I became so tired of charges that I suffered the Dunning -Kruger syndrome that I resolved to find out what it was. Before I could, someone sent me a nice video, along with the observation:

“Here's a good video for you. It's animated, so you should be able to understand it:”

Of course! Talk about motivation! “Hi! Here’s a video that insults you! It only takes 10 minutes. I hope you’ll watch it.”

Still, he had done me a favor. I had been meaning to check it out. A taunter is not necessarily a bad thing because he helps you to test whether you can keep yourself restrained under evil. Sometimes you find that you cannot and then it is back to Bible 101 for you!

I watched it. Sigh....it is the Child’s game of King of the Mountain played on an intellectual plane by Adult Children—to the same self-aggrandizing end and with the same pushing and shoving techniques. Low information people are prone to overestimate their command of a subject? Is that really such a profound observation so as to wait for Dunning and Kruger to give it academic endorsement? Just read up on the “fool” in the Bible and you will pick up the same.

The video begins with the account of a bank robber who was caught because the lemon juice he put on his face hadn’t made him invisible to security cameras. He had imagined it would since lemon juice is a component of invisible ink. Can we agree that this fellow is not pulling with both oars in the water?

Nevertheless, university psychologists Dunning and Kruger seem to think this loopiness has broad applicability, as though anyone might commit such a faux pas. Reading of this idiot in the newspaper “led to Dunning and Kruger to examine this phenomenon more deeply.” This suggests to me that they too might not be entirely pulling with both oars.

There is a sneering quality to this video. Rather than view this fellow as a mental health candidate, these psychologists—or maybe it is just the video-maker—seem to expand his nuttiness to whomever might disagree with them over matters of science. Specifically, it is hurled at me because I do not lap up every bit of evolution they want me to lap up. I do lap up some of it. It wasn’t me who put dinosaurs on the Kentucky ark. But I don’t lap up the works.

In their experiment to “examine this phenomenon” more thoroughly, Dunning and Kruger take the lazy person’s way out and employ graduate students as their guinea pigs. Obviously, it is easier for college professors to do this—always there are graduate students lying about—but are graduate students representative of the overall population? In the matter of low-information people tending to overestimate their knowledge, are they not significantly different than the overall population? Probably the difference is not enough to make the experiment worthless, but it is enough to relegate its conclusions from book-status to pamphlet.

The cure for Dunning Kruger syndrome, as proposed in the video, if not D&K themselves? ‘Taking in more knowledge’ is the antidote. I doubt this goes anywhere near as far as taking in more humility, and graduate students are not known for this quality. Young people in general are not known for it—all the more so those who have entered the competitive heady world of graduate school. Rather than advanced learning being a cure for Dunning Kruger, it is more likely to simply transform an ignorant braggart into an educated one. Which is worse? It is hard to say. On the one hand, it is “I can handle a stupid person, and I can handle a belligerent person, but a stupid AND belligerent person...” That’s a pretty tough combination, my coworker said as we were batting the topic around. So yes, eliminating half the problem—that of being stupid—would seem to be an improvement. On the other hand, equipping braggarts with knowledge doesn’t necessarily change them into more tolerant people—as often, it simply makes them more insufferable.

Better than the recommendation to take in more learning, which depending on one’s circumstances, may not be feasible, is the recommendation to take in more humility. The world of academia probably provides the least fertile ground for growing that counsel, whereas the world of spirituality is probably the most fertile. You won’t find Philippians 2:3 on the quadrangle—counsel to “consider others superior to you.” Rather, it is usually just the opposite. Even in the most skewed comparison, everyone has at least one quality in which they are clearly superior. The trick is to find that quality and hone in on it like a laser beam.

The world of the head does not rule as it imagines it does. If not coupled with humility, then even when heady persons are right, they find that people resent and will not cooperate with them simply as a reaction to how ill-mannered they are. It’s staggering how the high IQ can be coupled with an infantile EQ.

