Dunning response (late)(sorry)

The author of this piece (David Dunning) notes that he is a leading expert on the ideas that sometimes more information is not necessarily better, but does contrast that with the fact that these ideas are in no way new and can be dated back to at least the founding fathers. In his article Dunning talks in depth about how when someone gets a little bit of information, their confidence in their own grasp of that information can drastically outweigh what they actually know. By having only a small piece of puzzle but holding the impression that they’ve put the whole picture together, people are digging their own intellectual graves. This article made me think of the old idiom “all I know is I know nothing”. As the piece goes on Dunning says that people have so much trouble admitting they don’t know something that they will draw ridiculous conclusions to fit the tiny shred of information they have. By this logic people who have less information can actually be in better shape because they have no misconceptions about whatever topic is up for discussion. Dunning also notes that even when given unbiased information, peoples personal thought processes can skew how they view that information. Much of the research done in this piece is either done by Dunning himself and his colleagues, or other researchers in his field that are on a similar level of expertise as him. Among the very academically worded sources, explanations and theories, Dunning ties in pop culture or household names. A few of these are the use of Barak Obama as an example, or clips from Jimmy Kimmel bits that show the theories at work.