"Researchers discover there are many incompetent people in the world"
According to a New York Times article, Dr. David A. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, has found that people who do things badly, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.
The scientists found that in some cases there was an inverse proportionality between a persons actual and perceived ability.
In other words, the worse someone was at doing something the better they thought they were at it. Specifically the type of things where "self-awareness" or "self-monitoring" are required to evaluate one's competence.
An example might be a job where there is no immediate feedback on how well one is doing, in contributing to societies store of usable knowledge, such as in a large university....or perhaps any number of jobs in bureaucratic settings where there is little feedback on how well one is doing (or maybe not even a clear definition of what one is doing to further the goal of that enterprise).
The findings support Thomas Jefferson's assertion that "he who knows best knows how little he knows."
On the other hand, in some cases, Dr. Dunning pointed out, an awareness of one's own inability is inevitable: "In a golf game, when your ball is heading into the woods, you know you're incompetent," he said.
You could extend that, immediate feedback on one's competence to a bomb deactivator, auto mechanic, carpenter, cook, seamstress...etc. etc. etc.
It's not something we didn't already know (my blissful ignorance may be showing),
but we often find the truly clueless in those areas where the "proof is not in the pudding".
Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss
