Opinion: a log like decrease in happiness vs income is basically consistent with "more money doesn't make you happier". Sketching a graph that is completely flat is misleading however. The only question is, at what point on the log scale is the increase small enough to disregard (compared to other life factors).<p>Another one from the article: I'm arguing <i>without empirical evidence</i> of the superiority of good type systems (Note: I try to stay away from claims about what those are). I also think it's not possible to make controlled studies on this area - which is why it's such a contested issue. Studies use either students and/or toy problems, or irrelevant datasets such as bugs reported against github repos etc. The only way top make a valid study is to have N teams implement and maintain a product with the same spec over K years and then compare the results and try to factor out developer skill. I say it's not a feasible problem to solve. We'll have to stick to arguing type systems <i>without</i> evidence to back up the argumebts. But that is the best kind of arguing, after all.
So I write this as an academic who actually has read and cited Drs. Dunning and Kruger's (in)famous work. This is a little off the cuff so it isn't going to have the citations it should.<p>The generalized thing that the authors are talking about is information literacy. It is the process that includes not just understanding the information but identifying the need for information, locating it, understanding the information, evaluating the information, and then applying the information to some affect. Interestingly, it has found a home primarily within the libraries because...well they are really solid place to go for how information is organized.<p>“Making search easier for students can therefore be a double-edged sword: while it enables students to get to information faster and easier, it can also reinforce unreflective research habits that contribute little to the overall synthesis of a research paper or academic argument.” [0]<p>More broadly from research I have been involved in on student information literacy, self report data is spectacularly garbage because of underlying misconceptions students' hold about what they did. One semi-famous observational study showed that students strongly conflate finding a piece of information with understanding it. That was a 'whoa' moment for me. Cognitive conflation of access to a piece of information and deep coherent understanding of it. Houston...well you know the rest.<p>I personally attribute that in large part to fundamental problems in how we as a society think about education. This is philisophical about how we fail to differentiate transmission of information from the development of insights and understanding. We teach information as if it is both of those things. Science, as much as people scream otherwise isn't facts. Facts are the result of science. There is a lot of other work showing it is really hard to get faculty to change teaching practices. The reality is it doesn't matter. Society, not just teachers, need to think about information different and think about knowledge different ly for us to break out of this loop.<p>[A]Dimmock, N. (2013). Hallmarks of a good paper. In N.F. Foster (Ed.), Studying students: A second look (7-17). Chicago: ACRL.
Looks like the difference between perceived and actual scores fit the popular understanding.<p>The people who perform the worst have the most inflated perception of their performance, while the people who perform the best underestimate their performance.<p>I think people take Dunning-Kruger and apply it to their everyday anecdotes. They are thinking in terms of relative differences rather than absolute, and thus the pop-sci understanding may not be that far off from the original.
In regards to software engineering, The Leprechauns of Software Engineering has lots of good examples of this type of thinking.<p><a href="https://leanpub.com/leprechauns" rel="nofollow">https://leanpub.com/leprechauns</a>
The most interesting thing about the graphs isn't the slope, but that "perceived score" is far more tightly coupled to the individual's perception of their overall ability than their actual score. But that could be an artefact of how and when questions about ability were asked
(conjecture: I haven't read the original paper)
The money/happyness one is particularly interesting to me. If money does not equal happyness why am I so happy when I get more? I make more than 75k so obviously 75k isn't enough.
Oh man, it’s the HN link I was born to read.<p>The way people throw around Dunning-Kruger in particular is so aggravating. You can pretty much always tell they never got anywhere even close to reading the research.