Dunning and Kruger Explain it All

During my high school years I always suspected that I was smarter than most of my peers... Yet everyone around me always knew what was going on - and I was never sure. Everyone around me was self-confident - and I was wracked with self-doubt... I was deeply conflicted and troubled by the apparent disparity between what I felt was true and what I saw around me... I emerged from high school feeling incompetent and worthless - just some fast fingers caressing the strings on a 1953 Fender Telecaster - no more, no less...

It wasn't until I joined the military - where processes were clearly defined and evaluations were more objective than subjective - that I discovered my suspicions had been right all along... And I spent decades wondering how I could have felt so inferior to those confident kids - you know - the cool ones - the ones with "leadership qualities". The ones who knew that they were special and you weren't.

Then in 1998 Dunning and Kruger explained it all...
They administered a variety of "standardized tests" and discovered that those who scored the highest on the tests were the least confident that they had done well, whereas those who scored the lowest were dead certain they had done well. Furthermore - when shown other people's answers, those who got them right became less certain of their answers whereas those who got them wrong became even more certain they were right.
Like Paul Simon said: "A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest" - a sentiment echoed by the great Michael McDonald when he wrote "What a Fool Believes"...

The undeniable conclusion: The more confident a person is, the more likely they are to be totally incompetent.

This is rather troubling when you consider that self-confidence is one of the key characteristic we look for in doctors, lawyers, politicians and "the captains of finance and industry". Basically, the people who have the most control over our lives... (And now you know what really caused the "mortgage crisis")
Now I'm certainly not claiming that all those people are incompetent. Perish the though! As a lawyer I pretend to be confident all the time... It's really easy because that's what people want to believe :-)
The frightening part is that it's all but impossible to distinguish the truly confident (and hence incompetent) from those who are just faking it for our benefit. Personally, I sincerely hope my doctor is just faking it :-)

And nowhere are the effects more evident than in our schools. The confident kids are revered by their fellow students and teachers alike... And especially the coaches. Yes - nowhere does confidence, attitude and swagger play a greater role than in sports!

And that's my clumsy segue into one of my favorite stories - well, maybe more of a rant than a story - regardless, it's about a quarterback:

In high school he spent his first 3 years on the bench. Every once in a while they'd put him in late in the 4th quarter when they were way behind - just to give him some playing time - and he'd win the game. But his high school coach still thought he didn't have the "skills" to play at that level until his senior year...

In that last year of high school he did well enough to be noticed by a major college, where history repeated itself. At the start of his junior year he was the 3rd quarterback on the depth chart - he just didn't have the "skills" to play at that level. But every once in a while they'd put him in late in the 4th quarter when they were way behind - just to give him some playing time - and he'd win the game. His coach finally had to admit there was "something there" and moved him to the top of the depth chart.

He won a lot of college games but the pro scouts weren't impressed at all... No speed - no arm strength. He simply didn't have the "skills" to play at the pro level... And he wasn't drafted until the 3rd round. There were 81 players chosen ahead of him - 81 players judged to be "better" than him... Each team in the NFL passed him over at least twice.

That quarterback was Joe Montana - winner of 4 Super Bowls - architect of 31 come from behind 4th quarter victories. Yeah - his lack of "skills" didn't stop him from winning 71% of his pro games and amassing a pile of MVP trophies.

So how can you explain that so many people completely failed to recognize one of the greatest talents in football history??? We're talking every professional coach, scout, GM and owner in the game - people whose job it is to recognize talent - people who get paid unimaginable sums of money to win games. And they all completely and utterly blew it...

It would be comforting to think that Joe Montana was an isolated case, but the sports "Halls of Fame" are full of 3rd round draft picks and the trash heap of sports history is littered with top picks.
It would be even more comforting if sports were the only human endeavor where real talent goes undetected... Yeah - the "experts" get it right sometimes, but I wouldn't put money on it... And Dunning and Kruger explain it all...