Those absolutely no good at something, lack exactly the skill they need to know that they are no good at it. John Cleese dixit.

Monty Phyton’s John Cleese, fabulously interviewed at the Commonwealth Club by Adam Savage, the host of “Mythbusters”, and in reference to a theory by David Dunning, a professor at Cornell, says around minute 57:40 the following:

“In order to know how good you are at something requires almost exactly the same aptitude as it does to be good at that think in the first place.

Which follows, as a corollary, that if you absolutely no good at something, you lack exactly the skill that you need to know that you are no good at it.

And once you realize that, you see there are thousand of people out there that have absolutely no idea of what they are doing, and so they have absolutely no idea of that they have no idea what they’re doing.”

I wonder, could John Cleese by any chance be referring to those regulators who, when deciding on the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, assigned a meager 20% to those dangerously rated AAA, and a whopping 150% for those who rated below BB- have been made so innocous for the banking system?

Here some personal observations on those cuckoo risk weighted capital requirements for banks developed by the Basel Committee, for the world to use, God Help Us!