… It reminded me of my thoughts on the ‘imposter syndrome’.
I think there are many people who are under-confident in their abilities, both overall, and in relation to other people. Perhaps this disproportionally tends to affect people in the EA and rationalist community, because we are more introspective and skeptical.
But there are also people in this world who are in some way ‘imposters’, in the sense that they don’t have the training for their position, or they (or their organization) is claiming much more than they are actually doing. In some cases it is useful for these people and orgs to consider “how can we level up our abilities and accomplishments, and moderate our claims?”[1]
This is also real, and we don’t want to convey that “everyone who thinks they are over their heads/over-claiming is merely suffering from imposter syndrome”. Maybe some have IS, but some are actually having a meaningful and useful insight that they can benefit from… if not paralyzed by inaction and shame.
This ‘not everything is IS’ also applies to considering individuals and companies making big claims, or modest ones. I don’t think we should always judge these in the light of “these people/orgs are all probably better than they say, because everyone has IS these days.”I also think that sometimes so-called IS may often reflect ‘a whole sector is under-trained and overclaiming’. E.g., if ‘everyone doing [machine learning, economic analysis, whatever] doesn’t understand the principles, is doing a lot of guesswork, and writes things up as if they are clear and certain’… this is a problem. If you are particularly concerned that you are doing the above, you may not be an imposter ‘relative to others in the sector’, but it still seems like a good insight to have. And perhaps more people ‘revealing that they are not wearing imperial clothes’ could help change the dynamic.
In my own case, for example, I think I was underprepared for certain aspects of my PhD program. As an undergraduate I jumped right into Calculus 1 without taking pre-calculus. Here I struggled desperately and barely passed … and I lost out on learning some fundamentals and deep mathematical insights.
In some cases it is useful for these people and orgs to consider “how can we level up our abilities and accomplishments, and moderate our claims?”
I agree this is an important message for some people and circumstances. For instance, it would probably have been a good message for me when I started doing research on longtermist strategy (from an s-risk perspective) in 2014-2017. I mostly pushed through impostor syndrome because there weren’t many other people doing similar things, so it felt like “I know it’s bad but, looking around, it may just be good enough to be useful.” In hindsight, I think the feeling was telling me that I should have focused less on searching for conclusions (by “winging it”) and more on improving my understanding and skill building. (That said, “searching for conclusions” is a crucial habit and people should be trying it with some amount of their attention from the very start, otherwise it’s difficult to acquire it later.)
The Dunning-Kruger effect is real. But with a few basic sanity checks, I believe any thoughtful EA can determine whether it’s imposter syndrome vs actual under-qualification.
If you have evidence to support your non-trivial investment in the area—classes, degrees, self-directed learning, projects, jobs—you are probably at least qualified for an entry-level position in a given area.
Probably the easiest way to check is by asking an impartial 3rd party, like an 80kH Advisor, or even just someone who already has experience working in that field.
Note that this is heavily contested. A lot of the observed phenomenon in the studies (qualitatively: incompetent people thinking they’re average, great people thinking they’re only good) can be explained by “better than average” effect + metrics not being perfect + natural mean regression.
And of course pop science accounts of Dunning-Kruger is even more unhinged than what D-K claimed.
My own best guess is that the claimed effect is real but small.
Imposter (syndrome) ?
Building on my response to the Don’t think just apply thread.
… It reminded me of my thoughts on the ‘imposter syndrome’.
I think there are many people who are under-confident in their abilities, both overall, and in relation to other people. Perhaps this disproportionally tends to affect people in the EA and rationalist community, because we are more introspective and skeptical.
But there are also people in this world who are in some way ‘imposters’, in the sense that they don’t have the training for their position, or they (or their organization) is claiming much more than they are actually doing. In some cases it is useful for these people and orgs to consider “how can we level up our abilities and accomplishments, and moderate our claims?”[1]
This is also real, and we don’t want to convey that “everyone who thinks they are over their heads/over-claiming is merely suffering from imposter syndrome”. Maybe some have IS, but some are actually having a meaningful and useful insight that they can benefit from… if not paralyzed by inaction and shame.
This ‘not everything is IS’ also applies to considering individuals and companies making big claims, or modest ones. I don’t think we should always judge these in the light of “these people/orgs are all probably better than they say, because everyone has IS these days.”I also think that sometimes so-called IS may often reflect ‘a whole sector is under-trained and overclaiming’. E.g., if ‘everyone doing [machine learning, economic analysis, whatever] doesn’t understand the principles, is doing a lot of guesswork, and writes things up as if they are clear and certain’… this is a problem. If you are particularly concerned that you are doing the above, you may not be an imposter ‘relative to others in the sector’, but it still seems like a good insight to have. And perhaps more people ‘revealing that they are not wearing imperial clothes’ could help change the dynamic.
In my own case, for example, I think I was underprepared for certain aspects of my PhD program. As an undergraduate I jumped right into Calculus 1 without taking pre-calculus. Here I struggled desperately and barely passed … and I lost out on learning some fundamentals and deep mathematical insights.
I really like those points!
I agree this is an important message for some people and circumstances. For instance, it would probably have been a good message for me when I started doing research on longtermist strategy (from an s-risk perspective) in 2014-2017. I mostly pushed through impostor syndrome because there weren’t many other people doing similar things, so it felt like “I know it’s bad but, looking around, it may just be good enough to be useful.” In hindsight, I think the feeling was telling me that I should have focused less on searching for conclusions (by “winging it”) and more on improving my understanding and skill building. (That said, “searching for conclusions” is a crucial habit and people should be trying it with some amount of their attention from the very start, otherwise it’s difficult to acquire it later.)
The Dunning-Kruger effect is real. But with a few basic sanity checks, I believe any thoughtful EA can determine whether it’s imposter syndrome vs actual under-qualification.
If you have evidence to support your non-trivial investment in the area—classes, degrees, self-directed learning, projects, jobs—you are probably at least qualified for an entry-level position in a given area.
Probably the easiest way to check is by asking an impartial 3rd party, like an 80kH Advisor, or even just someone who already has experience working in that field.
Note that this is heavily contested. A lot of the observed phenomenon in the studies (qualitatively: incompetent people thinking they’re average, great people thinking they’re only good) can be explained by “better than average” effect + metrics not being perfect + natural mean regression.
And of course pop science accounts of Dunning-Kruger is even more unhinged than what D-K claimed.
My own best guess is that the claimed effect is real but small.
Me: “The Dunning-Kruger effect is real.”
Linch: “…the claimed effect is real…”
Great to know that we are in agreement, Linch! The logical follow-up question is what other factor(s) has (have) a higher impact on the effect?
Interesting. Of course my point is independent of the D-K effect, although that would enhance it.
I’m not saying worse ppl are more. overconfident. I’m just saying ‘some ppl are overconfident or overstating’
I’m also suggesting to there may be a secular overstatement of abilities and accomplishments in some fields. Less so among EAs I suspect.