The myth of the competent voter

Via Scott Adams: "researchers have discovered that people who are incompetent generally lack the knowledge that they are incompetent."

Here's the article at SFGate. The argument is, broadly, that "the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured...(because) the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence." 

One of the outcomes of this tendency is that more people tend to rate themselves "above average" across a whole range of categories than is, in aggregate, remotely statistically feasible. The genius part of the article though is at the end when - in pursuit of that unique journalistic goal of "balance" - the journalist finds an academic willing to dispute the findings of the research:

"Such studies are not without critics. Dr. David C. Funder, a psychology professor at the University of California at Riverside, for example, said he suspects that most lay people have only a vague idea of the meaning of 'average' in statistical terms.

I'm not sure the average person thinks of 'average' or 'percentile' in quite that literal a sense,'' Funder said, "so 'above average' might mean to them 'pretty good,' or 'OK,' or 'doing all right.' And if, in fact, people mean something subjective when they use the word, then it's really hard to evaluate whether they're right or wrong, using the statistical criterion.'"

Or in other words - you can't really blame the incompetent for not knowing they're incompetent, given that they don't really understand the tools or the terminology which are used to measure competence. I have my suspicions that at this point Dr Funder was just yanking the guy's chain.