: I copied the following from another board. I take no position as to where I
: or others stand.

: You guys might find the following article of interest:
: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/011800hth-behavior-incompetents.html

: A brief excerpt: ...according to his research, most incompetent people do not
: know that they are incompetent.

: On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dr. Dunning has found in studies
: conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely
: confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who
: do things well.

: One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the
: researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are
: the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

: The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly.

: "Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate
: choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize
: it."

: Unlike their unskilled counterparts, the most able subjects in the study, Dr.
: Kruger and Dr. Dunning found, were likely to underestimate their own
: competence. The researchers attributed this to the fact that, in the
: absence of information about how others were doing, highly competent
: subjects assumed that others were performing as well as they were.