I was at a cocktail party on Saturday and conversation turned to "That Guy". You know him, the one who is an expert on World Affairs and knows just how all major problems should be handled without ever having traveled more than 100 miles from home or picked up a text on current affairs or even a newspaper in his life. My brilliant PhD friend sniffed "Dunning-Kruger Effect". Not being a brilliant PhD, I had to ask what that is.
Here is part of what she told me, see if it doesn't sound familiar to you:
The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon whereby people who have little knowledge systematically think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.
They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
1. incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
2. incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
3. incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
4. if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill. (- lifted from Wikipedia for the purposes of theis post)
Apparently Dunning and Kruger won a Nobel Prize for "discovering" what any guy who's ever overheard a conversation at the 19th Hole can tell you-
Hacks are the biggest loudmouths on the golf course and the only people who say professional golfers aren't real athletes are people who can't play.
So, I've decided that the next time I'm paired with a know-it-all on the golf couse I'll just say Dunning-Kruger Effect!