EPISODE 015: THE DUNNING KRUGER EFFECT

DRINK INFORMATION

Every episode we drink a different libation – so what are we drinking this episode?

Tom’s Drink – Helderberg Bourbon

– A delightful bourbon that we found on accident 🙂

Ian’s Drink – Also Helderberg Bourbon!

– Ian liked this one as well

*Visit our “Tasting Room“

TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Welcome back to Drinking With Tom. And we did a little bit of research on Dunning-Kruger. And now we’re both experts.

Tom Kubiak
We are experts on Dunning-Kruger. We are experts.

Ian Robertson
And that joke. It’ll make sense later on in the podcast.

Tom Kubiak
Definitely true. How you doing, Ian?

Ian Robertson
I’m doing great. How about you, Tom?

Tom Kubiak
Very good. Good to see you.

Ian Robertson
Good to see you too. And this is an interesting subject that we have today on Dunning-Kruger.

Tom Kubiak
It is a really interesting subject. Yeah. And I think it’s, it fits in nicely with our personality tests from a couple weeks ago. You know, the, the, the different types of personalities. This is another one that will fit into our silo of personality discussions, psychology.

Ian Robertson
Psychology. Yeah, cuz it’s not it’s not necessarily personality. It’s the psychology of morons.

Tom Kubiak
Which we are experts in.

Ian Robertson
We are experts at moron psychology. But before we get into that, I’m really excited about talking about the subject. What are you drinking tonight, because I think we have the same drink.

Tom Kubiak
We have the same drink. And I’m hoping this is a new path we can go down where we both choose the same drink. So I’m drinking a big box bourbon from Helderberg spirits. And you actually got me thinking about this because you drank their, their rye whiskey. Right?

Ian Robertson
No, their winter wheat, actually.

Tom Kubiak
Winter wheat. That’s what it was, winter wheat. Yeah. So when I heard about that, I said, you know, I’m gonna look and see what they have. And I was able to pick it up. I have a pretty good liquor store right across the street from me, I was able to pick up a bottle and look forward to it.

Ian Robertson
Nice. I have the same thing. So I went to the Scottish games, which is a big thing here in our part of New York.

Tom Kubiak
I saw that in a billboard.

Ian Robertson
Weird thing. Albany, New York area is Dutch, but it’s also called the New Scotland region. I don’t know how this history works out.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, good point.

Ian Robertson
My, my grandfather’s Scottish, you know, I’m mostly Scottish. My brother took one of those genealogy tests. And it said, I’m like, why did you even take this? You’re from the Scottish English region, like my wife took it. And it’s like, Nigeria, and Asia and France. And my brother’s like, this one little island is where all your ancestors are from.

Tom Kubiak
You’re 93.7% Scottish.

Ian Robertson
I could have saved you some money. Just why did you even bother? So it’s called New Scotland spirits. I actually met the owner of this. And I bought this at that fair at the Scottish games.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, cool. They had it. They had a stand there?

Ian Robertson
Yep. And so Okay, listen, if you’re selling bourbon at the Scottish games, and you run out, you have some good bourbon.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, yeah. And actually, I, I’m not a bourbon drinker. But I poured this in this glass and it’s been sitting next to me for you know, since we just before we started the podcast, and it smells really good.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so I want to hear your tasting notes. I want to, okay, do the Tom sniff, there you go. Okay, he’s drinking. He’s tasting, smacking his lips.

Tom Kubiak
And here’s the thing about bourbon. So, you know, as we’ve talked about before, I’m a Scotch drinker. And Scotch typically is not sweet. It’s got the caramel and the vanilla and other things but it’s not sweet. Bourbon kind of adds the complexity of a little bit of sweetness to it. And I’m assuming it’s a higher sugar content or whatever’s left over in the in the distillate has some sugar. So this has got a beautiful sweet taste to it. It’s got all the things that I love about you know, a highland Scotch like the vanilla, the caramel the a little bit of fruit. It’s, it’s really good. I like it. It’s a five it’s a five year old bourbon.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, that’s what mine is. Your bottle is from 2021?

Tom Kubiak
2022.

Ian Robertson
2022. Mine’s from 2024, batch one of 2024.

Tom Kubiak
2024?

Ian Robertson
2024.

