Maggie's Farm

rhhardin,

I think we've got turtles with PhDs all the way to the top. People thinking way too hard (or at least getting grants way too large and writing papers way too dense) about something perfectly ordinary.

People familiar with the difficulties of a task generally know where they fit on a quadrille scale - pretty close. Those toward the lesser end of the ability spectrum will go somewhat easy on themselves and claim better ability than they have but not expertise or high ability. People on the high end of the scale will tend to downplay their capability.

There is little danger in slight exaggeration for the low-enders. They won't do all that well, nobody expected them to do great, they never claimed excellence.

For the high-enders there is upside to downplay. They know they'll do a good job, probably better. The worst that can happen is they meet expectations but if they've successfully set expectations a little low, exceeding them is more likely.

Human nature, that's all it is.