IN 2012, Monty Python comedian John Cleese posted a video online in which — citing the research of a friend named David Dunning — he explained the following: “If you’re very, very stupid, how can you possibly realise that you’re very, very stupid? You’d have to be relatively intelligent to realise how stupid you are.”
Journalist William Poundstone uses this research — known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect — as a springboard for his new book Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy To Look Up, reportsThe New York Post.
In it, he argues that Americans are lacking a shocking amount of knowledge in the age of Google. It may even be because of it.
Denning, a psychology professor, and graduate student Justin Kruger discovered the Dunning-Kruger Effect at Cornell.
In one experiment, they subjected students to tests of knowledge in various areas, then asked how they thought they did.
Those who did the worst thought they did the best; those who scored moderately well had the most accurate perception of their results; and those scoring the best underestimated their performance.
“Those most lacking in knowledge and skills,” writes Poundstone, “are least able to appreciate that lack.”
This is especially true today in our information age. Because everything we need to know is readily available on our computers, we are less likely to learn things we think we can find online.
This is known by scientists as the Google Effect.
making me dumber, was a short trip 