Delusional superiority syndrome: when ignorance is disguised as knowledge
No matter what your level of education, salary or training, you can always learn from anyone, even the one you consider “inferior”. Human ignorance is a widespread subject of study, from Socrates to Darwin have tried to explain why the most ignorant people feel superior to others. Almost always, the answer to stupidity is an internal lack.
One widely accepted theory is the Dunning-Kruger effect, designed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger and destroyed at Cornell University. This effect characterizes a cognitive disorder in which people who are unaware of a certain topic believe they know more than those who are studied and experienced without recognizing it.
In other words, these people live under an effect of delusional superiority, believe they know everything and have a response that is usually worthless for anything. As the 1999 article by Dunning and Kruger says:
“Incompetent people are often blessed with inadequate trust, secured by something that seems knowledgeable to them.
That’s how people with this syndrome are sure that their intelligence and skills are above average, or at least extremely good at what they do, when the truth is that they can be quite mediocre. It is precisely the blindness of believing that they already know everything that prevents them from learning from scratch and actually gaining knowledge.
But this misperception affects not only themselves, but also those around them. People with the Dunning-Kruger effect cannot recognize the potential in others and are often the sharpest critics (even though they are really mediocre). Thus, the syndrome is characterized by an exacerbated selfishness.
As you read these lines you are probably remembering one or more people you have met who seem to be painted in these letters. But today you can see more clearly that these people are trapped in their own ignorance. They cannot, and will not, understand that they are not superior and that even their supposed knowledge is just mental straw, leaf litter, garbage.
You’ll find these people teaching classes on how things should be done in the area they claim to know best. They can be quite unpleasant as they have the toupee of sitting and debating with academics and experts in an area they obviously know nothing about.
Learning requires dialogue, and more importantly, listening. A person with the Dunning-Kruger effect, or in general a person who cannot listen, is incapable of learning.
The Polish-born sociologist Zygmunt Bauman points out in one of his last interviews that “real dialogue is not talking to people who think the same as you”. In that order, it is necessary to think that almost nobody likes to dialogue, but there are people who are definitely predisposed not to. That way, they don’t learn, they don’t grow, they aren’t really good at anything.
Do you know anyone with this delusional superiority?