Tom Kubiak
It can’t be 2024.

Ian Robertson
2023. 2023.

Tom Kubiak
Unless you got a time machine.

Ian Robertson
And I’m also having a hard time saying 2024, anyways, I’m I kept saying it, I’m like..

Tom Kubiak
Your three glasses in at this point.

Ian Robertson
I haven’t even taken my first sip. But I’m going to take a wild guess as to why bourbon is sweeter. And I could be completely wrong and this is a completely wild guess. The distillate has very little sugar remnants in it, I think it’s because bourbon is is soaked in New American oak barrels. So the new American oak is freshly charred. So you get all the oak sugars so to speak out of it.

Tom Kubiak
It can’t be just that though. It has to be, it has to be the mash is producing like, bourbon is corn right?

Ian Robertson
Has to be at least 51% corn.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, cuz I mean there’s so many bottling there’s so many casking types in scotch, and you never get that no matter what you do, you’re not going to get that sweetness. So it’s got to be something related to the distillate.

Ian Robertson
Not necessarily, and again, this is my guess because when you have scotch typically you’re taking American oak that’s already done bourbon and then you do Sherry in it typically like a MacAllan or something, and then you age your your Scotch in it, whereas bourbon goes straight into the carmelized fibres and a new barrel.

Tom Kubiak
Maybe, you I mean, you know more about distillation than I do now.

Ian Robertson
I’m just guessing, but..

Tom Kubiak
I just drink it.

Ian Robertson
A Dunning-Kruger over here. I’m gonna say that I’m right, just a wild guess. But I think it’s a genius idea.

Tom Kubiak
I intend to speak loudly and firmly that I am right.

Ian Robertson
Okay, good. That proves that we’re both intelligent on the subject.

Tom Kubiak
That’s exactly, we are both experts. We know more than 82% of other people.

Ian Robertson
Exactly. But I’m gonna I’m going to do a little tasting here. I tasted it at the games. Okay. And I love their winter wheat when we had it on the other episodes, so hang on.

Tom Kubiak
I remember you telling me, yeah.

Ian Robertson
That is surprisingly good. It’s just as good as I remember. Like a bourbon is burny. Like it gives that burn. This has a little bit less of that more on the back of the throat and less on the front of the tongue. Which is perfect. You’re right. It has almost like a like a bourbon and Scotch had a baby. And it was beautiful.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, it’s it’s really good.

Ian Robertson
And it grew up to rule over us all.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I’m actually impressed. And like I said, I don’t typically choose bourbon, but that’s really good. Yeah, it’d probably make a smokin’ Manhattan.

Ian Robertson
Ooo. Yeah, I’m gonna have to try that. I’m not big on if I have a good whiskey. I don’t like to mix it. Yeah. But at the same time, if you’re going to mix it, a Manhattan’s really what you want to make.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, yeah, definitely.

Ian Robertson
So I’d say that’s a win. I don’t know if you can buy this online or not. Yeah, but I like it.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I think I went to their website and I do think they ship but I’m not sure to what what states it is. So we’ll have to look into that. But but locally here in local in local liquor stores, it seems like they have they have it because they had it when I stopped in to pick this up. They had the winter wheat there too. And they also had a rye. So I think they have three different bottles.

Ian Robertson
So they talk a lot about their rye, I like their rye, and I’ve tried their rye, but only in like samplings at like the liquor store or the fair or something like that. And the rye what they ran out of at the fair at the Scottish games, but this here, yeah, I’d buy this again.

Tom Kubiak
This is good. Yeah, definitely.

Ian Robertson
So Dunning and Kruger you know, I love it because it explains life. Whenever I’m really angry at a social situation, people or driving, the first thing I just say in my head is Dunning and Kruger.

Tom Kubiak
You know, and it’s so funny, because when you sent me this kind of the idea for a discussion, I said, I don’t even know what this is. I had never heard of it before. But doing a little bit of research it it, it really makes a lot of sense. And you see the principles that are part of the philosophy that they basically came up with in their testing. You see it in everyday life, like every day you see it happening in the news, especially with the with the way people treat news and information today, I think that’s really validates some of the things that they found in their studies.

