Stupidity protects people from the awareness of their own stupidity.

[scotteroni]

I guess there really are people in real life like the character Micheal on " The Office" TV program

 “When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.  Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the erroneous impression they are doing just fine.”

It became known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect — our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence.  But just how prevalent is this effect? "

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/

[1KPerDay]

I like chicken

[1moreroad]

Interesting article.  Thanks.

I've had long discussions about this at work, about riding, etc.

The best thing a person can do is to be open to the world around him or her.  Situational awareness in everything we do.  The was an article (maybe in Wired?) with the link posted here on STN arguing that the financial crisis, at least in part, was the result of bankers oversimplifying the math that the quants used when they put together their financial instruments like debt swaps and mortgage bundles.  The bankers were ignorant but also too egotistical to realize it.  How many times have we failed to put the pieces together that were all in front of us?  9/11.  Probably BP.  The facts in front of us didn't fit some predefined mental map so they are left behind.

Figuring out "unknown unknowns" requires awareness of everything out there and a radical ability to channel all that data into a useful decision.

For a similar subject, read Deep Survival and Everyday Survival (DS is the better book, though) by Laurence Gonzales.

[Open Sore]

It reminds of the saying - "He is stupid, but he know that he is stupid, and that almost makes him smart."

[miles]

We should all be like Donald Rumsfeld and learn from what we see and also what we don't see.  As he famously said: "Reports that say something hasn't happened are interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."

Rummy has been criticized for saying this, but he actually points out an important reality- there are things we don't know that we don't know, and learning those things is the most important for success.