He who speaks loudest at the hardware store usually knows the least. There’s a certain kind of confidence that comes from having a lot of opinions and very little experience. Real knowledge doesn’t need to shout; it just shows up in the tools you keep on hand, the work you do, and the helping hand you give.
You’ve met this guy. He’s in the plumbing aisle explaining to a stranger exactly how to fix their water heater, even though he’s never touched one. He’s at the family barbecue telling everyone how the economy works. He’s in the comment section of every video about a topic he learned about ten minutes ago. He’s never wrong, because he’s never actually tried it.
There’s a Name for It#
Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger published a study in 1999 that gave this a name: the Dunning-Kruger effect. In their experiments, the people who performed worst on tests of things like logic and grammar tended to overestimate how well they did by the widest margin. The skills you need to be good at something are often the same skills you need to recognize that you’re not good at it yet.
The flip side is just as interesting. People who really know a subject tend to be more aware of what they don’t know. Ask an experienced electrician a question, and you’re likely to hear “It depends” or “I’d have to see it.” That’s not a lack of confidence. That’s experience talking. They’ve seen enough jobs go sideways to know that every house is a little different.
How to Spot the Real Thing#
Over the years, I’ve found a few signs that separate the people worth listening to from the people who just like to talk:
- They ask questions before giving answers. Experienced people want to understand the problem first.
- They talk about mistakes. Anybody who has done real work has messed something up and learned from it. If someone’s never been wrong, they probably haven’t done much.
- They’re comfortable saying “I don’t know.” And then they usually tell you who would know.
- Their tools are worn. Not shiny and new, not in the original packaging. Used.
- They help instead of lecture. They’d rather show you how to do it than tell you how smart they are.
Keeping Yourself Honest#
The tricky part is that all of us are the loud guy about something. It’s easy to have strong opinions on things we’ve only read about. The fix is pretty simple: do the thing. Fix the leaky faucet yourself. Plant the garden. Volunteer for the job you’ve been critiquing from the sidelines. Experience has a way of sanding the rough edges off our opinions, and it usually makes us a little kinder about how hard things actually are.
Have opinions. Just earn them. The best advice I’ve ever gotten came from people who had more calluses than comments.
