Turns out it’s harder than I thought. But we all got a chance to learn about unconscious overconfidence. Where else do you see the Dunning-Kruger Effect show up in the world?

I've only read a little about the Dunning-Kruger effect, but I think I have a pretty solid understanding of it

When people say "I could land the plane", you did exactly what they think they could do . No one thinks they'd have a commercial-level landing, but people think they have the possibility to make sure everyone lands without dying. You literally proved that it's possible.

Pilot here, the fact that you actually made it TO the runway in IFR is better than a lot of pilot trainees do.

There's a difference between a crash, and a crash with fatalities. If a good landing is one you walk away from and as far as I'm concerned you did an impressive job. Plus taking into account BOS has a huge runaway and many emergency services, if the pilots stroke out on my flight I'd definitely want you to land it.

I AM a pilot, and I instructed in a 737 simulator for about a year and a half. The first of your actual manual landings was not a crash. I don't know why he told you that you "crushed the gear". Your rate of descent was fine at touchdown. In fact, it was even softer than the auto-land did. And the 737 is capable of REALLY planting onto the runway, which is actually a safer landing in adverse weather. I'd call that first landing a success. Though, the rest were... well... rough.

As a 20 year pilot I’m impressed that he could even make it to the runway especially in the weather. Keep hitting the Microsoft flight sim. It’s clearly paying off.

I feel like the hardest part is knowing how to channel into the right radio frequency to get help from the runway you are going to

This reminds me of when I was learning to drive. From what others have told me it seems that this is a pretty universal experience, but when I started learning to drive I was cautious because I knew that I didn’t know much. But by the time I went through the process of having a permit, taking the tests, and getting my required hours of experience I was confident in my abilities. So I wasn’t all that cautious after I got my license. And within the first year, like many others, I got into an accident. The accident really showed me just how inexperienced I was and it made me much more cautious as a driver and I think I’m a much better driver because of it.

As a pilot I would say that on your second attempt you would probably have saved all lives on board, despite damaging the plane. In an emergency situation I'm happy to call that a successful landing.

The second and third attempt, while technically a crash, would probably totally survivable by most if not all passengers. That's good enough for a novice.

I've encountered the term, "Dunning-Kruger Effect," countless times. I think it's totally awesome that you actually had Dunning included in your video.

Pro Tip: When you're landing, don't use the stick to climb/descend, if you're off the glideslope, adjust your throttle in small increments (you will get a feel for it after enough practice), more throttle will cause you to climb and less throttle will cause you to descend... When you try to make these adjustments on the stick, pulling up will cause you to lose speed and can lead to an aerodynamic stall, pushing the nose down causes an increase in speed which can cause you to overshoot your landing, you want to adjust your speed while maintaining the optimum descent angle for your aircraft...

Now that I'm aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect, I think I have what it takes to land the plane

Joe, I would like to have seen you do this with Tom Scott as your co-pilot.

I've played flight sims since I was a little kid, I bought some commercial simulator time for my 30th birthday I didn't crash it a single time and could even do a ILS approach. It was really fun and I plan on doing it again for my 40th. The hardest part really is getting used to the coordination required for using rudder, throttle, and the yoke at the same time while monitoring your speed it's very different than playing a sim on your computer

0:45 I'm an avionics technician. I've dabbled in Microsoft Flight Simulator and know a decent amount about how planes work. I can't land one. But I know that COM1 or COM2 is probably already set to the nearest ATC tower, look for the Push-To-Talk button on the CCD, press it and ask them to guide me through it. The good thing is autopilot will help a lot. The bad news is you still have to get the jet in the right configuration for approach, descent and landing. You also have to line up with the runway correctly. I've seen crosswinds nearly make senior pilots cause a tail strike or wing strike. If there's a crosswind you're boned.

When you realise you can have the Dunning-Kruger effect in relation to knowledge about the Dunning-Kruger effect..

There is also a positive side to the Dunning-Kruger effect, because if people really knew what was ahead of them, a lot of people wouldn't have started the journey in the first place.

Love all of your videos, but really liked this one, Shirley!

I was put in a really difficult situation when I was hired as an automation programmer without having the necessary knowledge (after the owner's suggestion). In my first month the only other programmer quit, leaving me with a bunch of delayed projects and a huge mess of programs. I often found myself telling the owner that my job is really hard because at every step I had to consider what I didn't know. But this made me very aware of the fact I didn't know enough and I setup procedures for testing and QA that in the end I ended up being the best programmer the company ever had. I had no idea about this effect but with methodical thinking I was able to discover it and overcome it. Now I also know the name for it.

