One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in communicating science (apart from my own struggles to explain things clearly without losing the interest of my audience), is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which Wikipedia gleefully defines as

a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes.

It leads to stupid people thinking they are way smarter than they actually are and to smart people thinking they aren’t as smart as they actually are.  I’ve wanted to rant write about this effect for awhile now, but Barbara beat me to it.  And lucky for you, too – she does it better than I ever could have, even though we’ve had many of the same experiences, like

There was a guy on my favorite online dating website that answered the question, “What do you think about healing crystals?” with the answer, “I think they work.” But he claimed to be an intellectual and he only wanted to meet women “if their smart.” He was online, so I started a chat with him. I opened with a remark that he’d attract more smart women if he knew the difference in “their” and “they’re.” Yet he kept talking to me. Turns out he believes in astrology, thinks the government has a secret 20 year plan to try to take away all rural land ownership to force people to live in cities, and he thinks global warming is a hoax to increase taxes. He honestly believes he is smarter than everybody else and wants to meet a smart woman.

Funny, and so true. Go read the rest!