From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 07:05:11 MDT
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> Harvey writes:
> > There was a recent study that found that most people who DON'T know a
> > subject will rate themselves as expert in it. Although there was some
> > correlation with people who really knew the subject from high
> to low levels
> > of competence, those with no competence rated themselves as experts!
>
> That's pretty surprising. Presumably these weren't technical subjects?
> Few people would claim expertise in paleontology or cosmology. They might
> feel they knew a lot about politics, sports management and economic
> policy though, when in fact they were ignorant. Do you remember any
> more details?
Actually, they did include technical subjects. I was particularly
interested in computer-related technology. I believe I exaggerated when I
implied that people with zero knowledge rated themselves as expert. I think
that zero knowledge people rated themselves as not knowing a subject. But
those with small amounts of knowledge, i.e. just introduced to a subject,
felt the grasped the basics and could extrapolate immediately. The newbies
rated themselves as experts, even in technical subjects like new physics
theories, psychology, etc. Newbies to the Internet thought they new it all
in a few days. Newbies to new physics theories were expounding on string
theories and black-holes after watching a few Nova episodes. Beginners in
V-Basic thought they were crack programmers. It was only after weeks of
intensive study that they began to realize how little they know about a
topic.
So the learning curve looked something like this (from memory):
0 knowledge - rates selves as not knowing subject
little knowledge - rates selves as being expert
some knowledge - rates selves as good
medium knowledge - rates selves as medium
lots of knowledge - rates selves as superior
expert knowledge - rates selves as expert
The krux of the findings was that people with a little bit of knowledge
believed that they had learned the entire subject. It took additional
knowledge to get beyond the basics and realize how many questions remained.
-- Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com> <pager@HarveyNewstrom.com> Fiderus - Strategic Security and Privacy Services <www.Fiderus.com> Phone: 321-676-4894 Tollfree: 866-FIDERUS Pager: 866-786-1001
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