Man Fails to Get Good, Blames fEmAlES

The lies men tell themselves

The bear is insulted we’re even still debating this at this point. (Photo by Becca on Unsplash)

I’m going to preface this whole article with a statement that in 1999 Kruger and Dunning published “Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. I doubt a lot of my audience will have access to the full article, but the abstract does sum it up. Basically really stupid people — or as Kruger and Dunning both diplomatically and more accurately put it “unskilled people,” — greatly overestimate their competence in any given area. As they gain skills in that area their confidence goes down as they start to perceive the “limitations of their abilities,” and then increases — albeit usually not to the first peak — as they become experts in the field. This explains why newbies always think they’re the greatest at whatever they’re a newbie in, and also why PhD candidates think they’re dumb. They’re not, they just aren’t yet experts and also fully perceive their own limitations.

But anyways, on twitter I do see a lot of foolish men being very confident and incorrect usually about women, biology, women’s biology, and literally everything else with the possible singular exception of sports-ball. I don’t know anything about sports-ball so I can’t judge. Although, if everything else these guys say is any indication…