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Welcome to the ‘Mount of Stupidity’!
Here at touch and go... the sky is not the limit, but only the beginning. Even after you have your paragliding license in your pocket, the adventure continues and we want to make sure that you always stay on the right track.
Have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Two renowned social psychologists have discovered that ignorance often leads to more self-confidence than knowledge, so people with little experience often tend to overestimate their abilities. They may not even recognize their own lack of knowledge, which can lead to risky decisions.
Recognized despite lemon on the face
For the two psychologists, the following story symbolized a phenomenon that later became known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
One day in 1995, a bank in Pittsburg was robbed in the middle of the day. A man, not wearing a mask, smiled at the surveillance cameras after committing the crime. By the evening, the police had already arrested the stunned perpetrator. When they showed him the recording from the surveillance camera, he couldn’t believe his eyes: He was wearing “the juice” after all. It turned out that he had thought that rubbing himself with lemon juice would make him invisible to the surveillance cameras. After all, lemon juice would also be used for invisible ink. If he just stayed away from the heat, he concluded, he would be completely invisible.
In their study, David Dunning and Justin Kruger describe that less competent people tend to
- overestimate their own abilities,
- not recognize superior abilities in others,
- not properly assess the extent of their incompetence.
The ‘Mount of Stupidity’ model is about recognizing the threshold of the “Peak of Supidity” and avoiding falling into the “Valley of Despair”.
During your training to become a certified paraglider pilot, you learned a lot quickly. A natural self-confidence develops from the sense of achievement, you believe that you have understood everything and feel equal to any situation in the air. Now there are two things that can happen to you. If you stop learning at this point, you may consider yourself a complete pilot, even though you may have only scratched the surface. Or, if you continue learning, you become aware that the subject area is more comprehensive and complex than you initially realized.
Valley of despair
Failure to recognize the ‘Peak of Stupidity’ can not only hinder your progress, but also set back your entire flying career or even cause you to give up flying. Only after you realize how inexperienced you really are will you begin to build a solid foundation of knowledge and skills that will accompany you on a long and happy flying career.