Ian Robertson
Yeah so let’s, let’s explain, first of all, what it is, then we can talk about where it came from, and then how it applies. So what it is, is technically a cognitive bias, which I think is an interesting thing. So basically, a cognitive bias is I don’t know enough about something. So I’m going to wander around in my head and create my own baseline point. And that’s what I’m basing it off of. I think Dave Barry actually summed up what it means.

Tom Kubiak
What did he say? I love Dave Barry.

Ian Robertson
I know, right? David Barry said the one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, or ethnic background, is that we all believe we are above average drivers.

Tom Kubiak
Actually, in the research that I was looking through the way people feel about their driving skills is one of the proofs of the of the Dunning-Kruger effect, like people say 80% of people feel that they’re above average, as a driver, which statistically is impossible. So it’s just, that’s what they their perception of the world around them is telling them that they’re a better driver than other people. And one of the articles I read said that one of the reasons why drivers within their first six years have more accidents is because of overconfidence, which is actually a symptom of Dunning-Kruger effect.

Ian Robertson
So there’s there’s two aspects of it. So basically, the Dunning-Kruger effect says that for lack of let’s just dumb it down here for my benefit. The Dunning-Kruger effect says that you’re basically too dumb to know that you’re dumb about something. And then people who are so smart about something think they’re dumb, because they know that they could know more about something, or it could be better. So that’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. So Dunning and Kruger, they did a study and they, they had these people take tests, and the people that thought they were going to do the best, did the worst. And the people that thought they were going to do the worst, did the best. We basically just have no idea of how good we are at something. And the better we get at something, the more we realize how much better we can get. Because now we have an actual baseline. And then we start thinking that we’re terrible at it. That’s Dunning-Kruger but pop culture and reality are two different things, pop culture is, you know, you’re dumb, but you think you’re a genius. It’s actually, there’s an argument that they make that it’s actually more set to like a particular skill set.

Tom Kubiak
Right. It’s not, it’s not a generalization for a person in their entirety. So, you know, you could say, well, listen, I, you know, I’m an excellent guitar player, and I know that I can get better. And I, you know, I recognize where my weaknesses are and things like that. But I play tennis, you know, one once a month, and I’m an excellent tennis player. And I’m like, I can beat everybody like, that’s, that’s the thing. So you have Dunning-Kruger happening in two ways there. You have the one way where they’re, they recognize their skill and see the areas where they need to improve. And as a result of that, that’s the high end of Dunning-Kruger. But the other end the the person who plays tennis rarely, but thinks they’re an expert at it. That’s the low end of the and so it can happen with the same in the same person. It can happen both ways.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. So it’s a cognitive bias that goes both ways. So the way I illustrate it is fairly similar. Like say, I’ve never built a table before. I remember the first time I built a table. I was like, I am a master carpenter.

Tom Kubiak
This turned out awesome.

Ian Robertson
I am eating at a table, I have a built table for family. We eat at table. And I just thought it was amazing. And then a friend of mutual friend of ours came and built these countertops for us. And then all of a sudden the Dunning-Kruger effect, just the curtain just fell. And I’m like, I know nothing. Yeah, exactly. But interestingly enough, he’s amazing. But he was just you’ll hear people that are, he’s the other end of the Dunning-Kruger. After he did that he goes, could have been better. You know, this, this wasn’t quite the way I wanted it. I should have done this a little bit. He was like downing himself, he’s viewed it as a bad job. And I viewed it as like, this is a new met bar of measure for me for tables and countertops for the rest of my life. So that was an example of Dunning-Kruger. I just thought I was amazing. Yeah, but that was my cognitive bias. I didn’t have a benchmark in my brain to compare it to.

Tom Kubiak
And this is one of those things that’s similar to what we were talking about with the Myers Briggs test. You could use your knowledge of the fact that Dunning-Kruger is an effect that affects everyone. You can use that to your benefit by saying, and I think they call it metacognition, where you, you have the ability to take a step back and say, I’m going to look at myself from outside of my own skill set, and examine where I am. And as a result of that, you can help yourself fix the areas where Dunning-Kruger is having a negative effect on you.

Ian Robertson
But here’s where that gets slippery. Like for the whole metacognition thing, which I looked into, which is a slippery slope. It’s like, if you have Dunning-Kruger, you’re too dumb to know if you’re doing it right. And then, you know, if you’re doing a really great, then it’s like.

Tom Kubiak
It’s true.

Ian Robertson
I don’t know, it just doesn’t. How do you know you’re doing it right if you’re, if you have Dunning-Kruger, because you’re gonna think, Oh, I’m not doing it right if you’re on the high end of Dunning-Kruger and I’m not doing it right if I’m on the low end.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, well, and it’s not even if from what I understand about it, it’s not even that I’m not doing it right. It’s a recognition that you don’t know everything. So even you get to the point where you are a skilled expert in something, it’s a realization that there’s still areas ways to improve. And I think that’s one of the things that is most interesting about this to me is that the person who is at the low end of Dunning- Kruger, and they’re and they’re determining that they know more about the subject than other people. This has happened to everybody, you’re at a family dinner. And the you know, one of the people at the dinner is loud, and they’re professing that they are an expert in this area, and they know the right answer, and you’re you’re looking at them and saying, you know, you really don’t know that or you’re making a bad decision. Like I think that happens with relative frequency. But if that person can say, even though I might know a little bit about the subject by examining the whole, I can realize that I don’t know as much as I really should. And as a result of that my decision making is skewed. And I think we’ve seen that in both of us try to stay out of politics because we, you know, we recognize it’s not really a good solution. But the, you know, you see the way people respond to political campaigns. And it is very easy to see how this, this mentality that I know the best way forward, and I’m the only one who knows that it can really easily, you know, skew people’s opinion. And as a result of that, sometimes they make bad decisions.

Ian Robertson
Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned politics because the Encyclopedia Britannica I don’t think you call it the encyclopedias just Britannica now, right?

Tom Kubiak
Maybe yeah.

Ian Robertson
Either way, they did a study. Well there was a study published in 2018 that indicated that Americans who know relatively little about politics and government are more likely than other Americans to overestimate their knowledge of those topics.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. Which is Dunning-Kruger exactly. Yep. That’s exactly what it is. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And we do it in all sorts of things. And, but here’s the thing, I’m gonna let my Dunning and Kruger out here because..

Tom Kubiak
Okay, I’ll slap it back in for you.

Ian Robertson
Okay, please. The way I see it, it’s almost like a scale. Because they bring it out a lot with like new hires on a job, new hire walks in, oh, I got this, I got this down. I know all these efficient ways, like a new manager walks in, they’re trying to make everything efficient and ends up blowing up in their face. The thing is, it ends up going the other way, over time. So going back to the table illustration, I just got done with another table. Actually, it was a desk. And everybody was like, Oh, this is awesome. This is amazing. And I’m sitting there, I’m like, there’s that one joint, I can see it from here. And I was actually proud of myself, because I’m like, oh, maybe I’m on the other end of the spectrum now.

Tom Kubiak
You are at the end of the spectrum, definitely.

Ian Robertson
But I’m like, at some point, there’s a middle ground, where you go from the lower end of the Dunning-Kruger spectrum to the higher end. So there’s a point where even if it’s a fraction of a second, where you have to, like stand there and say, I know exactly who I am and what I am in relation to this task.

Tom Kubiak
The whole world comes together.

Ian Robertson
And then it’s gone.

Tom Kubiak
Which way would you rather be? Would you rather be at the low end in ignorance thinking that you know everything or at the high end, you know, knowing a lot but realizing you don’t know everything?

Ian Robertson
So there’s good and bad to both. There’s a Slavic expression that says says it way better than you know ignorance is bliss, we highfalutin, a Slavic expression that says morons are happier. And I’m like, there’s a lot of truth to that. You think about people who are like, Frederick Nietzsche, he died basically in an insane asylum, didn’t he?

Tom Kubiak
That’s news to me. I didn’t know that. But I I wouldn’t doubt it.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, but he had pneumonia. But you look at a lot of people that were like the great thinkers, they go insane.

Tom Kubiak
I agree with you.

Ian Robertson
So the way I see it as they stand on the edge of blackness, I’m going to quote Firefly here, where they said the reavers came about, they didn’t, but they came about because they stood at the edge of space and the blackness drove them to insanity.

Tom Kubiak
It’s an awesome Firefly quote.

