Three on Thursday

Joining Kat and Carole for Three on Thursday, and today it's with three things I learned this week.

This is the back of a chair in a library I recently visited. It doesn't have anything to do with the post, but I needed a photo.
  I think it's really interesting and reminds me of Peter Max posters I had in the 60s and 70s.

1.  I learned that TIL is an acronym for "today I learned" (thanks to my kids).

2.  The Dunning-Kruger effect can explain so much! Simply put, it says that sometimes we are just too ignorant to even be able to assess or understand how ignorant we really are. We don't know what we don't know, and this can lead people (and I include myself) to overestimate their capabilities. I've had a week full of examples of the Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias!

3.  "Illusory Superiority" is another interesting term I learned while reading about Dunning-Kruger. It's just what it says, a tendency to overestimate our positive qualities and abilities and underestimate our negative qualities relative to others. Think Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." John and I have had fun this week, calling each other on our own illusory superiorities. It turns out that he may not know as much about knitting as he thinks he does (when he picked up my Match & Move and tried a few stitches), and I don't know as much about running an air compressor as I thought I did. Luckily neither one of us ruined anything with our illusions of superior knowledge, but it was a distinct possibility!

Head on over here to read more Three on Thursday posts.