I

The popular conception of Dunning-Kruger is something along the lines of “some people are too dumb to know they’re dumb, and end up thinking they’re smarter than smart people”. This version is popularized in endless articles and videos, as well as in graphs like the one below.

Usually I'd credit the creator of this graph but it seems rude to do that when I'm ragging on them Except that's wrong.

II

The canonical Dunning-Kruger graph looks like this:

Notice that all the dots are in the right order: being bad at something doesn’t make you think you’re good at it, and at worst damages your ability to notice exactly how incompetent you are. The actual findings of professors Dunning and Kruger are more consistent with “people are biased to think they’re moderately above-average, and update away from that bias based on their competence or lack thereof, but they don’t [...]

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Outline:

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First published:
September 29th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Di9muNKLA33swbHBa/you-re-probably-overestimating-how-well-you-understand

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article: