Letters to the Editor
-
You forgot about ...
emaydon:
Lowry is a fully paid up member of the punditocracy. He speaks on their behalf. The idea that Iraq is "little understood" is a judgement he may pass on his own milieu. Anthony Zinni, Brent Scowcroft, Juan Cole, amongst many experts foresaw the problems of occupying Iraq.
You left out Dick "shooter" Cheney, who during his relatively brief "Sane Period" in 1992 explained in explicit detail and described with terrifying accuracy the present situation in Iraq (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/192908_cheney29.html).
I'm sure psychiatrists have a name for this. No sane person could surely make such a fool of himself.
I don't know if they have a name for it, but a study by Justin Kruger and David Dunning of Cornell University published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1999 (http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf) was entitled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". I quote here the abstract:
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.
This would seem to be a perfect description of many of Washington's leading pundits (as well as our very own shooter).
If it has a name, it would most likely be "Too stupid to realize how stupid they are."