googling a few terms related to viruses will tell us all we need to know, but, as this article points out, people have a tendency to think they know more about a topic than they actually do. There's a term for that, and it's called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Quoted from the article:
The original title of the study was: “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” and, entertainingly, it featured a bank robber who covered his face with lemon juice under the belief that security cameras wouldn’t be able to see him. Lemon juice, after all, is a great way to write in invisible ink.
It’s good to be skeptical. It’s good to ask questions. But the beginning of wisdom is not so much to know that we know nothing, but to know how much we don’t know. Smart people know that.I've appreciated the sensible comments that this author has. More of us should take heed.
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