Years ago, a lady friend explained to me that, in some cases, it's pointless to argue with someone who's taking an idiotic position because, as she said, "Some people are actually too stupid to know how stupid they are." And she was right, you know.
It's one thing to try to have a conversation with someone who's just a bit dense but who at least understands that they're a bit dense. It's quite another to sit there and listen, slack-jawed, to someone who's almost indescribably ignorant but has absolutely no comprehension of his (or her) own stupidity. It's truly breathtaking and, finally, there's scientific evidence as to how they got that way:
Scientific conclusion: Stupid people make us dumber.
Go. Read. Enjoy.
1 comment:
"two Cornell scientists who showed that one attribute of extreme incompetence is "that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent." The study, titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It," demonstrated that people who scored, on average, at the 12th percentile in tests of humor, grammar and logic assessed themselves to be, on average, at the 62nd percentile. Incompetence at the extreme is a double-whammy, the authors declare: "Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."
And not realizing it makes them unable to learn.
I remember this study from Cornell.
Although not mentioned in this article, the most interesting part of it to me was that even after the mistakes were explained to the participants and the tests retaken, their marks didn't improve because they didn't realize there was anything to be learned.
Conversely, the participants who scored the highest consistantly predicted their ranking to be lower than it actually was.
Makes you think..
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