The Dunning-Kruger Effect Explains Why Society Is So Screwed-Up
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” -Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
In April of 1995, McArthur Wheeler covered his face in lemon juice and robbed two Pittsburgh area banks. He reasoned that the lemon juice would make his face invisible to security cameras, in the same way that lemon juice is used as invisible ink. He even claimed to have successfully tested the idea with his own Polaroid camera before the robberies. Of course, this was nonsense and he was picked up by police soon after the banks’ security footage was shown on the nightly news. “But I wore the juice,” he said, confused when officers showed up at his house.
Wheeler was originally written off as being just another dumb criminal with a half-baked idea. He was even featured in the 1996 World Almanac for being one of the dumbest criminals ever. But David Dunning, a psychology professor at Cornell, and Justin Kruger, one of Dunning’s graduate students, realized this was a perfect example…
