Noone seems to have read OP's post in its entirety. A crucial point was made by referencing this paper: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic

Noone seems to have read OP's post in its entirety. A crucial point was made by referencing this paper: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1215&context=numeracy https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1.... Figure 2 in this paper shows the result of an experiment where skill and perception of one's skill are measured independently. To eliminate any statistical artifact of auto-correlation. And lo and behold - on average skill is uncorrelated to the accuracy one's own assessment. No DK effect at all. What does show up actually is that more qualified people are more consistent in estimating their skill (i.e. their assessments are less variable), but the mean accuracy is still 0. So indeed, on average actual and perceived skills are uncorrelated. That's exactly what the numerical proof with random numbers shows and why in many cases we apply Occam's razor.