Dunning-Kruger Online
There are two main categories of users on the internet: those who create content, and those who rarely, if ever, create content, preferring to browse instead. Pre-social media, the latter was more commonly known as a lurker. This terminology and status is not uncommon now, but it less common that one is a committed lurker with the growth of social media, more commonly chipping in every now and then, especially if they are required to make an account to get full access to something. That is not to say there are not still any lurkers out there, but that the structure of social media and what it encourages, encourages participation more than other mediums typically do.
The poster vs non-poster distinction is arguably the most readily apparent one. It would be interesting to investigate if there is a correlation between intelligence and how much content one contributes to social media. Perhaps some of these studies exist that I have not discovered yet. I would guess that there would not be a statistically significant correlation when it comes to content contribution through sheer volume, though I could not say this with complete confidence.
Instead, what is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, is a pattern which I have noticed regularly throughout my time online, both involving myself and others whom I have associated with. What the Dunning-Kruger Effect is - henceforth referred to as DKE for the sake of brevity – is the pattern that those of low intelligence and cognitive ability tend overestimate them, while those with higher capabilities in the aforementioned tend to underestimate these things.
Before I go on, I should make sure to define intelligence instead of leaving it as an arbitrary concept for the reader to define with guesswork as to what I mean. I have encountered many people who like to discuss intelligence or lack thereof without knowing what it is supposed to be.
A basic definition for intelligence is the innate capacity to reason and be knowledgeable. Thus, knowledge is what fills this capacity for this intelligence. Think of intelligence like a cup, and knowledge a liquid that fills it. A large cup may not have much liquid in it, and smaller one can be filled to the brim. But it cannot ever become a large cup. The exercise of knowledge is the most evident way to display our intelligence to others.
In the same way, intelligence is not an absolute metric, but a gradient. IQ is a metric that is generally quite useful, but is not an entirely immovable number. Someone’s energy levels and mental state are likely to affect the results of someone taking an IQ test to a degree, for instance. People who are roughly the same in IQ may have very different capabilities and proficiencies that they are best suited at.
In the context of online, I have generally been able to tell very quickly when someone is much less intelligent than I am or trying to keep up but is bullshitting me for the sake of trying to either impress me or “own” me. I am sure averagely intelligent people have had this happen at some point. There are is a decent amount of people who are both stupid and arrogant who immediately assume you are retarded because something is beyond their comprehension from an offhanded post, or some other speck of wit goes over their pea-sized brains. These people do not seem to engage with others who they don’t understand for an extended period, instead taking potshots in passing. The DKE coupled with arrogance bolstered by anonymity – and anonymity is not a bad thing by itself – is like cocaine to them, making them act boisterous and reckless to those who by all laws of Heaven and Earth are their betters.
There are also those who have a decently high intelligence, but choose to slosh the liquid out of their cups and replace it with something different entirely. Not because of expanding their wealth of knowledge and becoming more certain in their beliefs – although that is often why they do it – but because to them, doing so puts them a cut above the rest for the mere sake of it. Most pseudointellectuals, particularly the “very online” ones behave in this manner. In my opinion, these are the biggest victims of the DKE, in that it paralyzes their intellectual growth and curbs the effective usage of their intellectual capacity. They aren’t cognitively stupid, but get off on behaving as though being cryptic and obscure makes them much more enlightened.
An example of someone who is more consistent in his beliefs, but also a pseudointellectual, is Jordan Peterson. He is just smart enough to explain things to idiots and midwits and impress them, but for those who are more perceptive, much of what he has to offer is empty feel good platitudes. If his IQ is indeed above 150 as he has claimed, he has clearly has not demonstrated anything to suggest it might be anywhere less than 30 points downwards. That, or drug abuse has rotted his brain severely to the point that he is nowhere near this point anymore and never really made effective use for it – a PhD means almost nothing by itself in terms of intellectual contribution, especially in his contemporarily nebulous field. I would liken him to a secular televangelist, even though he is evidently some sort of vague theist.
From my own experience, I can tell every once in a while when I am dealing with someone whom I perceive to be more intelligent than I. It’s difficult to tell how much of it is them having a bigger cup or how much of it is having more liquid in a cup, but in either instance, I am sure one of these contributes to this effect easily. I did say earlier than one can have a small cup with a lot of liquid, but unless someone is a mental freak and is heavily knowledgeable about a few topics while being an idiot about everything else, generally, a large cup will obtain more liquid over a lifetime. It’s not a yawning gap, mind you, but I do perceive them as more capable than me in some sense all the same. Some of this could be DKE in action where I underestimate my own ability, seeing as I typically keep up conversationally with such people well.
However, part of the DKE also involves being able to more accurately estimate your own intelligence compared to those with lower cognitive abilities. Even if you are underestimating it, you are likely close to knowing how about how intelligent you are. So, according to the principles of DKE, either I am much less intelligent than I think I am, or I am quite intelligent but lack assurance and underestimate it to some degree.
There is not really any reason to act much more knowledgeable than you really are online, it simply is not sustainable. You could use all this effort pretending and signally to others, and actually attempt to learn and have some of it stick. Coupled with the ability for the average user to furiously look something up during a conversation, almost anyone can pretend to be a self-proclaimed expert just from glancing at the first page of Google. You don’t win anything from this except from coming off as a hack fraud. That being said, there will always be a swath of gullibles who are impressed by the charlatanism and magic tricks of appearing much more clever than one is. Don’t be one of those people.