Everybody’s an Expert

The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when a person overestimates their own competence despite a lack of knowledge or skills in a certain area. In daily life, this is reflected when someone who is an expert in a field gets advice from someone who has no training, experience, or education in that field. To which they mutter, “Everybody’s an expert.”

A recent YouGov poll emphasizes this wild fantasy of competence that many people have. Of the 20,000 people polled in the U.S., 1 in 3 (32%) felt confident that they could safely land a passenger airplane in an emergency, relying only on the assistance of air traffic control. Nearly half the men (46%) thought they could, compared with only 20% of the women. After all, they’ve seen it in the movies, so it can’t be that difficult.

What are the actual odds? “There is a zero percent chance of someone pulling that off,” said Patrick Smith, a commercial air pilot and founder of the Ask the Pilot blog. “Do people think they can perform transplant surgery? No. Then why do they think they can land a plane?”

I often think about the Dunning-Kruger effect because every day I read comments from incompetent and uninformed politicians, business leaders, and others arrogantly posing as experts. Yes, we all have a right to express our views, regardless of how lame they may be, but when it comes to making them public or to passing laws that affect others, we have a responsibility to support our views with actual evidence and not just the bluster of entitlement.

Intro By Kareem Abdul Jabbar . NBA Basket ball Legend