Ian Robertson
It is right? But you stare into the like Frederick Nietzsche, he, he stood at the edge of blackness, great thinking, I think drove him insane. Because you can’t stand on the edge of reality. With the Dunning-Kruger effect and thinking, I know so little and not and not have that mess with your brain.

Tom Kubiak
True. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
So maybe I am leaning more towards being a moron. That sounds amazing. But there’s a darkness that comes with high intelligence.

Tom Kubiak
That’s a good point. Yeah. Yeah. And I think some of that is due to the fact that you’re, you’re recognizing the importance of decisions and you’re inconsequential to the movings of the world and all of that when you come to realize it, you know, your desires and your feelings are really a drop in the bucket compared to what’s happening to humanity. And as a result, yeah, it’s a it’s sobering to, to get to that point.

Ian Robertson
Well, you know, when William Shatner went up into space.

Tom Kubiak
I read that.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, he had that there’s an effect I don’t know the name of it off the top of my head. Yeah. But basically, you look at the smallness of humanity and your existence and causes you to have like this deep depression. Yeah, like people weep. Yeah, and it takes a while and some help to basically get back to normal.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, so it’s a an emotional experience. Yeah, read the same thing.

Ian Robertson
If you’re so intelligent that you can basically bring yourself up that high mentally, there’s going to be some effects.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. But at the same time, you know, when you’re talking about what’s the practical benefit of, of recognizing that you don’t know everything? Well, that may cause you to do research on something before you buy it instead of just sticking your you know, pounding your fist on the table. And you can even put that on simple decision. So as an example, you go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and you want to buy a refrigerator. And if you’re saying, I know everything about refrigerators, and I’m gonna buy this model refrigerator, and I don’t even pay attention to the reviews or anything like that, or the repair history, that’s gonna affect your ability to make a good decision, you think you’re making a good decision, but because you don’t have all the information, you’re, you’re really not. Now on the other hand, the person who, who spends time and researches and tries to figure out what model has the best repair history, which one is the best value for the money. And in the end, they may feel like, I’m not positive, I’m making the best decision. But the reality is they have more information and their decision is going to be better. That’s a simple example of it. But it’s, it shows how things work practically. I was thinking back to when, when you were saying about people being experts. And this happens to me in my profession all the time, people comment about what they think should happen to taxes, you know, because I’m a tax accountant. Yeah. And so they will pound their fists on the table flat tax is the best idea, you cannot convince me otherwise, just make everybody pay a flat tax, or we need to lower the tax rates. And a perfect example, I had these clients come in one time, they’re upset that their tax rate is too high, and they’re paying too much tax. And because of the way their income was, they were paying the lowest taxes that was possible at that rate, like with their income, they’re paying much less than someone who might have wages of that income. And in our state, New York doesn’t tax the pensions of state employees, they were state employees, so they weren’t paying even $1 in state tax. So their perception of a lot of tax. And their knowledge about how much tax they were paying was skewed erroneously.

Ian Robertson
A cognitive bias.

Tom Kubiak
A cognitive bias, you could not convince them otherwise, that they were paying less tax than than everybody else. As a result, they would strongly support, you know, changes to the tax system that they would think would benefit them. But in reality, it wouldn’t, wouldn’t help them at all. So it just shows how it has an effect, like lack of knowledge and lack of really be having an open mind and being consider, you know, considering what is happening, I think is detrimental.

Ian Robertson
Well, okay, so to go along with what you just said, because since you work in the financial field. So in a national financial capability study conducted by the US Treasury in 2012, there was a bunch of people that were there were basically bankrupt, all of these people, and not basically, they were bankrupt. They took around 25,000 participants and were asked to rate their financial knowledge. And later their financial knowledge was checked by the financial test. Results showed that 800 participants which were declared bankrupt, performed the worst in the test. And shockingly, 23% of the participants were recently declared bankrupt, believes themselves the masters of finances, and rated themselves the best possible score around 67% were confident about their false financial knowledge. So basically, these people that were bankrupt, were like, I am a financial genius.

Tom Kubiak
Dunning-Kruger, exclamation point, exclamation point. Yeah, that’s exactly true.