I've been watching a lot of flight videos lately. So, how confident am I that I could land a plane? Assuming full automation and ideal conditions, close to 100%. A fully manual landing, also 100%. Granted, survival of the plane and passengers in that situation would probably be around 0%, but I could definitely get the plane out of the sky and onto the ground.

I have a bachelor degree in aviation: I became a pilot in college. This donning-krueger affect I think it's very real and without knowing it, I experienced it during my flight training. That's where good instructors come in. Because you don't know what you don't know, it's a very fine line to know when you did something well or need improvement. Flight training is all about training, training, and training some more; you build from the previous lesson and before you know it, you're proficient. Handle an emergency while you're task saturated... do that and you can be taught to fly. What he said about chain of events is so true. There's never ever any one reason why accidents happen; it's always a chain of events and we strive to stop that chain of events at any one point.

Well done . I've always wanted to try out a proper simulator

Great video. Well put together and well presented.

From what i hear, you landed it better than most Ryan Air pilots

I am a pilot. I can tell you that flying IS mentally exhausting. On the subject of "Dunning-Kruger", long before I had even heard of the study, I would talk of the five stages of competence: Unconsciously Incompetent - You don't know what you don't know. You have absolutely no idea what you must learn. Consciously Incompetent - You now have some idea of the enormity of the task before you but you still don't know how to do it. Consciously Competent - You can now do it. However, you must think about it in order to be able to do it. You cannot do it automatically. Unconsciously Competent - Now you can do it without thinking about it. You can walk AND chew gum. This, often inevitably, leads to: Unconsciously Incompetent - You are not paying attention to what you are doing. You have over-estimated your ability and have grown complacent. ("The Killing Zone"). The trick is to remain somewhere between Step 3 and Step 4. Allow your automatic responses to do the thing (be "pilot flying") whilst your conscious mind pays attention to your performance (being "Pilot Monitoring").

I've seen this young man before and really enjoyed this. I subscribed.

Duel survival is a show that actually gives alot to take away in the way of understanding and knowledge of what to do in specific scenarios but also goes through and explains things that are commonly thought of in said spot is incorrect.

I remember reading that the Dunning-Kreuger effect was strongest for highly competent experts (PhDs, the worlds bests surgeons, etc) when dealing with fields other than their specialty.

This is 100% the case in survival scenarios as well. It's well documented that since the new survival shows have become more and more popular (think Survivorman, Survivor, Man vs Wild) more and more people incorrectly assume they can survive in the wilderness and end up getting lost in a large forest requiring rescue.

This is a great concept. Can’t wait to watch.✈️

Loved your analysis from the practical data. I myself have flown Cessna and i know that flying a sim and the real deal is way way different. Our virtual worlds have exposed us to more and more to this affect and the need to fit socially actually cause most of us to - fake it, till we make it. Cheers!!!

I'm an archaeologist, and each time we do activities in which we interact with visitors, I know I'm bound to get that one person who's going to know everything better than me because they watched a documentary. And oh boy that particular person will let you know that they possess The Knowledge.

So the quote from Socrates: "I know that I do not know." is more current than ever. Thanks for the video. Well made. It was fun, and I do appreciate the interview with Mr. Dunning. PS: (SCNR) It seems many people with a little knowledge "in the death zone", who have an outrageously huge self assurance like to go to politics... And too many tend to believe them as these guys radiate confidence.

On a single prop/basic plane, it’s amazing how intuitive something you felt was rocket science becomes when you realize you have to fly it or crash.

I can imagine those gamers into sim games thinking, "how much that flight sim setup cost?"

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Niels Bohr I love this quote, i always put it in the end of all my classes. Both from the angle of how important mistakes and exposure/experience is to building knowledge and also to dispel the myth that the best professional never had a mistake or is beyond failing. I think a lot of what has been learned had huge prices, how many first aviators died? But being able to learn from their mistakes without paying the same price is what makes the right education a miracle. Forming pilots, surgeons, nuclear physicists without deaths is a miracle.

Back in my twenties I discovered the paradox of "The more you know, the more you realize you do not know". I love learning new things and whilst UKposts is good to show you what might be possible, nothing replaces research, trial and error ie 'practice makes perfect'. I watch a lot of 'Air Crash Investigation' so I have a realistic approach to whether I could fly a large plane. Id be screwed and everyone would probably die hahaha.

