Also related is the notion of "friendship" as it has been adapted for online life.

In real life, I think most people only have a few real friends then a next-valence level of neighbours and professional "friends" etc. who are somewhat more than nodding acquanitances but less than friends. In online social networks , there's a few people with whom one communicates regularly blended with the bit-more-than-nodding acquaintances, and then there's everyone else, either trying to get at you (spam, market to, use somehow) or ignore you, reject you or flee your online presence .. because they think you are a form of spam.

Happy first birthday to the Cognitive Edge blog! May it prevail against swampy mushes of spam and ignorance for many more years to come!

Dunning-Kruger effect: could this be a quantification of "those who know not that they know not"?

As in:
"There are those who know, those who know not and those who know not that they know not" - often attributed to Kung Fu Tzu (Confucius), but I would imagine that a great many quotes have been wrongly attributed to him - perhaps this is one of them.

Thank you for the gift. In never heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect (first evidence of being guilty of the effect myself :-)

I think I am guilty as well of the Dunning-Kruger effect and as of the Lake-Wobedgon effect. And as I learned yesterday from a coaching feedback I am guilty of cold-reading.

I call myself a "professional dilettante" in complex situations, like change management in very large organizations, I try not to go into the details of the knowledge of the myriads of experts. I find my patterns and I gain confidence in emergent approaches and I use my confidence to boost the self-esteem of "change heroes" to gain their insides in working change approaches "that was never done before".

To approach complex subjects I ask vague questions to activate participants. Cold-reading like fortunetellers or the use of Forer effect - there is something for everyone to resonate.

I ask myself is it skill or charlatanry even if it is helpful?
:-)

Werner, I'm sure that you are from Bielefeld: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy

Christian,
I was trained to denie any existence of that base;-)

But as a management consultant I am from Golgafrincham.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Golgafrincham

[From 2nd book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy ]