Sorry, no profound insight offered here, but inquiring if anyone subscribes to, has access to this scientific report (see end for reference):

PSYCHOLOGY
Believing you know is not the same as knowing
Impossibly large numbers of people believe that they are above average drivers; similarly, people often think that they understand how GPS works, but then cannot provide a persuasive explanation. Atir et al. add the phenomenon of overclaiming to this list of metacognitive judgments. They find that crowdsourced workers claim to know or to be familiar with nonexistent financial (“fixed-rate deduction”) or biological (“metatoxins”) terms and that this occurs in proportion to their selfassessed knowledge about the topic. Moreover, telling people in advance that some terms did not exist had no effect on how many they claimed to know.  — GJC
Psychol. Sci. 26, 10.1177/ 0956797615588195 (2015).

I wouldn't expect any profound insight from this study either, but curious as to the details of how they frame it (which usually relates closely to their "findings").

Overall, the topic would appear to have some relevance to some of the goings-on here in DhO.

I do not have access to this report, but they seem to be talking about the Dunning-Kruger effect, known informally as "peak stupid". The Wikipedia article cites a dozen peer reviewed papers on this 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Thanks. It sure looks like the same direction of research, focusing more on the over-estimation side.

From the wikipedia article:
"David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University have postulated that the effect is the result of internal illusion in the unskilled, and external misperception in the skilled: "The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."[1] "

Looks like has some relevance to meditative cultivation -- the internal / external axis of insight is a theme in Therevada sutta-s and Abdhidhamma; and obviously conceit (mana) as pride / comparison.

"Studies on the Dunning–Kruger effect tend to focus on American test subjects. A number of studies on East Asian subjects suggest that different social forces are at play. For example  East Asians tend to underestimate their abilities and see underachievement as a chance to improve themselves and get along with others.[11] "

This also may pertain, though the citation mentions Japanese, Chinese and Koreans (home to Zen/Chan varieties of Buddhism), and not the South Asian Therevadan countries.

A big part of this seems to be a limited vocabulary for knowledge. Perhaps there should be a distinction between "rational knowledge" and "irrational knowledge". Rational knowledge would have been subjected to logical critique. So for example I can believe many things about myself that have never been validated by a 3rd party let alone debated to demonstrate logical consistency of the arguments supporting the belief. 

One of the claims made on DhO is the concept of 1st person experience giving more authority and a justification of a belief. It seems like a good idea if you classify knowledge as being 1st person, 2nd person or 3rd person. But that is framing the problem as an 'OR' so it seems a logical conclusion that 1st person experience is as good as it gets. We need 1st AND 2nd AND 3rd to start having any confidence in a belief, beyond that there should be logical debate demonstrating consistency of the supporting arguments. This is still far from a solution but it could help indicate where doubt would be appropriate.

I think of true knowledge as the ability to predict. So for example if I am a great driver then I will never be responsible for causing an accident. If that does happen (or did happen) then my knowledge is not true. Without predictions we can more convieniently re-interpret history.

Most of us do not have 3rd party validation of our relative driving ability so doubt would be in order,

I like the description of system 1 and system 2 thinking (dual process theory) bascially if system 1 can make an association and system 2 is not "online" (mindful) then we act with a belief in what system 1 responded with. System 1 does not have a "don't know" response so it will often provide irrational associations.

Your subject title should have been "Who has access to X journal?" But I've grabbed the chance to put something up for debate  

This seems to be a part of the larger study of Logical Fallacies, which seems to be a fallout of how the brain (or consciousness) is wired. Our neurology has, either by design or for lack or a workable solution, these glitches in awareness, like the room with the funny mirrors in an amusement park. If you believed the image in those mirrors were the real you, and at each instant you forgot what you looked like in the previous mirrors, and instead you just acted on the image right in front of you., there you come across these lapses in judgement on the part of normal people. And yes, the smartest people are not immune to it either (Richard Dawkins, anyone?).

I just read this book called 'You Are Not So Smart" (he also has a blog by the same name) by David McRaney, which lists out the most common logical fallacies that you're likely to come across, both in yourself & others. It was amazing as I found insight after insight into my own logical fallacies that I was not aware of, & which now seem so obvious when I see myself acting on them.

The fact that we have been able to get to the point where we are actually aware of our own blinders & are able to account for them in our decision making, our work & life is a staggering achievement of the human intellect. It just blows the mind.


That's why when senior practitioners on DhO are asked if realms & other worlds are "real", they reply that there is no way to know, since all they have to go on is their subjective knowledge.


I took off on a tangent there, but hope it gives you a few more paths to traverse.

Love & metta,
Yash