Dunning Kruger Effect: Why Some People Believe They Know More Than The Experts

People come to believe things that serve them in one way or another, and often disregard contradictory information because it doesn't reinforce the ideas that make them less anxious and feel more empowered. Below is a good explanation of an effect of which one only becomes aware as their education reaches college levels of understanding and above. I'd noticed it in myself: the way my perceptions of the world shifted with more and more perspective and knowledge, but I'd never put it into words except to say, "I know that I do not know what I do not know. Being mindful of this, I know a little better." Some people regard a shatter illusion a "bad thing". Not me. Bring them on. If I've an illusion, let it be shattered. This is not the attitude of people who still support trump. THEIR behavior is more typical of schizoid people with tight delusional systems that make them hateful towards anyone who, no matter how kindly, tries to show them facts that do not mesh well with their delusions.

Regarding the virus, obviously trump has his ideas about how to respond to the virus, and he is motivated by a variety of factors, many of which are inappropriate and displacing the energy he puts into what should be his number 1 concern: Reducing fatalities by supporting medical personnel and the folks who are keeping food, utility and supplies available to weather this biological storm. But his followers are ignoring the medical experts, infectious disease experts, etc and what follows is an explanation for why they are prone to doing this. Basically, it's a lack of perspective in which to judge the competence of their own perceptions/ideas created by a lack of knowledge/data. Just like we can't know how deadly the 2019 Corona virus is until we test a huge random sample for antibodies, these people lack the data set that would give them insight. Couple that with an unwillingness to entertain data contrary to their own theories/delusions and you get a MAGA and/or KAGA. Without further delay, the Dunning Kruger Effect:

Copied from Quora where David Blackstone wrote:

"There’s a psychological phenomenon called the Dunning Kruger effect, which explains why the ignorant believe themselves to be smarter than they actually are.

Knowledgeable people, or experts who know more about a subject than anyone else, are more likely to be aware of what they don’t know. They know the extent of the knowledge that can be learned on a subject and consequently are more likely to know how much they know relative to how much there IS to know.

Ignorant people are the opposite. They don’t know how much there is to know because they don’t know much to begin with. So they assume that their knowledge is on par with or better than an experts, purely because they don’t understand how much there truly is to learn.

Because of this phenomenon, knowledgeable people are more likely to underestimate their knowledge while less knowledgeable people are more likely to overestimate their knowledge.

In sum, smart people know how much they don’t know. Ignorant people are unaware of how much they don’t know, so they think they know more than they do."
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As to where this will lead us, I'm put in mind of what my Dad would shrug and say in such a situation: "Them that cannot hear have to feel".