It is a wise man who knows that he knows nothing. - Not sure who really said it.
What I find interesting, and somewhat disheartening, is that the people who are incompetent and constantly brag about themselves, actually tend to be more successful because people admire confidence.
Having spent a lot of time on both the selling and buying side of "professional services" I can see that most successful sales pitches are built around giving the purchaser a sense of certainty of the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
I actually think that in many cases it is more difficult for someone who is knowledgeable to convey that sense of certainty because in so many technical situations the technical answer to simple questions is "it depends on the details of what you want to do". The "right" answer in a sales context is usually "yes, this will solve your problems" and worry about the reality once the contract is signed.
I think to some extent individuals that continue the process of learning into adulthood naturally become adverse to stating anything in completely concrete terms. Presumably part of this is from painful past experience, but also as one's depth of knowledge grows so does the realisation of just how much there is to know - even in a supposedly finite domain!
Yes, but be careful with this line of thought - it is a result of a person being aware that there are known-unknowns. That is why they avoid using concrete terms, because they know that they are ignorant about many things. But there are still things which this person will be unaware that they don't know.
I have always felt that Richard Feynmann's greatness devolved largely from the fact that he was better at identifying things that he didn't know than his colleagues. Where one person might develop a theory that works to explain a particular phenomenon, Feynmann would understand that this answer would just reveal new questions, so he would dig further than others.
It's been shown in studies that athletes who think they are the best (deceiving themselves) perform better than athletes who are more realistic. The phrase "ignorance is bliss" does indeed ring true.
I think this illustrates the sorry state of education. I learned about unknown unknowns in high school from Socrates. I hope my son learns them even sooner. There's an opportunity cost in false confidence. Better to get that out of the way at a young age, and learn to feign confidence when necessary.
But that isn't everything. At a university you start to see that subjects that might have appeared to be shallow at first glance are really quite vast and complex. It's hard to say with confidence you are an expert on any of those subjects after seeing a little ways down their respective rabbit holes (which you rarely get the opportunity to do in high school).
I don't think they get ahead because of admiration.
It's just that skill can only be judged by people with equal or more skill, if you have to judge somebody without the necessary skill to do so you have two options.
1. admit you don't know and get somebody else to judge him (admit your own incompetence)
2. judge by other factors (including confidence)
option 2 is by far the easiest and thus the most chosen one.
What I find interesting, and somewhat disheartening, is that the people who are incompetent and constantly brag about themselves, actually tend to be more successful because people admire confidence.