Ian Robertson
So I know that they say that technically, it is applied to a specific field. Like you go into to do a job, build a table, do your taxes. Yeah, it’s weird. Like everybody thinks they know how to build a shed. Have you ever like said to somebody, I’m gonna go build a shed, every guy in the room comes around to give you advice. And I’m like, Listen, guys, it’s four walls on a roof. I can handle this. But it is shocking. You know, how how much people make Dunning-Kruger apply in a broader sense.

Tom Kubiak
Well, and that that’s an interesting point. So Dunning-Kruger, as you mentioned, applies to a specific field, generally. But do you think it’s possible that personality traits of an individual could broaden what it applies to, like make them more susceptible to be Dunning-Kruger low end across the board?

Ian Robertson
Yes. Personally, and anecdotally, I think so. And you are an expert on this. I am an expert. Across the board.

Tom Kubiak
Across the board.

Ian Robertson
Think about it. Have you ever met like a person who was a real genius?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, yeah. But they were like intimidatingly smart. Yeah,

Ian Robertson
There are going to be people that are geniuses that are arrogant about it. But real geniuses that I’ve actually met in life, they’re usually very quiet and they watch, they watch for baseline, like, what does this person know? And they’re comparing their cognitive bias to theirs. And they’re basically adjusting for it. Yeah. And I’m like, that’s Dunning-Kruger. They’re like, okay, Am I really that smart? Could they know something I don’t know. Like, there’s a guy that I know that’s, that’s a genius. And he doesn’t he doesn’t talk about being a genius. He doesn’t think about being a genius. He goes, there’s so much I don’t know. And he just he’s just learning and learning. And then there’s some people that are just like, man, you’re just so dumb, but you’re just I don’t know why you think like they’re always walking around talking about the next big thing, something that they they learned everybody should be doing. You know, bitcoins going to be the newest biggest thing. I’m like, yeah, maybe 20 years ago, man, what’s going on? So I think, I think Dunning-Kruger does have a broader application, but it’s probably going to be called something different. I imagine. What are your thoughts?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I’m not sure how it will end up playing out in the future. But I think it this is a relatively recent recent concept to I think it was the late 90s, late 90s, that it came out, like 1999 is when they did their study.

Ian Robertson
And it only recently gained popularity in pop culture. Okay. Yeah. Like people, people apply it to everything. You know.

Tom Kubiak
One interesting thing I read, talked about Dunning-Kruger in the workplace. And it said that they did some studies in larger workplaces, and it said, 40, more than 40%, like 45% of people would rate themselves as being in the top 5% of the workforce of their company. Now, obviously, you know, that that’s statistically impossible, again, just like some of the drivers. But I was thinking, what is the cost of that, and the cost is, is that those 45, people will will not consider that everyone above them, actually has good ideas. And as a result, they may discount those ideas, because they’re rating themselves as I’m in the top 5% of this world, and what a cost that would be to your, you know, your personality. And I think you may agree, agree with this, like, you know, we serve on some, some boards, where we work with other people closely. And those individuals all bring unique elements to the table. And you know, we might be have a quicker personality or no references better or, you know, maybe have some public speaking skills that others don’t have. But one of the things that makes a group of people work well together and accomplish things, is the ability to look and say, every one of us at this table has a gift and has something to bring to the table. And you know, you have something that I don’t have, the person sitting next to me has something that neither one of us have. And if we recognize that I think it empowers the group to be able to make better decisions.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, and that’s where I say it’s more of like a spectrum, more of a scale. Like there’s going to be some people that are going to be way at the top and way at the bottom, being somewhere hovering around the middle is a sweet spot, in my opinion.

