I’ve just stumbled across something which helps explain a lot about the world: the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.
Manifestations include:
- incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
- incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
- incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
- if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.
This certainly applies to a news story I stumbled across today: Texas has appointed an anti-intellectual creationist as the head of their schools board. A school head who thinks education is a bad thing?