The wisdom of the ill informed

Ivan Krstić krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu
Mon Jun 30 21:38:49 EDT 2008


On Jun 30, 2008, at 7:22 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> One of the most interesting things I find about most fields is the
> fact that people who are incompetent very often fancy themselves
> experts. There's a great study on this subject -- usually the least
> competent people are the ones that feel highly confident in their
> skills, while the people who aren't have more doubts. One sees this
> very phenomenon on this very list, and not infrequently.


Indeed:

     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon_effect>
     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect>

How security non-experts screwed up security in systems like WEP and  
PPTP is no mystery to me. How, on the other hand, a real expert at  
_anything_ feels comfortable entering another hard technical field  
without screaming for assistance is something I don't get at all.

That a roomful of network experts designing 802.11 didn't hold hands  
and all together chant "bring us a good cryptographer" with such  
maniacal monophony as to rival any Gregorian choir makes me highly  
suspicious about their supposed expertise with _networks_.

--
Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | http://radian.org

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