Know-nothing arrogance

[cjsmith]

(This idea has been running through my brain for some time. I finally said it in a comment in someone else's journal. Reposting, after nitpicky edits, here.)

There should be a specific word meaning "the type and amount of arrogance that leads a person with no formal training and no experience in a particular subject to believe he knows that subject better than someone who has lots of formal training and/or lots of experience in it". 'Cause it's common enough to deserve a name.

Whatever people decide to call it, I hope it's surgically correctable.

Comments

[altitudeandwine.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!
As for the word... perhaps we should call it after someone who's particularly 'good' at it. ;-D

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you said "and" there... since I've got a pet peeve in the opposite direction, the one where people think that formal training is necessarily better or more desirable than experience. Additonally, how do you account for TALENT or natural ability? Some people have LOTS of formal training and still can do FOO to save their souls, where some people step in as relative neophytes and kick the butts of those with multiple advanced degrees. Education is not necessarily equal to competency.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

BS Artist works for me, and I think the corrective surgery is a cranio-rectal inversion. ;-)

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

For a minute there I thought you were talking about me. That I-know-what-I'm-talking-about-and-I-can-make-up-statistics-to-prove-it authoritative voice is something I picked up at Harvard. Very handy...

[allanh.livejournal.com]

"Delusions of competency."

[jcgbigler.livejournal.com]

I think "presumptuous" works pretty well. If that's not quite it, how about "militant ignorant"?

Reminiscent of Derek Bok's wonderful quote, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

[apparentparadox]

I can't locate the source right now, but I remember reading about a study where they discovered something like the more you understand a subject, the better you are at judging your understanding of the subject (and vice versa). In other words, those people who really don't know what they are talking about don't even know that they don't know what they are talking about, and actually probably *can't* know that they don't know what they are talking about.

[erisian-fields.livejournal.com]

Wow. You just totally described my ex.

[firecat]

In my quote file, stolen from a news report about that competency study:

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured...is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence. -- San Francisco Chronicle, 1-18-00