Tom Kubiak
Probably true. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
I mean, that’s, that’s the ideal spot to be in, and a person who’s kind of in the middle of that spectrum, and this is going wildly off off the actual books of what’s technically right or wrong. Again, Dunning-Kruger, I’m going to make up my own information here. There’s my cognitive bias. But I think most people would fall in the middle 40% of that scale, you know, there’s always going to be extremes. But when it comes down to it, the more we can actually step back and look at ourselves and admit, okay, I think I know more than I do. Or, okay, so here’s here’s a cost of business, people not knowing that they’re good as they are. So oftentimes, people will get hired for a lesser position, and then later get promoted, because they get discovered as being amazing. But they’re like, just working in the trenches I’m in, I’m doing this because I’m not good enough for that job. And then sometimes they don’t get discovered. That missed talent is a huge expense to a company. They hired them for the wrong position. Meanwhile, the guy on the other end of the spectrum, thinks he’s amazing, and he gets hired. So I’ll give you an example. In my industry, with the marketing industry, I have an entire team. We do these things day in and day out. And some of the companies we work for will hire an internal marketer, they’re like, okay, you’re gonna deal with this person instead of me, the owner of the company. And we’re like, okay, we always know where it goes. They’re like, Okay, let’s take the phone number off the website, because, you know, nobody uses phones anymore. We’re shifting our entire budget to TikTok, and we’re ignoring all other social media is, you know, it’s just an every single time it happens. And then six months later, they’re gone, our client’s out of a bunch of money, and they’re paying us to put everything back together. It’s an ongoing joke in our in our company, because we just laugh, we’re like, Okay, we’ll do it. You’ll pay us and then you’ll pay us to put it back. I even stopped warning people about it, because they’re.

Tom Kubiak
They’re not listening.

Ian Robertson
They’re not listening. That happened not long ago. Somebody just like, take the phone number off the top of the website. I’m like, you literally schedule all of your business by phone…but I want them to scroll down…And I’m like, I don’t know how else to explain this. Okay. And then they’re like, we’re down, we’re down $100,000 this quarter. I’m like, Yeah, I wonder why.

Tom Kubiak
That comes from the concept where I will pay attention to someone who’s perceived as being an expert rather than actually looking at whether they are an expert or not

Ian Robertson
Exactly. So Dunning-Kruger builds on itself too, because here’s the thing. Oftentimes, I think I’m an amazing judge of character because I own a business and I manage people. And then I realized I know nothing. So yeah. Oftentimes, business people be like, Well, I’m a great judge of character, I run this big business. I know people, and we’re still really just easily fooled. And so like you said, so now we’re listening to somebody who is perceived as an expert, I went to this seminar one time, and I had a booth at the seminar. It was a real estate seminar. Everybody walked in there, like, Oh, you’re gonna get free continuing education, all the agents were like, I’m not getting sold on anything. I’m just here for the two hours of free continuing education and the croissants and they were good croissants. But I’m standing back there. This guy from Canada, probably the best salesman I’ve ever seen in my life. He gets up there. By the end of the program. He had them all sold. He had people waiting in line signing up people that were like, coming in saying, Ian, I’m not going to sign up for this, were like, Ian, isn’t this amazing? So one of them. I asked him like, because I’m not in real estate. I’m like, What are you signing up for? He goes, all of this. Unlike all of what. He couldn’t quantify what the guy was actually selling. So the guy selling something didn’t have anything to sell. So there’s a little bit of Dunning and Kruger, and then the guy buying it didn’t know what he was buying. But the guy looked like an expert. And he thinks he’s an expert at people. Exactly. So moron to moron. I found a neat quote, John Cleese said, if you’re really, really stupid, then it’s impossible for you to know that you are really, really stupid. Exactly. That defines Dunning and Kruger,

Tom Kubiak
That’s exactly what it is.

Ian Robertson
It’s a cognitive bias. We don’t know what we don’t know. Yeah, we don’t have a baseline to go off of. So you build a table? If you’ve never seen another person’s table built before? Is this the best table in the world? Or the worst? I don’t know. Because I’ve never seen it.

Tom Kubiak
Well, and I would push back a little bit on your, you know, you want to be in the middle. I think that you should be, you know, to the expert side of Dunning-Kruger, when you know a lot about things. So if you know a lot about things, you should be at that expert side where you recognize what you know, but also recognize that you don’t know something. Yeah. And as a result of that, you’re willing to say, Okay, I’m going to take time and learn so that I can make a good decision. But for everything else, your baseline should be the middle. Yeah, like, that’s where I might not have all the information. But I’m not going to overestimate my ability. Touche. That’s where I would be.

Ian Robertson
I’ll give you that one, touche. If we could actually get on the upper spectrum of that cognitive bias, but at the same time..

Tom Kubiak
For specific areas.

Ian Robertson
For specific areas. And that’s really what Dunning and Kruger comes down to is specific areas, it’s not overall in life, I’m a genius about everything in life. It’s about no particular tasks, so to speak.

