>it seems to me that, for DK to be 'surprising' (in the parlance of the OP), four phenomena must hold:
The surprising things about DK, to me at any rate, is how unvarying it is in application. Under DK people who are poor at something never think wow I really suck at this, or if they do they are such a minuscule part of the population that we can discount them.
I've known lots of people who were not good at particular things and did not rate themselves as competent at it, although truth is they might have claimed competence if asked by someone they didn't want to be honest with.
There is an easy reframing that works well. People that are "poor" at something don't know enough to know just how good someone can be at something.
And this tracks for most skills. How good are you at tying your shoes? Probably average? Just how good can you get? Probably not that much better, all told. It is a clearly defined goal and likely has a limit on the skill you can build.
What about writing your name? Putting on your clothes? Making your bed? All things that are somewhat bound in just how good you can be.
Now, throw in something like "play the piano." Turns out, the expertise bar is much much higher suddenly. But, it you haven't been trying, how would you know?
If someone asked me how bad are you at playing the piano, having never tried, I would say I was totally incompetent which I take to mean the worst possible. According to DK I should somehow be worse than that.
> And this tracks for most skills. How good are you at tying your shoes? Probably average?
In fact, this is pretty much what the Dunning-Kruger graphs look like. The article shows the one for humor which has the bottom quartile participants answer "eh, about average" while the top quarter of participants realize they're better than average, but estimate roughly 75-percentile rather than 87.5-percentile.
That is because DK does not day "incompetent people see themselves as pros". It says "they overestimate their abilities". They rate themselves low, but in fact their competence is even lower.
The surprising things about DK, to me at any rate, is how unvarying it is in application. Under DK people who are poor at something never think wow I really suck at this, or if they do they are such a minuscule part of the population that we can discount them.
I've known lots of people who were not good at particular things and did not rate themselves as competent at it, although truth is they might have claimed competence if asked by someone they didn't want to be honest with.