How to be an utterly confident idiot

Let me offer myself as an example of a confident idiot at least for a short period last week As a fan of factcheck and reasoned doubt I have been trying to fight the surging tide of panic about coronavirus by telling people its far from the end of the worldA friend was deciding to postpone her return to Laos where she lived for fear of coronavirus mdash or COVID19 as it is now named Laos was close to China she reasoned had porous borders and poor administrative controls even if no cases yetI argued telling her that it was all media hype pointing out that another virus the seasonal flu had infected 18 million people in the USA alone and killed 12000 in the same time as COVID19 mdash and with barely a small mention in the media In comparison COVID19 has so far infected 71334 people as of February 14 and 1775 had died Only three of the deaths were outside ChinaMy friends were unimpressed I however was very impressed by my levelheaded logical reasoning After five years with virologists and epidemiologists in the UNs Food and Agriculture Organizations section on emerging infectious diseases I felt the certainty of an expert The world needed more people like meJust yesterday I saw a quotation that dunked cold water on me One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision Bertrand Russell had written these words in 1951 in his book New Hope for a Changing WorldI felt certainty So was I stupid Inevitably this road led to David Dunning and Justin KrugerThe DunningKruger effect written up first in 1999 says that people of low ability or knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge Less charitably Some people are too stupid to even know how stupid they are Donald Trump is often cited as an exampleDunning and Kruger gave subjects tests in humour grammar and logic and then asked them to estimate how well they had scored Those who scored abysmally consistently estimated that they had scored outstandingly Poor sods youre probably thinking too stupid to know theyre stupid Detecting idiocy in others is such fun David Dunning in an interview threw cold water on this by saying The first rule of the DunningKruger club is that you dont know youre a member of the DunningKruger club No matter what your subject area is you have no way of knowing how much you dont know It seems that the true moron knows a little and believes he knows it all The more one moves towards expertise and mastery though the more aware you are of how there is yet to learnYet saying I dont know in a world exploding with information is a damning admission of absence of mind Try it at a party Go to some garrulous confident fellow and ask Hey dude do you think Chasing Dingos breaks new ground in hiphop You know the new single by Dermatitis You havent heard it No wayHow many people do you suppose would launch into a confident discourse on a nonexistent singerI made up a quick test of five questions to test your DunningKrugerness Answer each question with a number from 1 to 5 with 1 being Not True At All and 5 being Absolutely TrueThe god Ganesh has an elephant trunk so clearly plastic surgery was invented in IndiaOne day Muslims will take over the world because they have so many wives and produce so many childrenCold winters are proof that global warming is a total hoaxIt is quite possible that the earth is flat since all my knowledge is second hand from photos that could have been PhotoshoppedDrinking cow urine cures AIDSNow go back and for each question write down a number between 1 and 10 indicating how sure you are of the answer you gave Multiply the two numbers to get your five answer scores Calculate the average of these numbersThe higher the number the greater the chances that you were being a confident idiotIn case youre wondering what was wrong with my comparison between coronavirus and the seasonal flu most people recover from flu whose mortality rate is about 015 per cent COVID19 seems to have a mortality rate of around 21 per cent or 14 times that of seasonal fluBefore you start feeling like an expert mdash two earlier coronaviruses SARS 2003 and MERS 2012 had death rates of 10 and 34 respectively Ebolas was 44You decide how scared you want to beHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback tomailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates