Being dumb is a handicap. Being dumb and not knowing you are dumb is worse but being dumb and thinking you are smart is worse than that. The Philadelphia Eagles are a classic case of being bad but believing they are good.
A lot of people tend to hold overly favorable views of their intellectual abilities. This overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the meta-cognitive ability to realize it. People who score in the bottom quarter on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this mis-calibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. They were still stupid but now they knew it.
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