What a great video. I just wanted to add to your median driver comment. I think that is mainly because people only ever remember the bad drivers on the road. They don't remember any of the good times.

This guy, a non pilot, just executed a hand-flown ILS to minimums, and he managed to get to the runway. That's kind of impressive ngl.

Currently at an Aviation camp where I get to fly planes, with an instructor of course, this video can not have been posted at a more perfect time!🤣

The Dunning-kruger effect may also apply in health care facilities. As a radiographer working in CT-MRI department is very tough job your dealing with machines and patients. Some procedures are complicated like Ct-mri guided biopsy, angiography or all examinations applying IV contrast.

In regards to the statistics about partially experienced pilots being more deadly than new pilots…I’ve been a carpenter for 25 years now and when I was just starting out the guy I worked for made a comment about how this same phenomenon manifests itself in my profession. After I had been framing houses for about six months I was feeling like I finally understood how (when I started I was completely inexperienced with building things or even using tools) a house is built, and my confidence led me to take on a side job building a deck for my cousin. When I told my boss he replied, “Keep in mind you know just enough to be dangerous.” What he was saying was that I think I can build a house on my own, but there’s still so much I have to learn that if I do attempt it on my own I will likely make mistakes that I’m not even aware of, and could build something that isn’t structurally sound, which could be very dangerous to the homeowner if a structural failure occurred. Now, 25 years later as a very experienced contractor I realize how little I knew, but how confident I was in my abilities.

This "killing zone" curve is exactly the same as for motorcycles.

As a pilot, it is quite flattering to hear that you are so fascinated with our work. In the same way, I am fascinated with scientific topics in which you are the professional, haha. Landing is typically the most delicate and often stressful part of flying, and you actually did better than I was expecting. Great video!

I actually landed an airbus A320 at Cairns Airport QLD, with Zippo experience... while flying the Ansett Flight Simulator near Tullamarine Airport in 1989 on a Saturday morning as I got to know the senior engineer there... It was fun... But as an avionics engineer, I know a fair bit about aircraft.... Of course there is a big difference knowing that I am sitting in a simulator, then actually sitting in the cockpit of an aeroplane with to disable pilots....

Decades ago I got to take a ride in a Cessna 150 with a student who was in an aviation school. He showed me all the pertinent controls and the artificial horizon, then let me take control. Keeping the plane level was a major task. If you start climbing the plane starts losing power as the throttle was set for level flight, not climbing to a higher altitude. Simce then I've "flown" using Microsoft flight simulator. More times than I count I either crashed or accidentally landed the plane in a field and was taxing around. I did eventually get ahold of a generic flight manual and could accurately calculate a flight path when the wind would be trying push me off course. The only way I'd ever volunteer to go play pilot would be if everyone else passed up the opportunity. I am under no illusion that I could confidently and safely land a commercial aircraft,

Even worse, the simulation is an ideal scenario. Clear skies, good weather, no turbulence, no other planes, no worries about if you can land and where, no screaming passengers, along with the fact that you know it isn’t real so you aren’t as freaked out and stressed as you would be.

I'm a pilot myself .First of all great content . For some clarification . Being a pilot isn't about just handling the controls , it's about doing and knowing much more things . Some of which are knowing how the weather behaves , emergency procedures , laws in the air ,aircrafts systems etc...besides the landing techniques differ between weather conditions . Watching many documenteries about the human body for fun does not give anyone 1 percent of the knowledge of a real doctor . Again great content , keep it up !

Nincompoopery is a word I didn't know I needed to hear. What a wonderful word

There's a video of someone who was a passenger in a dual motor small airplane he sat next to the pilot and was curious about the plane enough to have asked a few questions, one of them was how the radio worked. Soon after takeoff, the pilot went unconscious. The passenger, decade or so ago, had 3 lessons in a single motor Cessna. He was able to call the tower and they scrambled to find a pilot familiar with that exact aircraft. It still took him several tries at the runway and the landing wasn't really smooth, but he made it. Mind you, small airplanes like that are considered easy, an airbus is something else entirely. A random person landing it per instruction alone would literally be a miracle. Knowing that, I still think that I, having zero flight experience, could land a small Cessna (and survive), but a passenger jet, no, most definitely no.

