Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses why the Mishna needs to delineate the disqualification of two different kinds of gamblers: one who plays with dice and one who bets on pigeons. This Gemara holds that the reason a gambler is disqualified is that betting is tantamount to theft. How so? Because the person who is betting doesn’t fully commit to losing, and therefore, when the winning bettor collects winnings from the losers, it is essentially stealing their money. The Gemara explains why it is necessary to specify both the dice gambler and the pigeon gambler due to the different psychology of the bettors in assessing their odds of losing and their resulting level of commitment.
The Gemara answers that it is necessary for the Mishna to teach that both types of gamblers are disqualified. The Mishna taught that one who bets on dice, believing he has a method to win, is disqualified. Similarly, one who bets on pigeon races, making it dependent on the decision of his pigeon, is also disqualified.
Dice gamblers might believe that skill influences their odds, while pigeon gamblers recognize the randomness of the outcome. Ironically, because pigeon gamblers understand the randomness, one might think their commitment to the possibility of loss is more complete, therefore paying their loss might not be theft. Yet, the Mishna teaches that even in pigeon racing, collecting winnings is considered theft, as gamblers still delude themselves into thinking they can win, failing to fully commit to the possibility of loss.
Had the Mishna only mentioned pigeon gamblers, one might assume that only they are disqualified, as they believe their skill, such as knocking on trees to speed up pigeons, gives them an edge. But with dice, perceived as pure chance, we might think dice gamblers are fully committed to the possibility of losing. Yet, the Mishna disqualifies them as well, highlighting the gambler's psychological tendency to overestimate their chances.
This Gemara touches upon the human psychological process of rationalizing and overestimating one's ability or skill. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, discovered by researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments").
Dunning and Kruger discovered an interesting and persistent form of cognitive bias: people who were unskilled in a particular area tended to grossly overestimate their ability, while inversely, people who were competent in a particular area tended to underestimate their ability. These findings resonate with the adage, “The more you learn, the more you realize that you do not know.” In a series of experiments, Dunning and Kruger had people evaluate their skills in a particular area, such as logic, humor, and grammar. In each of these separate experiments, people in the 16 to 25% percentile of competence evaluated themselves as being closer to the 60-65% percentile, in other words, above average. Ironically, the top 25% tended to think their skills were in the 70-75% percentile, although their performances were actually in the 87th percentile.
How do we account for this? Dunning and Kruger attribute it to a meta-cognitive deficit. In plain English, it means that the same lack of intelligence and skill which caused their poor performance also accounts for their inability to perceive that their performance was poor. Imagine a person enjoying singing completely out of tune, but not knowing it’s out of tune and not being bothered by it, because they don’t have the ability to recognize whether they are in tune or not. The same can be said for hard skills like mathematics and even softer skills like emotional intelligence. How would you know if you’re hurting somebody’s feelings if you have insufficient empathy?
Later researchers have critiqued Dunning and Kruger’s attribution and have come up with other interesting explanations for the effect. Some argue it is simply a matter of statistics, particularly the concept of regression toward the mean. If we look at self-assessment scores in the entire population, and the average score is a certain number, the lowest performers, whose scores are lower, will by definition estimate a higher score, as they apply the average ability to their own self-assessment. In other words, those with lower competence will tend to overestimate their abilities because they fail to accurately assess themselves within the larger statistical average.
Others argue that the bias arises from a lack of incentive to be accurate. People may be incentivized to overestimate their abilities in certain situations. For example, when applying for a job, if a person is humble and talks about their weaknesses, it could hurt their chances, whereas overestimating their abilities might increase their chances. However, this can backfire if the person is exposed as incompetent. The irony is that some irrational behaviors persist because, in certain ways, they confer short-term benefits, and sometimes even long-term ones.
Where this cognitive bias becomes dangerous is in professions or situations where a high degree of skill is required, and the consequences for a lack of skill are great. For example, you would not want your surgeon to be overconfident in their abilities, although, ironically, a certain degree of overconfidence and cockiness might be necessary to have the steel resolve to perform surgery. Similarly, in relationships such as marriage or parenting, where emotional intelligence, communication, and conflict management are crucial, a person lacking sensitivity in these areas may not even be aware of their deficiencies, especially according to Dunning-Kruger’s meta-cognitive explanation.
The lesson for us is that while we should be optimistic about our abilities and take leaps of faith, we must also be realistic about our blind spots, particularly when it comes to recognizing our deficiencies and our ability to assess them.
Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation 
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