To underestimate the gravity of what you do not know is a human tendency that will afflict all to some degree. No one is immune to the Dunning - Kruger effect. The video acknowledges this, even if it does propose a faulty solution. But the humble person who truly “does not think more of himself than it is necessary to think” has a leg up on the one who consistently does think more of himself than it is necessary to think, even when his increased knowledge reveals to him that the subject is more massive still. That doesn’t necessarily humble him. As often, it puffs him up with self-importance at the thought of what he has been able to figure out.

Dunning Kruger can work as my taunter says, but it can also work in the following Hans Christian Anderson way (per Wikipedia):

Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor hires them, and they set up looms and go to work. A succession of officials, and then the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool. Finally, the weavers report that the emperor's suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all! The emperor then sneers at the stupid little tyke, too stupid to know he is stupid, and laughs at his Dunning Kruger limitations.

......

******  The bookstore

For those who don’t know, ‘woo’ is a derisive term originated by the scientist/philosopher/atheist/cheerleaders. It refers to how they, the intelligent people, will run something past the dummies that the latter can’t understand and so attribute to the supernatural. “Woooo,” they exclaim. There is some overlap of scientists with scientist/philosopher/atheist/cheerleaders but the two are not the same. Plenty of scientists just go about doing science and see no contradiction with believing in God. Science is a tool for understanding, but it is not the tool for understanding.

 

The scientist/philosopher/atheist/cheerleaders kid themselves in their supposed enlightenment—just like the intrepid explorer did when he suddenly found himself surrounded by primitive cannibals! He pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicked it, and a low flame emerged. The astonished natives gasped ‘Woo! Woo!’ and fell back. “MAGIC!!” the explorer said in a deep voice. “It must be,” the chief said. “That’s the first time we’ve ever seen one light on the first try!”

So Vomodog thinks he has “won” with the admission that the Covid update (#4) is just good human advice? He thinks that it proves his case somehow—to win an admission that the Governing Body is not drawing on woo? I never thought that they were in this instance. Nor, I doubt, did many. Nor, as likely as not, did Brother Glock, who gave the talk that started this ball rolling.

Here is a statement from Harry Cheadle, in NewRepublic.com: “The current moment [of responding to Covid 19] is demonstrating just how far away we are from being able to come together to solve a planetary crisis. The pandemic is a test, and we’re failing it.”

Why is his statement true? Because you can’t get people to agree on anything. Propose a course, and find yourself lambasted by those advocating just the opposite. The Governing Body is the only entity that can issue an update of Covid 19 without my saying, “What is their real motive here?” 

There is a public talk on making sound decisions that recognizes it is often not so crucial that you have made this or that decision, but it is crucial that you follow through on whatever you decide. This the greater world is unable to do. It is the paralysis of everyone challenging everyone else that collectively delivers the Cheadle verdict that “we’re failing the crisis.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t failing it, and it is because of completely human factors that they enjoy and the greater world does not. Witnesses have the ability to yield. They don’t insist on their own way. They do not have to “question authority” on every piddly thing. They trust leadership. They see that direction given obviously has their interests at heart, that it is not too onerous, that it allows for individual family headship. It allows that the circumstances of one family will not be that of another, and doesn’t try to tell them all what to do, even as it sets a greater overall theme of caution. In contrast, the direction of human leaders during these Covid days has ranged from draconian to complete laissez faire.

“Well, that’s just good sound thinking,” Vomodog says, “based upon Bible verses that show good sound thinking. We could have done that.” But the fact is that he didn’t. And in fact, he can’t—because he has sided among those with a societal inability to agree, a societal inability to compromise, and a societal inability to endure delayed gratification. Return to the fold, and he will find it again, but it’s not to be found in the greater world that he has chosen.

In fact, I have no problem if Brother Glock does think that a woo factor is at work, nor would I ever rule out that there might be—it is just that you can’t “prove” it in the scientific sense. But the fact is, you can discard all the woo, and still have the greater argument. You still have Vic Vomodog swimming in a chaotic cesspool of argument, indecision, and waffling. You still have him, like an insane Jeremiah, at the bottom of a miry cistern, trying to persuade Ebed-Melech to come down and join him. You still have him trying to sell you the bill of goods that your life would improve if you would just step over to the morass that is his.