July 22, 2009 by mike.

I have a theory about police work and social work.  Here it is:  if you want to be a police officer, you have to train as a social worker and work as a social worker for five years before you can become a police officer.

In order to balance the job market, anyone interested in becoming a social worker would have to work as a police officer for five years after completing their MSW.

That would mean that a lot of us would end dealing with an authoritarian social worker who would yell at us, threaten to knock us down and rough us up if we did not make change quickly.  That might not be an altogether bad thing.

It might also mean we would end up with cops who would pull us over for speeding, or not using our blinkers, or making too many lane changes and they would sit down in the car with us and say things like:  I am worried about you, I think what you did back there was dangerous.   What were you thinking about?   Let’s talk about the important people in your life, how would they do if you were killed in an auto accident?  Do you have anything important that you need to say to your friends and family?  Have you said it?   because I am worried about you, you are driving like a person with a death wish.   If a miracle happened and everything was just the way you want it, what would the speed limit be?

And then, I guess, hey, our time is up for now.  You want to meet here again next week?  Great, let’s think about this situation.  I am not going to write you up this time.  Give me a hug, big guy.  Take care of yourself now.  Don’t hurt anybody, including yourself.

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June 20, 2009 by mike.

They don’t know they’re dumb. They’re everywhere.

Well, that’s a little uncharitable, but also a bit funny.

What is also funny is that there is a study that explains how dumb people can’t figure out they are dumb. It’s known as the Dunning Kruger effect.

I think this explains so much about trickle down economics and the foreign policy expertise that has the US fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan today.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org The Dunning-Kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which “…people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”[1]. They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average. This leads to a perverse result where people with less competence will rate their ability more highly than people with relatively more competence. Across four 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 test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. They won Ig Nobel Prizes in Psychology in 2000 with their report Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

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