The "Dunning-Kruger effect" is the idea that if you're thick as pigshit you're dumb enough to think you're brilliant. It's as old as the hills. Socrates is often misquoted as spouting that old line "Wisest is he who knows that he doesn't know."

Regardless of whether it's demonstratively or even anecdotally true, it's fundamentally just a comfort to self-professed smartasses who recognize this trait of blithering ignorance in someone who's getting paid more than they are, and so find solace in some modicum of officiated psychology. "Yes, I am smart! They just don't recognize it! Because they're not as smart as me!"

Often it's flipped the other way. That verbose cunt Bertrand Russell: "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." We get it Bert, those geeks you identify with have never had any self-confidence.

What if you think you're as dumb as a brick but are aware of the D-K effect and its opposite counterpart? I think, for example, that I'm borderline handicapped regarding coding. But then perhaps I know more than I think I do. Or perhaps that very hypothesis is evidence that I truly am as moronic as I first thought.

Surely the best outcome is to be smart as hell and know, with reasoned confidence, that you're that smart as well. Until the time in which I embody that apogee, we should just throw all this self-aware masturbatory psychological bullshit out the window -- whether you considered it or not.

I'm an amateur programmer, and I'm here to learn.