Why Ignorance Fails to Recognize Itself

I discuss the flawed evaluator problem, which asks how well can people assess their own intellectual and social skills, as well as those of others, when their expertise inevitably contains gaps and defects? I discuss how these imperfections lead people to misjudge themselves, often causing them to miss their own incompetence and gullability (the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect), and misjudge others, often prompting failures to recognize top-level competence and virtuosity among their peers (the Cassandra Quandary). I discuss the implications of the flawed evaluator problem for personal issues as well as society at large.