Mistaking Confidence for Competence
Remember the days when someone asked a question and you actually had to use your brain to find the answer? Now we just Google it. It’s a privilege to have access to the information we have today. I can look up Premier League stats on the fly. I can figure out how to change my own oil. I can learn to improve my squat form. And yet, I wonder about the implications of this access to unlimited information. How is it actually impacting us?
If I had a thesis for this post, it would be:
Unfettered access to information causes people to mistake confidence for competence and ultimately regard knowledge as more valuable than wisdom.
I think several societal factors contribute to this misunderstanding. Here are my thoughts:
The Peer-Reviewed Decision Making Process Elevates Influence over Validity.
With access to unfettered information comes the necessity for some way to validate the information, which is why we’ve become such a peer-reviewed society. We rely on reviews to find the best restaurant, the professor to enroll with, or the pediatrician we should see. Inadvertently, this sometimes means that rather than the most qualified person guiding the decision making, the most influential person sets the standard. Unfortunately, when validity is superseded by influence, decisions get muddied.
“When people mistake confidence for competence, they end up valuing style over substance. The most charismatic person in the group is the most likely to get away with a flawed argument. The most polished speaker in the room is the most likely to get away with being unprepared. ”
Input-Output Orientation Elevates the Fear of Failure.
We live in a world that is highly input - output oriented. I put forth effort, I get a result. In some ways it’s contributed to a lot of progress in our society. However, this industrial revolution has unwittingly bled over to how we view ourselves and others. Several companies try to implement methodologies that assume people can be automated. I used to work at a call center where burnout was common and turnover was always high because people’s natural limitations simply can’t be bypassed with automation. Everyone has a cap and mine differs from the next person. Yet, our love for measurable productivity and efficiency can also more readily expose failure. If I did A, I should have gotten B. What happens when I don’t? What does that mean about my parenthood, my competence, my likeability, etc.?
Let’s connect some of these thoughts. I have unlimited access to information. I try to set standards for validating that information but influence and style hijack validity. And my disposition toward input - output processing easily exposes my failures. What do I do with that? It seems pretty intuitive to hoard more information to boost my confidence, right? However, it does absolutely nothing to solve my lack of experience in knowing when and how to use the information wisely. And since I’m afraid of failing, I’m inclined to look for even more information to further bolster my inexperience. The problem is if we can’t admit what we don’t know, we also prevent ourselves from learning it. And just because we know about something doesn’t mean we’ll apply it well. If we’re too afraid to step into experience without some false sense of textbook competence, we’ll continue the never-ending cycle of mistaking confidence for competence and be overly confident in our inexperience.
“Ignorance becomes a double curse for the unskilled. They make many mistakes because they don’t have the skills they need, and their lack of skill makes it impossible to recognize when they make mistakes.”
What I’m really searching for is wisdom. I want to know how and when to apply information in any given circumstance. To do this, I must first gather the information and then step into experience. But I must also be willing to fail. Wisdom is hard to find. But it is hidden in the union of knowledge and experience and in the ebb and flow of failure and success. I can nestle in the false confidence of the wealth of knowledge I’ve collected, but unless I step into the tension of that union, my fear of failure won’t give me the wisdom I lack.