I remember when my dad got our first flight simulator. He had (short-lived) asperations of learning how to fly, so he bought some gear to make the practices more realistic. Like I said, he gave up pretty quickly, but I loved the simulator and played for years. The one frustration I had was that, unlike my dad, I couldn't seem to land any of the planes. I started to feel better when I met someone with the same problem-my uncle, a former air force pilot who's been flying 737s since I was an infant. He was a co-captain when he realized that he couldn't land planes on Microsoft Flight Simulator, so part of his job was literally to handle the landing of the plane he couldn't land in the simulator. That made me feel a little better lol

I love that, essentially, at 2:52 Dunning is telling us most people who think they know what the D-K effect is, display themselves the effect: “[it’s] an*entire family* of effects, but the one that everybody knows is […]”. Touché, Dr. Dunning!

Seeing Nahant which was in one of the leading patterns to approaching the Boston Logan airport and seeing the tower where I fly into when I know im arriving home was very interesting while watching this. I literally saw my own neighborhood in this video about a plane flying overhead while hearing the actual real life planes flying overhead near my house.

The apprehension in Dr. Dunning's voice when he says "Uhhhh, interesting--don't tell Elon Musk" was priceless.

In my field (surgery) we say that there are two “peaks” of mistakes in the practice, from the “young” surgeon (based on ignorance/inexperiece) and from the “older” surgeon (based on overconfidence). You gotta keep a very high degree of self confidence to cut people open, but its also very healthy to have a certain dose of fear/doubt to not cut your own fingers off 😂

The best time to come to terms with the limit of your knowledge is when you need something repaired and the repair doesn’t go well. It can be difficult to know if the repair is especially complicated or if the specialist is to blame.

I think that I'm really good at knowing what I'm not good at and what I don't know. In fact, I think that for a long time I underestimated myself. It's not difficult to say "I don't have experience in this area...let me go do research or ask someone else", yet people act like it is. I am a therapist and I can't even begin to estimate the number of undergraduate counselors who have tried to compete with me on things that they have absolutely no training on. It's really not difficult to be self-aware enough to know what you don't know.

Because I've watched this video on the Dunning-Kruger effect, I'm 100% confident I know everything about it and I'm now a qualified expert on knowing what I don't know.

I'll be quite honest, I was impressed with his ability to single pilot hand fly an ILS in IMC conditions in a 737. Bravo.

This video perfectly demonstrates the importance of Crew Renource Management and the priority structure of Aviate-Navigate-Communicate. The pilot flying needs to focus on keeping the aircraft in the air. The other pilot needs to focus on navigating, reading checklists, and communicating with air traffic control. It's pretty crazy to juggle all of those tasks by yourself, let alone without any real piloting experience.

The effect is super easy to understand, and I'm confident that I know all about it.

I have to object to "technically, I crashed" after the second landing. You may have damaged the plane and started a fire, but you were in the air, and now you're not, and you're still alive, and that means that you, sir, have just landed. It might not have been pretty, and it may *also* be accurate to say you crashed, but if I'm the proverbial passenger asked to land the plane, my take is simple: any landing that everyone walks away from is a good landing, period.

Flight attendant: "Does anybody know how to land this plane?" Me: "Once!"

5:37 I hate whoever hung those paintings

Same problem here with simulator, during landing, taking off and flying was good, The landing mostly got me, usually from over shooting the runway. I was a maintenance person in a flight sim facility.

The difference between watching someone do an unfamiliar task and doing it yourself is HUGE.

Hey Joe, I am 67 years old. I have know several "geniuses". This includes two world famous inventers. What I discovered, in line with Dunning - Krueger, is that the most gifted often have a delusions that they are also experts in many unrelated fields. For example, if an inventor designs advanced military aircraft why would he also expect expertise in aircraft subassemblies? Also, chemistry, botany, handy capping race horses, global warming, and plate tectonics? I suggest the most gifted are also the worst offenders of Dunning -Krueger effect. This was a good video.

There should be trainings that teach non-pilots how to activate the autopilot and automatic landing on planes, just like how we have CPR training. I know it would be much more expensive and more difficult to implement. In addition, some may say it would be unnecessary since a passenger at the cockpit would be guided via comms, but I believe training would make the process smoother as passengers who completed the training would likely get a sense of déjà vu from the training and remember what some of the controls look like. That could be very helpful in such a stressful situation where a person could easily panic and glance over the controls without knowing which ones they are being instructed to activate.

