A Metacognition Problem

This is not about intelligence. It is about metacognition — the ability to evaluate your own thinking. Competence brings awareness of a field's complexity and your own limits. Incompetence brings ignorance of both, producing exactly the unshakeable confidence the research found in its lowest performers.

The implication is that self-assessment is unreliable. You cannot judge your competence in a domain where you lack competence. This blind spot feels like clarity — your most confident judgment is often your least accurate.

The fix is external feedback. Seek honest evaluation from people with demonstrated expertise in what you are assessing.