Dunning-Kruger effect is rampant in Cabinet

All known vaccines are 100% ineffective against incompetence, especially the South African variant, exacerbated by comorbidities, stupidity and arrogance.

Scientists have detected a virulent South African strain of the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in the US.

According to RationalWiki, the Dunning-Kruger effect “occurs where people fail to adequately assess their level of competence – or specifically, their incompetence – at a task and thus consider themselves much more competent than everyone else.

“This lack of awareness is attributed to their lower level of competence, robbing them of the ability to critically analyse their performance, leading to a significant overestimation of themselves. In simple words it’s ‘people who are too ignorant to know how ignorant they are’.”

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You have to be stupid and incompetent to neglect to check the expiry date when ordering 1.5 million vaccine doses of questionable effectiveness.

And then go on TV and talk down to others, as if they are the dof ones. Eish.

South Africa’s vaccine panjandrums have been made April fools, stamped with an appropriate “use by” date.

Somehow, the imminent expiry was not detected when President Cyril Ramaphosa and senior officials went to OR Tambo International Airport last week to receive a much-hyped shipment of AstraZeneca vaccine from India.

Presumably the date wasn’t printed on the label which Ramaphosa was seen reading.

Fanfare around the vaccine arrival was absurd, considering how far behind we are in the herd immunity stakes.

Ramaphosa and his advisors probably imagined it would make them look good, at the top of their game.

But, as the character Touchstone says in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

READ MORE: Scientists working on plan to vaccinate population in ‘shortest possible time’ – Ramaphosa

British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell lamented: “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision”.

What is now called Dunning-Kruger effect is as old as humanity.

Ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, for example said: “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

Since time immemorial, stupid people have thought they were clever, while others entertain what British writer Colin Wilson called necessary doubt. Do you necessarily doubt that?

The Dunning-Kruger effect is rampant in the South African Cabinet.

“Our people” adopt lofty titles such as National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC), Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) on Coronavirus Vaccine Development, etc.

These grand names do not induce competence. Instead, their holders unleash economic ruin, heavy-handed, selective policing and a shambolic late, stop-start vaccine roll-out.

ALSO READ: ‘We can still use AstraZeneca vaccine, but the clock is ticking’ – expert

We are victims of ignorant leadership afflicted by delusions of competence.

Ministerial briefings on imagined vaccine roll-outs are a leading cause of boredom, more soporific than death by PowerPoint.

TV viewers switch off when presenters offer fairy tales about how and when people will receive government-approved vaccinations.

Their jabbering about jabs is pure jabberwocky, defined as “invented or meaningless language; nonsense”.

Such footage belongs in the fiction section, along with tomorrow’s state of the nation address. We know what state we’re in. Dung.

Martin Williams, DA councillor and former editor of The Citizen.

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