Preface - Lemon Juice

One of the things that has entered into popular culture is the Dunning-Kruger effect, or as I remember it, "The Lemon Juice Bandit".

For those of you who are not familiar with the "Lemon Juice Bandit" it's the story of McArthur Wheeler. Mr. Wheeler was a 44 year old, resident of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and in 1995 he decided to rob two banks. He was quickly caught when the police broadcast the surveillance footage, because he apparently made no attempt to disguise himself. When he was arrested he was incredulous because, in his words, "But I used the juice!"

Now, there is a certain amount of logic to his thought process. He knew that common science trick to making "invisible ink" was to use lemon juice to write. That writing is "invisible" unless it is heated, at which point it turns brown. He even went so far as to test it himself, rubbing lemon juice on his face and taking a picture with a polaroid. When he didn't show up in the photo he knew he had figured it out. The obvious critical flaw here is that lemon juice isn't visible, but the paper it is on certainly is, but I actually admire the logic. I do struggle with how you would ever find lemons if this were true, but that's a different story.

This is now commonly referred to as the Dunning-Kruger effect after the authors of a study based on a series of experiments to test for cognitive bias. In particular it studies the lack of self-awareness that results in people lacking the ability to correctly assess their own competence in an area. Or, in the words of the great 21st century philosopher Donald Rumsfeld, assessing the 'unknown unknowns.'

All of this is entertaining and useful. Especially if you actually internalize it and try to work on figuring out where your blind spots are. But there is another side to this coin that we don't talk about, and I call that "The Conceit of Speed".

The Conceit of Speed

I want to take you on a slight detour into the world of endurance sports. As luck would have it, I love to run. It's something that drives my wife crazy, because she feels it's unfair that I should enjoy something that is good for you that so many other people hate. Or in the words of cross country teams around the world, "Our sport is your sport's punishment".

But, I'm not very good at it. In races my goal is to be be in the top 50% of the finishers, and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don't. Especially due to my abilities, I used to assume the following:

• Everyone who was ahead of me was just more talented
• Everyone who was behind me just hadn't trained enough

Looking at this one way, you could perceive it as coming from a place of humility. It assumes that you're just bad at what you do. But in fact, I think the opposite is true and actually Dunning-Krueger also explains this. Their same study says:

"Roughly, participants who found tasks to be easy erroneously presumed that the tasks also must be easy for others; in other words, they assumed others were as competent as, if not more competent than, themselves."

You'll notice that my assumption, when placed in a different light could also be phrased as:

• Everyone ahead of me doesn't have to work hard to get there
• Everyone behind me is too lazy to do more work

Which sounds a whole lot less humble.

And this is where I think we all have to work to be better. In particular, I think we all need to practice at coming at all places from a place of humility. One piece of writing that has really struck me is David Alm's, An Elite State of Mind. It describes his experience as a 'pedestrian' runner. His personal record for the marathon is 2:49 and for a 5k is 16:26. Both of which are only slightly more than half of my personal bests. In other words, he's fast. In the local running scene this is what some of his peers advised him:

"[...] another runner whose race times at shorter distances were nearly identical to mine casually suggested that I focus on ultras instead. His reasoning: "Those guys aren't very fast."'

But he had a once in a lifetime opportunity. He won a local 5k in 17:07. In his own words

"Plenty of local runners could have beaten me, had they shown up."

The prize for winning that race was an all-expenses-paid trip to race the Modesto Carrion Half Marathon in Juncos, Puerto Rico. He was one of only 12 people invited to the race and the only American. And the only non-professional. These people were the real deal. Professional Kenyan runners. I suggest you read the whole article, but David struggles with the idea that he'll embarrass himself or lose the respect of the other 11. Some of these men were Olympians with half marathon times in the 61 or 62 minutes. David 'over-cooks' himself in the half marathon and had his worst performance ever. The result of that from the professionals is nothing but support. The winner of the race is cheering for David to finish. None of them look down on him for his performance.

Contrast this with "You should run with people who aren't very fast" from a local athlete and ask yourself which one do you want to be?

For me, "The Conceit of Speed" has actually started to morph into the "The Insecurities of the Mediocre", and I refuse to be that person. I may in fact be mediocre. I'm probably not McArthur Wheeler, but I'm also not Mo Farah. I can only try to continue to improve myself, but more importantly, I can support and encourage others. Because they're not McArthur or Mo either, but then again, most of us aren't.

And, because there is always a relevant xkcd , maybe you'll get lucky and meet one of the 10,000 today.