Tom Kubiak
A good example of that is so my field is taxes. I do know a lot about taxes, and I read about taxes constantly. But I’m constantly, I had a client today mention to me a form that I’ve never used before. And and when she mentioned that I said you know what, I’ve never used that form. Let me do a little research on it. Before I comment on whether you qualify to take those credits. And but at the same point, even though I know a little bit about marketing, I will never say that I’m an expert in marketing, because there’s so much that like, I don’t know, I’d rather be like that and be someone who’s pounding the table and say I could go, I could go toe to toe to you with that about what marketing will work, because you’re the expert in marketing, not me.

Ian Robertson
Well, in that regard, I’m not an expert in marketing.

Tom Kubiak
I think you are an expert in marketing.

Ian Robertson
I’m an expert in marketing in one particular niche field.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. But see, that’s Dunning Kruger. That’s, you’re at the top end of that.

Ian Robertson
Nice.

Tom Kubiak
And you’re recognize… Yeah.

Ian Robertson
Score. Gotcha Tom.

Tom Kubiak
You’re at the top end of that. And you’re recognizing that I am an expert in this, but I don’t know everything. Like I recognize there’s limitations to what I want to know.

Ian Robertson
No, I actually think I’m a genius and marketing. I was just tricking you into telling me that I’m on the upper spectrum.

Tom Kubiak
Just wanted me to tell you, you’re an expert.

Ian Robertson
All right. Great. Well, this really is an interesting field with a lot of different facets to it. I mean, we could go on, on and on. But I really go back to that Dave Barry quote, We all think we’re an above average trier. But it is true.

Tom Kubiak
Speaking of Dave Barry, do you ever read his like, January 1 of every year he puts out a summary of the previous year?

Ian Robertson
No.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, they are hilarious. He is probably one of the best like sarcastic comedians that I’ve ever read.

Ian Robertson
He’s funny in a weird way. Like there’s sometimes no joke. It’s just like, I don’t read a lot of books but I read as I remember being a kid 20 some odd years ago reading this Dave Barry great quotes or something. And like one of the lines just said, If you ever drop your watch into a pool of lava, just let it go, man, it’s gone.

Tom Kubiak
That’s exactly what he is.

Ian Robertson
I’m like, that’s not even a joke, but it’s hysterical.

Tom Kubiak
You have to go back and find his January 1.. Like he does like a letter, I don’t know if it’s a letter to the editor in an article or something. It might be Washington Post that he puts it on, or New York Times. But anyway, wherever he does it, go go and read it. And it’s his summary of the past year. And it is hilarious. Like, I don’t know how he does it.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, but he is hysterical, and I’m happy to quote him on the show. But do you have any bad dad jokes to take us out, Tom?

Tom Kubiak
Oh, I always have a bad dad joke. Of course.

Ian Robertson
Okay.

Tom Kubiak
Okay, so here’s the, here’s my bad dad joke. Where do families argue at the mall?

Ian Robertson
I don’t know.

Tom Kubiak
In the feud court.

Ian Robertson
That’s terrible. That’s not even a bad dad joke. That’s terrible.

Tom Kubiak
Speaking of, speaking of Dunning-Kruger and jokes, one of the articles I read said that they in their Dunning-Kruger tests. They ask people their views about humor and whether or not they think their jokes are good. I am definitely an expert.

Ian Robertson
You know, if you look up Dunning-Kruger jokes, they’re all just basically saying that I’m an expert in Dunning-Kruger.

Tom Kubiak
I’m an expert. Exactly.

Ian Robertson
But I got one for you. First rule of Dunning-Kruger club. You don’t know you are in Dunning-Kruger club.

Tom Kubiak
Now you can’t talk about Dunning-Kruger club. You don’t know you’re in Dunning-Kruger.

Ian Robertson
i’m an expert on the Dunning-Kruger effect. I don’t know anything about it.

Tom Kubiak
That’s good. That’s good.

Ian Robertson
So..Well, thank you for drinking with me, Tom.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, no problem.

Ian Robertson
We had some bourbon, and we talked about the Dunning-Kruger effect and it was a good time.

Tom Kubiak
Have a good night.

Ian Robertson
You too.

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