I got to play in a 747 sim once years ago and it was a little shocking to me how slow it was to respond to input. I also needed a great deal of assistance for the million switches, knobs, and buttons. I doubt i could have landed without any help.

Oh god, I love that pilot. "We're all counting on you." If only he said it multiple times in the video. :P

As the Darkest Dungeon narrator would say: "Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer."

As an actual "private pilot" I used to work for an airline on the ramp and became friends with some sim techs, it cost me a lot of burritos at 3am to get some time in a 757, 737, and A320 Sims. I only had 100 hrs and probably a million on flight simulator. It was much harder than I imagined. I successfully landed the 737 and 757 several times in perfect conditions but never the bus, slippery plane and hard to slow it down without stressing it. That doesn't mean I could do anything other than straight up stick flying, radios are a whole other thing and an ILS approach, forget about it. Never gonna happen.

Wayne Gretzky made me want to play hockey in the 80s. His slapshot hit the top corner blocker side every time. That's the Dunning-Kruger Effect. He made it look easy. When you see someone do something who makes it look easy, you don't know what they did to get where they are. You don't see how they are doing what they are doing. I played 5 years before I realised I'll never be that good.

I believe I'm currently working for the Dunning Kruger company

when i was a young kid at some random sports & 'remote control crafts' store at some random place with my random uncle i once stumbled upon a legit simuator setup for flight sims. i spent the next hour trying to just bloody land. my uncle wanted to leave after an hour but APPERANTLY he was so amazed i was silent and focussed that he let me be. took me over 2 hours of repeated attempts to finally make it to 3 safe landings in a row. Ever since i've never ever believed i could land a real jet (without serious) training.

I watch lots and lots of videos on aviation. This video of yours is very humbling 😂

First try you crushed the gear? I feel like you confirmed Dunning-Kruger Effect. I think in a situation in which a random person is relied upon to do a landing this would merit an amazing achievement saving the lives of many.

My wife was a flight attendant. We traveled a lot, and it was a running joke that maybe THIS would finally be the flight where I might be needed to be the emergency volunteer (with no flight training) to land the plane safely. Of course, this is really the stuff of movies, like Airport 75 and Airplane. But it's an effective way to illustrate DK. Thanks!

I’m a pilot and can assure everyone out there than almost no one would be able to land a 737 without some kind of training lol. With that being said it wouldn’t take much training to be able to land a 737. A person with a private pilots license and a atc in their ear could put a 737 on the ground safely.

Would have loved to have seen this with you flying one of those motion controlled simulators that let you feel all the bumps and jarring that would happen on touchdown.

I've also played a lot of flight simulator and have also fallen into that trap. This video opened my eyes and brain😂 I knew a guy who also had lots of online sim flying experience and when his friend offered him a trip in his real cessna and asked if my friend wants to try he obviously said yes but once he touched the yoke and the plane shifted a little he said nah ah it's alright, you fly rather😮😂

This effect was pretty obvious to me when I switched operating systems from Windows to Linux. Now I had watched a fair share of videos about all sorts of different things and how to set stuff up, but when I had the first issues I was completely at a loss for a solution in that moment. Some things took a lot more time and getting familiar with before I was able to actually execute them well, things like customization options which I thought were super easy turned out to be FAR above my skill level yet. But through pushing across that hill I now slowly start to actually be able to understand what I actually can and cannot do with my system. This was a very nice demonstration for me on how I vastly overestimated my skill set, especially since I always considered myself to be a bit of a tech-savy.

I used to watch videos like that and in depth explanations of how all the systems of an aircraft work. Eventually, I started taking flight lessons and flying real planes, and I realized that, while those videos helped me a lot, there is a huge difference between learning about flying a plane and actually doing it.

