The lowest common denominator

I've been doing a fair amount of reading of late that has been interfering with, but contributing to, my writing.  Have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?  I don't know of any connection to Freddie but it is interesting the self-destructive nature of this effect that these scientists have documented.  Perhaps I only find this interesting because of a cognitive psychology course I took many, many moons ago, but I suspect that others will also be interested in light of some of the "conversations" that are occurring around climate change and other natural resource issues today.  One that comes to mind is a spaghetti feed mentioned by Rainbow Jarvis.

Here is a short description from Wikipedia, which begins with a quote from their 1999 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a 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] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."^[1]

“	The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.	”
	— Bertrand Russell[2]

In short, we are screwed.  The lowest common denominator dominates the microphone proclaiming to the world their competency at .....  whatever.  Pick your favorite topic and there is the self-appointed expert.  Not a credential to their name but what they feel they know.  

Now this puts me in a bit of a conundrum because I do like to challenge myself to learn new things and expand my horizons.  I like to believe that on-the-job training is some of the most valuable experience a person can get.  Those efforts, especially when expended on my personal time, don't get a me a degree or even some kind of credential.  And even worse, my reward is an overwhelming sense of how much I don't know.   That I can speak from my own perspective is true.  But I don't have the feeling that I can challenge the experts in the field and say the work they are doing is bunk.  

Does this mean my mind is somehow different from the seething masses of intuitive geniuses?*  I hate to think so.  I hate to think that we are forever condemned to have important societal issues pushed and swayed by the lowest common denominator.  The short Wikipedia article, in summarizing this and followup research, provides a measure of hope.  People, after extensive training or tutoring in the lacking skills, can become better at estimating, and therefore understanding, their own competency.  

So my questions are, what kind of implications does this have for our educational system?  Particularly at the elementary or secondary school level?  How do we give our next generations the leg up to not shoot themselves in the foot as a society by becoming trapped in unending and misnamed "debates" over facts?

*  I will be forever grateful to the author of the term "intuitive genius."  He knows who he is.