> The DK hypothesis is "double burden of the incompetent"
The actual DK result (which is much criticized, but that's a different issue) was actually a pretty much linear relationship between actual relative performance and self-estimated relative performance, crossing over at about the 70th percentile.
(Because there is more space below 70 than above, that also means that the very bottom performers overestimated their relative performance more than top performers underestimated, not because of any “double burden” (overstimation didn't rise faster as one moved below the crossover), but just because there was more space below the crossover point.
> Arguably the hypothesis that matches the data from the DK paper best is: "Everyone thinks they're average regardless of skill level"
If there was a perceptual nudge toward average relative performance, you'd expect a crossover at the median with a slope below 1, the nudge is toward a particular point above average.
Sure, there's in aggregate a slight positive slope to self-assessment when plotted against performance. But all of these have in common that the range of self-assessments is small across the full range of performances and they're all centered somewhere around 60.
> The actual DK result
The "incompetent self-assessment because incompetent" claim is literally everywhere in the paper. It's in the title, the abstract, the introduction and every section thereafter until the end.
The actual DK result (which is much criticized, but that's a different issue) was actually a pretty much linear relationship between actual relative performance and self-estimated relative performance, crossing over at about the 70th percentile.
(Because there is more space below 70 than above, that also means that the very bottom performers overestimated their relative performance more than top performers underestimated, not because of any “double burden” (overstimation didn't rise faster as one moved below the crossover), but just because there was more space below the crossover point.
> Arguably the hypothesis that matches the data from the DK paper best is: "Everyone thinks they're average regardless of skill level"
If there was a perceptual nudge toward average relative performance, you'd expect a crossover at the median with a slope below 1, the nudge is toward a particular point above average.