As a flight instructor, this is one of the things I need to make sure people are well aware of on day one - ESPECIALLY those people who have flight sim experience. Flight sim is great for learning the techniques and procedures to programme an aircraft but does not do anything to teach you how to 'fly'. Another thing I've learnt over the past 10 years flying is that each time I complete a new rating/licence (CPL, multi, instrument rating, flight instructor) I gain a lot of understanding of what I previously didn't know and scarily, how close I've perhaps come to ending up in a dangerous situation without even realising it - this is why the Dunning-Kruger effect is so important for NEW pilots to know about. The cockiest, 'know-it-all' pilots that I see everyday are the fresh PPL's whilst the most cautious and safe pilots are the guys with thousands of hours who fly a wide variety of aircraft, not just airliners. The saying really is true - "There are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but there are no old-bold pilots". If I can give any new pilots a few pointers: 1 - Use flight simulator to practice what you learn in flight school, but don't think you know anything just because you've done it before in flight simulator. 2 - Knowledge is key. The more you can learn about principles of flight, meteorology, aircraft general knowledge - the bigger your bank of knowledge to fall back on is when crap hits the fan. 3 - Learn from others. People make mistakes. Learn from those mistakes so you don't have to. 4 - Stay well within the envelope. Until you have the experience having sat with someone who knows the envelope and can show you, don't venture to the edge of the flight envelope on your own because things like spins and load factor do things to the aircraft that are very counterintuitive and the recovery from undesirable states can be complicated for each aircraft and may vary for each type. Believe me, spinning an aircraft is fun until you don't mean to spin it. 5 - Allow the process to happen through time. As I said, each time I achieved a new rating, I learned so much about what I didn't know. That's kind of what the guy in the video is saying what makes an 'expert pilot'. You can't fake your way to knowing more stuff. It just comes with time, practice, hours in the air, reading the books. Enjoy the process, be aware of your ignorance and be prepared to learn and do that learning in a safe environment surrounded by people who have been there and done it.

I've never flown a plane or learned to fly one (besides flying FA-18s a Jane's sim when I was like 15), and I flew a and landed a single engine prop plane with, while handling ALL the controls. There was even a strong crosswind. Pilot told me to roll the wing down into the wind. VERY different plane, and very different situation, but still. He said I practically aced the landing.

I'm an aerospace structural analysis engineer with over 10 years of experience. I think I gained a lot of confidence when I realized there is no way in hell I know everything, ask dumb questions (even when I feel like I'm expected to know it), and have other people look at my work.

i saw tons of the dunning-kreuger effect in art school lol its amazing to me to see how confident an artist can get with a few successful projects under their belt. I, myself might be smack dab in the middle of this effect but being self aware about your abilities can definitely help you check your ego.

20 years ago or so, I was obsessed with microsoft combat flight simulator - my mom & stepdad & I were down in Kitty Hawk, and we decided to visit the Wright Bros. Memorial and go up in a Cessna puddle jumper. My stepdad told me to sit up front with the pilot so I could land if something happened to him. It was a good, uneventful flight, and when we came around and lined up with the runway, the pilot looked at me and said " you wanna' land ? " & I said " sure, I'll give it a shot ! " He just shrugged his shoulders, chuckled a bit, and did not let go of the controls....

Motorcycle rider here, noticed the same pattern about hours and confidence. Noob are taking care, experienced pilots too, but just when you start to develop some skills and abilities as a fresh rider you're exposing yourself to shtf. Saw multiple cases like this.

As a person who have played racing games a bit and now learning to drive in real life on mechanics, I felt the power of Dunning-Kruger effect

"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." - Donald Rumsfeld unintentionally summarizing the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I practiced taking off and landing for hundreds and hundreds of hours precisely for that reason. "In case one day it may be needed" Only problem, the simulator I found was a fighter jet. But I think with the proper guidance I should be able to land a plane safely. Although I always thought if that situation ever comes about, I first would like to ask if it'd be possible to do a test run at about 3, 4, maybe 5000 feet first. OR... to follow all steps till right before touch down, take off from there, take note of any corrections of anything I missed, then turn around and do the actual landing.

Been using that thought for most of my life. You don't know what you dont know till you find out how little you do know.

Old saying among pilots: In an emergency, any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. Speaking to overconfidence: it is amazing how many people with a driver's license think they are good drivers.

"Is there anyone here who knows how to land a plane?!" Raises hand "You do??" "I mean... I've played flight sims before." "Sir, please put your hand down." "okay."

My favourite instance of the Dunning-Kruger Effect is itself: its generally portrayed message is different to the original Dunning-Kruger paper: people are closer to the average than they think, speaking of self-assessed underperformers *and* overperformers.

With all of the automation in modern airplanes and a little help from ground control I could probably get such a plane relatively safely to the ground, at least when the runway is pretty long and I have enough fuel to go around and try again a few times. But I've never put that knowledge to the test and that probably better stays that way XD

“Knowing how much you don't know gives life a purpose.” Great quote, Joe 👍🏻