Thirteen Arrowheads

 

In 1995, a man named McArthur Wheeler robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight, without a mask. He’d splashed lemon juice on his face prior to the robberies, convinced it would make him invisible to security cameras. He was utterly dumbfounded when police showed up at his home to arrest him. He knew you could use lemon juice to write invisible messages; obviously the juice would make him disappear as well. When news of his misadventure reached two psychologists at Cornell University – David Dunning and Justin Kruger – they were fascinated. How could someone be so certain, yet so wrong? Four years later the pair released a study describing the Dunning-Kruger effect: those of us who know the least often convince themselves they know the most. The less we know, the smarter we feel. And the more we learn, the more we realize how much we don’t know.