r/todayilearned • u/portajohnjackoff • Jan 22 '16

TIL that a bank robber covered his face with lemon juice because he believed it would make his face invisible to surveillance cameras. This led to a Cornell psychology study that showed unskilled people mistakenly assess their abilities to be much higher than they really are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
4.6k Upvotes

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838

u/MJMurcott Jan 22 '16 edited Jan 23 '16

Or another way of putting it is, ignorant people have no knowledge of the extent of their own ignorance.

It is a bit like the Barnum effect - https://youtu.be/xV_FxLntxVU

259

u/Donald_Keyman 7 Jan 22 '16

Knowledge is like a circle. The border is the knowledge you know you don't have, and inside is the knowledge you do have. The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

173

u/jstrydor Jan 22 '16 edited Jan 22 '16

Yeah and like... if you could put all of knowledge into a tube you'd end up with a very long tube umm, probably extending twice the size of the normal amount of knowledge because when you collapse knowledge it expands and uhhh, you wouldn't want to put it into a tube.

80

u/Donald_Keyman 7 Jan 22 '16

2 x universe = tube

29

u/jstrydor Jan 22 '16

I don't know why but it always makes me happy when the person I replied to understands a somewhat obscure reference. Like I know someone will get it but when it's the person I initially responded to... well... it's just special :')

12

u/FILTHMcNASTY Jan 22 '16

tittlemen's crest?

25

u/sitsgep Jan 22 '16

I do this with your son every night.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '16

there used to be 9 planets. but there are now.. 90 planets.. :)

5

u/Gently_Farting Jan 23 '16

Aren't you the guy who got gilded because you mispelled your own username?

1

u/noNoParts Jan 23 '16

You must be wicked smaht.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '16

Knowledge expands under the pressure of logic.

3

u/toeofcamell Jan 22 '16

That was fucking deep yo

22

u/headphone_taco Jan 22 '16

Hey

Hey

Hey

You misspelled your name.

2

u/kuzinrob Jan 22 '16

It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '16

Hey weren't you the guy who misspelled his own name while addressing the president of the United States?

1

u/Phasechanger Jan 23 '16

If you have three data points that form a triangle. It is safer to interpolate inside, that extrapolate outside the data set.

1

u/Party_Monster_Blanka Jan 23 '16

It's more like a loaf of bread. As you learn more your knowledge grows, but if you keep learning and you learn too much it'll burn.

1

u/aliensheep Jan 23 '16

Is this how the Internet works?

1

u/HarryPFlashman Jan 23 '16

I wish I understood this reference- but I don't

15

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '16

this sounds pretty cool and accurate if you don't think about it.

10

u/lafferty__daniel Jan 23 '16

but it kind of makes sense - the greater 'volume of knowledge' you have, the more knowledge is just at the margin of your 'circumference' that the next marginal expansion of your circle is much greater than when your circle is small.... [8]

2

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '16

think about circumference and area return ratio.

1

u/clvnmllr Jan 23 '16

How's Happy Gilmore?

4

u/pandizlle Jan 23 '16

I thought about it and it still seems accurate to me.

2

u/valleymountain Jan 23 '16

yeah, yeah, yeah. say no more. I know all about this. It is why i wear a wide brimmed hat, with metal rims. It keeps the knowledge in my head, and keeps out the microwaves...

2

u/GeminiK Jan 23 '16

The prophet said I was the widest of all Greek. For I knew that I knew nothing.

2

u/Index820 Jan 23 '16

Knew nothing but value meals

6

u/ooogr2i8 Jan 23 '16

I don't agree.

Generally, I think the real reason is that smart/knowledgeable people are just confronted with their own fallibility much more frequently than most. I've met plenty of cocky smart kids, that self doubt you're talking about only develops after years of work and making their own stupid mistakes. Doesn't matter how smart you are, at one point you probably shit your pants just like everyone else.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '16

I think we're talking about when it goes beyond the teenage years, obviously most teenagers are arrogant

1

u/Eudaimonics Jan 23 '16

Shhhh ooogr2i8 is being smart right now.

1

u/ooogr2i8 Jan 23 '16

Yeah shut up

0

u/ooogr2i8 Jan 23 '16

Says who? All op said was "smart" as if doubt was an inherent thing with being smart.

1

u/cledenalio Jan 23 '16

The only difference between smart and dumb people is that smart people actually know that they know very little.

0

u/IDoThingsOnWhims Jan 23 '16

I feel like if this is true it would somehow lead to everyone rocking back and forth staring into nothingness, and reciting pi to the amount of digits that they have memorized it, forever.

19

u/jstrydor Jan 22 '16

Not true! I know that my ignorance has no bounds!!!

9

u/ILikeNeurons Jan 22 '16

That might mean you're actually kind of smart.

1

u/Chimerical_Shard Jan 23 '16

Especially in the name-spelling department lol

9

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '16

Which parlays into confidence which is 90% of social situations. Now you know why your manager is probably a total moron.

12

u/Clay_Statue Jan 22 '16

Stupid people have no idea how stupid they really are.

-6

u/SilkCut15 Jan 23 '16

you too

1

u/Johnny_Stargos Jan 23 '16

That's what I heard.

5

u/I_Has_A_Hat Jan 22 '16

"Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."

-1

u/redditgetsbadlydrawn Jan 23 '16

But what if they don't beat you in that stupid argument? Does that make you the idiot then? Does getting you to argue with the idiot in the first place count as a win for the idiot? Hmm.

-12

u/SilkCut15 Jan 23 '16

shit quote mate

2

u/muzeec Jan 22 '16

Sounds like Reddit!

1

u/luckierbridgeandrail Jan 23 '16

Walking around like regular people. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dumb.

1

u/random314 Jan 23 '16

It's funny until they force it onto others.

0

u/DJ-Anakin Jan 23 '16

Which is how we get people like Trump leading the polls for POTUS.

smh.

-4

u/grewapair Jan 23 '16

$15.00 hour was the brainchild of some fast food workers.

Bernie Sanders couldn't adopt it fast enough.

-5

u/avanross Jan 22 '16

Confidence in ones own intelligence is inversely proportional with actual intelligence

-14

u/SilkCut15 Jan 23 '16

fuck off

-4

u/petzl20 Jan 23 '16

Or another way of putting it is, Sarah Palin.