I think sometimes it’s also hard to comprehend how good people can actually get at some things.
Like you might be naturally gifted at chess but not realise the gap is so big to say a grandmaster without experiencing it.
Similarly you might learn to solve a Rubik’s cube in a couple of minutes but would the average person expect the world record to be like 3 or 4 seconds? Hard to imagine you can move so quickly and plan so many move ahead in your head!
People are pretty amazing when they specialise in something
exactly, but one would be aware of this due to knowing the Dunning-Kruger effect and would thus assume that there’s a gap of unknown but likely massive size above you that you just don’t have the perspective to perceive
I would say that most people should forget about it. It might just be a statistical effect:
A different interpretation is further removed from the psychological level and sees the Dunning–Kruger effect as mainly a statistical artifact. It is based on the idea that the statistical effect known as regression toward the mean explains the empirical findings.
My hypothesis is that you’d go for “intermediate” since you are not new to go but also wouldn’t yet classify yourself as advanced. We have some indication that such people already call themselves intermediate when that is presented as the second highest level of 4!
I was 20k after playing for a few months. At that time I didn’t know more than corners-sides-center, a few good shapes and a few basic tsumegos, so I felt closer to “new to go” than to “intermediate”. So if I absolutely had to make a choice, I’d choose reluctantly “new to go”.
And so I suppose the question is then would that be so bad? You’d win some games and get a more accurate rank. I have the impression that that outcome is overall preferable than getting thumped in your first games while testing the patience of those doing the thumping.
I don’t know either way. However there is maybe some correlation between Go players who’ve stuck at it a bit and modesty? I wonder if the established community feels, collectively, that people would err on the side of underestimating skill. Whereas the general population, who are maybe closer to those using this system on the whole, tend to overestimate themselves.
I suspect that most people who have initial success in a competitive environment, and persist in that environment, know about the effect, even if they do not know the ridiculous, pompous name for it. This is because after some steady improvement they eventually reach a level where they get the tar knocked out of them, and if they have common sense, this gives them a more just estimate of their ability. I’ve experienced this twice, in distance running and in music. An old friend of mine experienced it in mathematics.
