Damnit, nice post. Hang on, I gotta properly reply to this.
I think the Dunning-Kruger effect is frequently misapplied. I think it's meant to describe a general trend that's been observed without implying any sort of causation, and it's certainly not meant to be applied as a hard law.
Absolutely. My reference of it here is simply to point out that it's the leading reason that the data of this poll isn't useful for gauging talent simply because of biases in perception. A sense of self-worth (or lack thereof) heavily skews these pol--
People frequently take it to mean that anyone who recognizes their talents must somehow be untalented, or that it must mean they're not challenging themselves to be better. The inverse is true, as well -- people tend to assume that anyone who assesses their talents to be low must be some kind of hidden genius.
Damnit, stop taking the words out of my mouth. D:<
I think I'm terrible at quantum physics, but this isn't some Einstein-esque declaration that my knowledge of physics is low because I only have a sliver of the available knowledge in the universe; it's just me saying I know fuck-all about quantum physics because I've literally never studied them at all.
While I agree that a general question like this is too broad, for reasons you've stated, I'd have interpreted it as "Do you see yourself competent in areas where you actively apply yourself" judging by the phrasing of some of the responses, which ultimately holds a couple implications (How do we define an area that we're knowledgable in? Are we comparing ourselves to what we perceive as the layman or simply the absolute top percentile of our crafts? Which is food for a fascinating other discussion, by the way...)
Misapplication of Dunning-Kruger is why you get people thinking they're geniuses because they know about Dunning-Kruger (for the record I'm not accusing you of this, I'm just saying it's common on the Internet and that it frustrates me).
I'd agree with this overall sentiment and I probably should have left more context in my post.
For every Rick & Morty guy who postures themselves as a high IQ genius for reading these bizarre obscure high art references in a cartoon, there's flimsy accusations that someone who has a good vocabulary or uses technical language that's specific to a volition must just think they're smart, and not that they're just using language that's natural to them because they've spent hours and hours soaking up specialized knowledge.
I actually had a neat discussion about this earlier with some people. Generally, I find it intensely frustrating if someone bolsters their sentences with flowery language in an attempt to socially posture when their exact sentiment could be conveyed much more concisely without any loss of nuance. I'm sure you've seen the company memo that's like 3 paragraphs to just say what you could sum up with in a sentence or two written by some insecure middle-manager who's more interested in his image than actually getting his point across (which I find funny, since their lack of linguistic efficiency quickly betrays their facade).
Anyway, I like to think I'm fairly smart -- at least, smart enough to pick things up relatively quickly -- but I have, like, no discipline. I'm terrible at applying myself to things and sticking with anything long enough to get to deep, high-level knowledge of anything. So I'm not really all that deeply skilled at anything, just kind of decent at a lot of things.
Well that's the other part. "Deeply skilled" is relative to who you're defining as deeply skilled. To bring this back around to ZC/ZScript, I feel like I'm shit at scripting often, yet Russ tells me I'm amazing at writing complex shit efficiently, so . The take-away from all of this is that our own self-image skews the origin point that we evaluate and compare most aspects of things we're trying to learn and not always in good ways I guess. Human psychology is kinda dicks, but again, that's a discussion for another thread.
I kind of recoil at the idea of describing myself as a "jack of all trades, master of none", but that's probably a decent enough shorthand description of me.
I don't really see anything wrong with that, but I'd guess from your phrasing that not being able to claim to have mastered anything bothers you? While in zero-sum situations (warfare/competitive vidya games/other contests), I'm a firm believer that specializing is better than generalizing most of the time once you hit the apex of your specialization, but thankfully IRL isn't inherently zero-sum, at least not in terms of self-perception and that's a fact I'm quite thankful for!
(The irony that I criticize linguistic inefficiency while reiterating the same point several times isn't lost on me either. )