Dunning-Kruger — The Double Curse

Overview

Kruger & Dunning (1999, JPSP): poor performers overestimate themselves not because they're arrogant, but because the same skills required to produce a right answer are required to recognize one. Incompetence carries a double curse — you fail AND you lack the ability to detect the failure. Corollary (often missed): top performers underestimate their relative standing because they assume tasks easy for them are easy for everyone (false consensus).

In an unfamiliar domain, your error-detector is broken in exactly the places your generator is.

When to Use

• Working outside your (or the codebase's) established competence: new language, framework, domain, API
• Output "looks right" and you're about to ship on that signal
• Estimating your own accuracy: "I'm confident this is correct"
• Reviewing an expert's work in their domain, or a novice's confident claim

The Procedure