John Cleese on How “Stupid People Have No Idea How Stupid They Are” (Otherwise Known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect)

Mon­ty Python icon John Cleese had this to say about Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene yes­ter­day: “She is the per­fect exam­ple of some­one who is not intel­li­gent enough to realise that she’s not very intel­li­gent. Hence her enor­mous self-con­fi­dence. Sad­ly, her sup­port­ers are even less intel­li­gent than she is. Hence their con­fi­dence in her.” It turns out that, as Cleese fur­ther explains in the video above, there’s a sci­en­tif­ic term for MTG’s con­di­tion–the Dunning–Kruger effect, “a cog­ni­tive bias where­in unskilled indi­vid­u­als suf­fer from illu­so­ry supe­ri­or­i­ty, mis­tak­en­ly rat­ing their abil­i­ty much high­er than is accu­rate” owing to “a metacog­ni­tive inabil­i­ty of the unskilled to rec­og­nize their inep­ti­tude” (and, by the same token, of “high­ly skilled indi­vid­u­als to under­es­ti­mate their rel­a­tive com­pe­tence, erro­neous­ly assum­ing that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for oth­ers”). This con­di­tion gets its name from Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty researchers Justin Kruger and David Dun­ning, the lat­ter of whom Cleese–who has spent time at Cor­nell as a long-term vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor–counts as a friend. You can learn more about the Dunning–Kruger effect here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Why Incom­pe­tent Peo­ple Think They’re Amaz­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son from David Dun­ning (of the Famous “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect”)

24 Com­mon Cog­ni­tive Bias­es: A Visu­al List of the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sys­tems Errors That Keep Us From Think­ing Ratio­nal­ly

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

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